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In order to understand Papias’s preference for the “living voice” over written sources we must first recognize that it was an ancient topos or
commonplace. Loveday Alexander has pointed out the close parallel in the prologue to one of the works of the medical writer Galen, where he quotes a “saying current among most craftsmen” to the effect that “gathering information out of a book is not the same thing, nor even comparable to learning from the living voice.”56 The phrase “from the living voice” (para zoe phones) here is precisely that used by Papias, though Papias adds “and surviving” (kai menous3s). Two other known sources refer to the assertion that “the living voice” (in these Latin texts: viva vox) is preferable to writing as a common saying (Quintilian, Inst. 2.2.8; Pliny, Ep. 2.3).57 So it seems certain that Papias is alluding to a proverb. In the context of scientific and technical treatises such as Galen’s, this proverb expresses the easily understandable attitude that learning a craft by oral instruction from a practitioner was preferable to learning from a book.58 But even if it originated in the craft traditions, the saying was certainly not confined to them. Seneca applied it to philosophy, meaning that personal experience of a teacher made for much more effective teaching than writing: “you will gain more from the living voice (viva vox) and sharing someone’s daily life than from any treatise” (Ep. 6.5).59

In all such cases, what is preferable to writing is not a lengthy chain of oral tradition, but direct personal experience of a teacher. In discussion of rhetoric, the phrase was used by Quintilian (Inst. 2.2.8) and Pliny (Ep. 2.3) to express a preference for the communicative power of oral performance by an orator, which cannot be adequately conveyed in written texts.60 Alexander sums up her study of this topos:

We have seen that the “living voice” had a wide currency as a proverb of general import, but also that it is possible to identify three cultural worlds in which it has a more specific application. In rhetoric, it reinforces the centrality of live performance. Among craftsmen, it expresses the widely-felt difficulty of learning practical skills without live demonstration. And in the schools generally it serves as a reminder of the primacy of person-to-person oral instruction over the study (or the production) of manuals and handbooks.61

In all these cases, the proverb refers to firsthand experience of a speaker, whether an instructor or an orator, not to transmission of tradition through a chain of traditioners across generations. In the context of the schools, it seems sometimes to have been brought into connection with oral tradition,62 but even in this usage the “living voice” of the proverb does not refer to oral tradition, but to the actual voice of the teacher from whose oral instruction one learns directly. It follows that in the case of Papias’s use of the proverb, as Harry Gamble points out, “it is not oral tradition as such that Papias esteemed, but first-hand information. To the extent that he was able to get information directly, he did so and preferred to do so.”63

Alexander does not mention historiography, and the saying about the living voice itself does not seem to appear in the extant works of the historians. There is, however, an equivalent proverb, also cited by Galen, who says it is “better to be an eyewitness (autopt3s) by the side of the master himself and not to be like those who navigate out of books.”64 Galen applies this proverb, like the saying about the living voice, to learning a craft directly from an instructor rather than from a book, but it was also cited by the historian Polybius (writing three centuries before Galen) when he compared historiography to medical practice (12.15d.6). This is part of Polybius’s savage criticism of the work of the historian Timaeus, who relied entirely on written sources. It is notable that Polybius was also fond of the word autopt3s (“eyewitness”),65 which Alexander has shown was characteristic of medical literature, as in the quotation from Galen just given.66 Though this word is not common in the historians generally, Polybius uses it to refer to a concept that was central to the method of ancient historiography: reliance on direct personal experience of the subject matter, either by the historian himself or at least by his informant.

Continuing his attack on Timaeus, Polybius writes that there are three modes of historical — as of other — inquiry, one by sight and two by hearing. Sight refers to the historian’s personal experience of the places or events of which he writes, which was so highly prized by ancient historians and which Polybius, like Thucydides and others, considered of first importance. One of the two forms of hearing is the reading of memoirs (hypomn3mata)(in the ancient world written texts were “heard” even when a reader read them for him/herself67): this was Timaeus’s exclusive method of historical research but was put by Polybius third in order of importance. More important for Polybius was the other form of hearing: the interrogation (anakriseis) of living witnesses (12.27.3).

As Samuel Byrskog has reminded us and as we noted in the previous chapter, ancient historians, considering that only the history of times within living
memory could be adequately researched and recounted, valued above all the historian’s own direct participation in the events about which he wrote (what Byrskog calls autopsy), but also, as second best, the reminiscences of living witnesses who could be questioned in person by the historian (what Byrskog calls indirect autopsy).68 The latter might sometimes be stretched to include reports received by the historian from others who had questioned the eyewitnesses, but since the principle at stake was personal contact with eyewitnesses it cannot be understood as a general preference for oral tradition over books. It did not, of course, prevent the historians themselves from writing books, since their purpose was, among other things, to give permanence to memories that would otherwise cease to be available, to provide, in Thucydides’ famous phrase, “a possession for all time” (1.22.4).69

