On Papias: sayings, logia, and 'para ton presbyteron'
Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2018 6:59 pm
... We learn something of the contents [of Papias' logion kyriakon exegesis] from the preface, part of which has been preserved by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 3.39.3–4):
I will not hesitate to add also for you to my interpretations what I formerly learned with care from the Presbyters and have carefully stored in memory, giving assurance of its truth. For I did not take pleasure as the many do in those who speak much, but in those who teach what is true, nor in those who relate foreign precepts, but in those who relate the precepts which were given by the Lord to the faith and came down from the Truth itself. And also if any follower of the Presbyters happened to come, I would inquire for the sayings of the Presbyters, what Andrew said, or what Peter said, or what Philip or what Thomas or James or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which Aristion and the Presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying. For I considered that I should not get so much advantage from matter in books as from the voice which yet lives and remains.
From this we learn that Papias's book consisted mainly of "interpretations" - it was a kind of commentary on the "Logia of the Lord". The word logia, meaning "oracles", is frequently at the present day taken to refer to sayings, as opposed to narratives of Our Lord's actions (so Zahn and many others).
But Lightfoot showed long ago ('Essays on Supernatural Religion', 171-7) that this view is untenable. Philo used the word for any part of the inspired writings of the Old Testament, whether speech or narrative. St. Paul, Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, even Photius, have no other usage.
St. Irenaeus speaks of corrupting the oracles of the Lord just as Dionysius of Corinth speaks of corrupting the Scriptures of the Lord.
Logia kyriaka in Papias, in Irenaeus, in Photius, means "the divine oracles" of the Old or New Testament or both.
Besides these "interpretations", Papias added oral traditions of two kinds: some he had himself heard from the Presbyters, para ton presbyteron; others he had at second hand from disciples of the Presbyters who happened to visit him at Hierapolis. The Presbyters related what the "disciples of the Lord" -Peter, Andrew etc.,- used to say in old days.
Other informants of Papias's visitors were still living, "Aristion and John the Presbyter, the disciples of the Lord", as is shown by the present tense, legousin. We naturally assume that Papias counted them also among the direct informants whom he had mentioned before, for as they lived at Ephesus and Smyrna, not far off, he would surely know them personally.
However, many eminent critics -Zahn and Lightfoot, and among Catholics, Funk, Bardenhewer, Michiels, Gutjahr, Batiffol, Lepin- identify the Presbyters with Andrew, Peter etc., thus making them Apostles, for they understand "what Andrew and Peter and the rest said" as epexegetic of "the words of the Presbyters".
This is impossible, for Papias had just spoken of what he learned directly from the Presbyters, ora pote para ton presbyteron kalos emathon, yet it is admitted that he could not have known many apostles. Again, he seems to distinguish the sayings of the disciples of the Lord, Aristion and John, from those of the Presbyters, as though the latter were not disciples of the Lord.
Lastly, Irenaeus and Eusebius, who had the work of Papias before them, understand the Presbyters to be not Apostles, but disciples of disciples of the Lord, or even disciples of disciples of Apostles. The same meaning is given to the word by Clement of Alexandria [continues]
John Chapman - http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/i ... athen.html
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