Are our only [pre-Nicene] accounts about/of Papias -
- Irenaeus' Adv. Haers. book V. chapter 33. ?,
- Eusebius' Hist eccl
- book II. chapter 15, and
- book III. chapter 39 ??,
and the Old Latin (anti-Marcionite) prologue of John - http://www.textexcavation.com/papias.html#fragment19 ???
Adolf von Harnack's 1893 Geschichte der Altchristlichen Litteratur bis Eusebius (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1893) 1:69, refers to
- 'the Church History of the Nicephorus Call.' (III, 20 cf. 2:18); below, white text box;
which I presume is the Historia Ecclesiastica1 of Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos* (Νικηφόρος Κάλλιστος Ξανθόπουλος*), of Constantinople, "the last of the Greek ecclesiastical historians", who lived around 1320.- * Latinized as Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopulus
1. ... an ecclesiastical history, beginning with the time of Christ, that survives in one manuscript. The original, complete text continued through to 911 in twenty-three books; however, the last five books have since been lost. The surviving eighteen books take the story of church history up to 610. Xanthopoulos's project was unusual in that no historians had written in the genre of ecclesiastical history since late antiquity, and his efforts seem to have failed to revive the genre ... https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/gu ... D8BA0183EE
From the Church History of the Nicephorus Call. (III, 20 cf. 2:18) it can hardly be concluded that he even knew Papias’s work; his words “Papias … left behind many treatises; but only five of his are spoken of, which are inscribed the interpretation of the Lord’s oracles”, should not be taken at face value. Perhaps the following four Western references are to be taken more seriously, if we knew just absolutely nothing about a translation of Papias in Latin:
Papias’s fragments were repeatedly collected, first by Halloix. cf. Gebhardt’s and my edition of the PP. App. Opp. 1, 2 (edit. 2) p. 87sq.
http://hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2003/11/ ... -ages.html
- Ménard (s. Keil i. Fabr.-Harless Bibl. VII p. 153) in [the Civil and Church History and Literature of the city of Nismes] (Paris 1750 4:67) has copied the index of the inventory of the sacristy of the church of Nismes, which an unknown person included around the year 1218. Here is the comment: “Item: I discovered in a cloister a book of Papias, a book of the Lord’s words.”
. - Bickell has published in ZKT 3:800ff. the catalog of the library of the monastery of Stams, which was drawn up in the year 1341. Here is the notice: “Discourses of St. Benedict and of St. Bernard. – Different discourses. – Papias with different discourses.” I searched for this manuscript a week in Stams, but I did not find it.
. - Tritheim, de scriptor. eccl. 9 writes: “Papias, hearer and also disciple of St. John, bishop of Hierapolis in Asia, most steady propagator and defender of the Christian faith, disciple and diligent follower of the holy apostles wrote works whose authority must not be rejected. From which a noted work, separated in five volumes, which he designated thus: Explanation of the Lord’s Sayings, five books. We have not seen others that he wrote.”
. - Witzel writes in a letter to Beatus Rhenanus (in the year 1534, s. Texte u. Unters. 1, 1 p. 107): “You gave us Eusebius, and after that Tertullian. It remains that you in equal elegance give Justin martyr, Papias and Ignatius composed in Greek.”
Papias’s fragments were repeatedly collected, first by Halloix. cf. Gebhardt’s and my edition of the PP. App. Opp. 1, 2 (edit. 2) p. 87sq.
http://hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2003/11/ ... -ages.html