Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Secret Alias wrote:And this name Παπίας finally deserves some attention. Was there really a man of this name or is it a collection of sayings ascribed to '(Church) fathers' = פאפי. In other words, when 'Papias' says that he preferred to hear the witnesses of Lord rather than books these people were likely called פאפי. So was the collection identified later as belong to Παπίας really only just the very 'living voices' identified as Papias's preference?

There were "five books" written under the name of a Papias. I don't see any other very reasonable way to break this one down.

So? How many volumes are there in the 'Teaching of the Desert Fathers' series?

The Apophthegmata Patrum (lit. Sayings of the Fathers)[1] (Latin: Apophthegmata Patrum Aegyptiorum Greek: ἀποφθέγματα τῶν ἁγίων γερόντων, ἀποφθέγματα τῶν πατέρων, τὸ γεροντικόν)[2] is the name given to various collections popularly known as of Sayings of the Desert Fathers, consisting of stories and sayings attributed to the Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers from approximately the 5th century AD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophthegmata_Patrum

So... the question arises, then, of when were these books compiled, who wrote them, what are their sources, etc.

Even the most "conservative" position here is going to identify the contents of the books as "the very 'living voices' identified" in the text, because that position holds that Papias did collect such sayings and such, and so on, et cetera, and on and on.

Ben C. Smith wrote:Hi, Ulan. That other thread was getting pretty complicated, so I thought I would start a new one for this topic.

Ulan wrote:The choice of "logia" for Matthew's writings also suggests a more Q-like document....

I used to think that, too, but I no longer think so. Papias uses the same term of Mark, as well; he says that Mark did not hear the Lord himself, but rather heard Peter, who taught to the needs of his listeners, but did not give an ordering of the dominical (lordly) oracles (logia). Yet Papias also describes Mark as having written down what he remembered from what the Lord had said and done; and that does sound a bit like our gospel of Mark, right? Both sayings and deeds? So it seems that, according to Papias, Peter delivered the dominical oracles orally, but not in order, and Mark wrote them down. (Matthew, on the other hand, wrote down the dominical oracles in order, and in Hebrew, and others interpreted as best they could.... Not exactly a ringing endorsement of any Greek Matthews out there.)

Thanks Ben. This seems not to be the whole story though. There are not many sayings in Mark, and I'm not sure the order differs much between Mark and Matthew. Always keeping in mind that I'm talking about the versions we know.

Ben C. Smith wrote:Also, do not forget that the title given to the five books of Papias themselves is Exegesis of the Lordly Oracles, and Papias deals with deeds as well as words.

I think what is happening is this: the term oracles means words, certainly, but is not implying a genre, because it is not just the words of the Lord, but also the words about the Lord. And words about the Lord can include events, or deeds.

That is how it seems to me, at any rate.

OK, that sounds convincing. I sometimes wonder about all those explanations out there. I guess there aren't enough people checking the original text, under which I have to include myself, I guess.

So, according to Eusebius, there are extant five writings of Papias which are given the title of Exegesis of the Lies of the Lord.

But this isn't what it seems either. If there was a Hebrew or Aramaic underpinning to the gospel of Papias what are the odds that this book was originally written in Greek? And if so what are the odds that this was the title. It's all worthless assumption piled on top of worthless assumption. We simply don't know (a) what the book was actually called (b) what language it was written (c) WTF (who the fuck/what the fuck) 'Papias' was. Let's at least stop pretending we do and we've made some progress.

This guy seems to know a lot about Papias

http://tinyurl.com/posbr5m

but it does look like an excursion in apologia

In Syriac Pope = ܧܧܣ , ܒܐܧܐ
There are two attested forms פאפי and פפי BT Sot 42b(26) בר מאה פאפי וחד־נאני the son of one hundred fathers and one mother.

Let's look at פפי for a second. It is claimed that it was the name of an Amora:

פפי pr. n. m. Pappi, 1) name of an Amora, son-in-law of E . Yitshak Napp'ha. Hull. 110a; a.fr.—2) an otherwise unknown person. B. Bath. 48b Eashi a. Mss. (ed. פאפי, v. Eabb. D. S. a. 1. note 60).—3) a fictitious name in an incantation formula. Gitt. 69a .פאפי .V—.

But notice that it is a fictitious name also. From what I remember there is a similar variant in some of the anti-Christian material. Will have to revisit that.

Furthermore there is a specific form

פפיים

ם,פפים, פפיאם pr. n. m. (Ha.'Kiaz) Papias, name of a Tannai. Eduy. VII, 5, sq. (Ms. M. פוס&, corr. acc.); E . Hash. 6a (v. Eabb. D. S. a. 1. note 8); Tem. Ill, 1. Shek. IV, 7 (early eds. פפים; Ms. O. פפיאם, v. Eabb. D. S. a. 1., p. 32, note 90). Yalk. Gen. 34; Gen. E . s. 21 פפום (corr. acc); Cant. E . to I, 9 פפים. Mekh. Yithro, Amal., s. 1 פפים.

But I don't know. How certain are any of these references?

So there are the questions (a) is Papias a corruption of the Aramaic term for 'fathers' and (b) is Papias an Aramaic name. In either case the implication seems to be that the original source for this five volume work might well have been written in Aramaic and translated into Greek later.

And back to our second discussion about Irenaeus's relationship with Papias. It isn't just Papias's information about Matthew's logia which was borrowed by Irenaeus. As Burney notes:

Looking at the titles of other witnesses, we observe that [Irenaeus's statement] 'Mark the interpreter and disciple of Peter ' seems clearly to depend upon Papias's statement, Μαρκος μεν ερμηνευτης Πετρου γενομενος ... ουτε γαρ ηκουσεν του κυριου ουτε παρηκολουθησεν αυτω, υστερον δε, ως εφην, Πετρω

In other words Irenaeus statement about existence of the four gospels depends on at least TWO statements from Papias and a section of text which says that Mark implicitly rearranged material from Matthew in the wrong order. I don't see where Irenaeus 'corrects' or 'rejects' Papias's critical assertion so he must have allowed that statement to stand thus again implicitly leaving him open to affirm that Mark knew Matthew (if cornered by individuals who weren't buying his 'supernatural explanation' of the similarities between the synoptic texts).

Ulan wrote:Thanks Ben. This seems not to be the whole story though.

I agree.

There are not many sayings in Mark....

There are quite a lot of sayings in Mark when considered on its own. I think it is its unfortunate position between Matthew and Luke in the canon that makes it look slim when it comes to sayings. I do not think what the Lord said and did is at all a bad way to describe Mark.

I agree completely, however, that we have to be aware of recensions and not leap to assume that we have exactly what Papias had.

...and I'm not sure the order differs much between Mark and Matthew.

(I am indebted to Martin Hengel for most of what follows.)

Agreed. I do not think the early church as a whole thought much of the relatively minor differences between the 3 synoptics. But there is one gospel whose difference from the synoptics did become a big issue, especially in century II: the gospel of John. Gaius and the alogi (whoever they are) rejected it outright, ascribing it to the heretic Cerinthus, and part of the argument, according to Dionysius bar Salibi, was from differences of order:


Indeed, one big discrepancy between John and the synoptics is that John, counting days after the baptism (John 1.29, 35, 43; 2.1), up to the miracle at Cana, does not seem to leave room for the temptation in the desert that the synoptics record. (The gospel of John also specifies that water to wine was the first sign Jesus performed, and that the raising of the son in chapter 4 was the second; notice the counting, the emphasis on order. To me it looks like the fourth gospel knows the synoptic record and is deliberately correcting it, for better or worse. Another example is that in the synoptics Jesus starts in Galilee and then makes one journey to Jerusalem, whereas in John he is back and forth between the two several times.)

And the Quartodeciman controversy in century II was based at least in part on the apparent difference between John and the synoptics on the exact day of the crucifixion (Passover or not). Clearly, the order of the gospel of John was an issue over and against the order of the synoptics in century II.

Eusebius does not record anything that Papias said specifically wrote about the gospel of John (and Eusebius may have had very good reasons not to, depending on what Papias said!). But look at the list of seven disciples of the Lord that Papias mentions as sources for the traditions that he records:


Compare that list to the first time each of their names is mentioned in the gospel of John:


The Papian addition of Matthew is explicable on the grounds that he considered Matthew to be an important eyewitness and gospel author (who wrote in Hebrew, though, not in Greek). I think Papias knew the gospel of John [ETA: I no longer think this] and also, like other Christians in century II in Asia Minor, preferred its order to that of the synoptics. I think he was explaining both why the gospel of Mark, though accurate enough, is not in the correct (Johannine) order (Mark got his information from the oral teachings of Peter, which were to the needs of the listeners and not in order) and why the (Greek) gospel of Matthew, despite deriving (allegedly) from an eyewitness, is not in the correct (Johannine) order (it was a clumsy Greek interpretation of a Hebrew original, which was in order).

And at this point we can note that what has been observed above works with the recensions that we actually have in hand, which lends us the advantage of not having to posit lost recensions that we no longer possess. I am sure such existed, but to be able to explain things with what we have is nice.

That is how I see it.

Ben.