This historiographic context is the one in which Papias’s use of the proverb about the living voice most appropriately belongs. It would have been easy
for this common saying, used as we have seen in a variety of contexts, to be applied also to the well-known preference among the best historians for
eyewitness testimony rather than written accounts. It expresses that as aptly as it does the practice of learning directly from master craftsmen or
philosophers. Against a historiographic background, what Papias thinks preferable to books is not oral tradition as such but access, while they are still
alive, to those who were direct participants in the historical events — in this case “disciples of the Lord.” He is portraying his inquiries on the model of those made by historians, appealing to historiographic “best practice”(even if many historians actually made much more use of written sources than their theory professed).70 That he himself wrote down the traditions he collected is not at all, as some scholars have thought, paradoxical. It was precisely what historians did. Papias, who in spite of Eusebius’s prejudiced jibe at his stupidity was well-educated, 71 may well have read Polybius. This historian’s strict principles of historiography were, like those of Thucydides, something of an ideal for later historians at least to claim to practice. Alexander suggests that Josephus was dependent on Polybius when he insisted on his qualifications, as a participant and eyewitness (autopt3s), for writing the history of the Jewish War.72 That Papias claims to have conducted inquiries in the manner of a good historian may also be suggested by his use of the verb anakrinein for his inquiries about the words of the elders, which he made when disciples of the elders visited Hierapolis (“I inquired [anekrinon] about the words of the elders”). This verb and its cognate noun anakrisis were most often used in judicial contexts to refer to the examination of magistrates and parties. But we have noticed that Polybius uses the noun for the historian’s interrogation of eyewitnesses (12.27.3). At another point in his criticism of Timaeus, Polybius calls anakriseis the most important part of history (12.4c.3). The way he continues indicates that again he is thinking of the interrogation of eyewitnesses (i.e., direct observers both of events and of places):

For since many events occur at the same time in different places, and one man cannot be in several places at one time, nor is it possible for a single
man to have seen with his own eyes every place in the world and all the peculiar features of different places, the only thing left for a historian is to
man to have seen with his own eyes every place in the world and all the peculiar features of different places, the only thing left for a historian is to
inquire from as many people as possible, to believe those worthy of belief and to be an adequate critic of the reports that reach him (12.4c.4-5).
The verb anakrinein also occurs in the advice given by Lucian of Samosata in his book about writing history. The context is similar:
As to the facts themselves, [the historian] should not assemble them at random, but only after much laborious and painstaking investigation (peri ton
auton anakrinanta). He should for preference be an eyewitness (paronta kai ephoronta), but, if not, listen to those who tell the more impartial story
(Hist. Conscr. 47).

This suggestion that Papias deliberately uses the terminology of historiographic practice can be further supported from the first sentence of the
passage from his Prologue that we are studying. This has conventionally been translated in this way:

I will not hesitate to set down for you, along with my interpretations (synkatataxai tais herm3neiais), everything I carefully learned from the elders and carefully remembered (emn3moneusa), guaranteeing their truth.73

In favor of this translation is the fact that it is the way in which Rufinus translated the Greek text of Eusebius into Latin. But Kürzinger has proposed a
considerably different translation that is very attractive.74 I have incorporated Kürzinger’s suggestions into the translation of the passage I gave above, translating the opening sentence thus:

I shall not hesitate also to put into properly ordered form (synkatataxai tais herm3neiais) for you everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down (emn3moneusa) well, for the truth of which I vouch.

According to this interpretation, Papias is describing the stages of producing a historical work precisely as Lucian, in his book on how to write history, describes them (immediately after the passage just quoted from him):

When he has collected all or most of the facts let him first make them into a series of notes (hypomn3ma), a body of material as yet with no beauty or continuity. Then, after arranging them into order (epitheis t3n taxin), let him give it beauty and enhance it with the charms of expression, figure and rhythm (Hist. Conscr. 48).

Papias’s use of the verb mn3moneuein refers, on this interpretation, not to remembering but to recording, that is, making the notes (hypomn3mata) —
the memoranda or aids to memory — which are often mentioned in references to the practice of historians in antiquity.75 The collection of notes constituted a rough draft that then needed to be artistically arranged to make an acceptable literary work. This latter stage of the writing process is what, according to this interpretation, Papias meant by the words synkatataxai (or syntaxai, the variant reading that Kürzinger prefers) tais hermeneiais (usually translated “set down together with my interpretations”).76 There is much to be said for this understanding of Papias’s statement. That he vouches for the truth of what he reports is also, of course, a conventional part of the historian’s practice (cf. Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 39-40, 42).

So we may see Papias’s Prologue as claiming that he followed the best practice of historians: he made careful inquiries, collected the testimonies of
eyewitnesses, set them down in a series of notes, and finally arranged his material artistically to form a work of literature. His preference for the testimony of eyewitnesses, obtained at second or third hand, is therefore that of the historian, for whom, if direct autopsy was not available (i.e., the historian himself was not present at the events), indirect autopsy was more or less essential. What is most important for our purposes is that, when Papias speaks of “a living and surviving voice,” he is not speaking metaphorically of the “voice” of oral tradition, as many scholars have supposed. He speaks quite literally of the voice of an informant — someone who has personal memories of the words and deeds of Jesus and who is still alive. In fact, even if the suggestion that he alludes specifically to historiographic practice is rejected, this must be his meaning. As we have seen, the saying about the superiority of the “living voice” to books refers not to oral tradition as superior to books, but to direct experience of an instructor, informant, or orator as superior to written sources.77 But Papias, uniquely, expands the usual cliché “living voice” to “living and surviving voice,”78 thereby making it even more appropriate to the context in which he uses it — the situation in which what he seeks are the reminiscences of those who knew Jesus and in which the passage of time has now been such that few of those people are still alive.

It is worth noting that Jerome, who translated this section of Papias’s prologue into Latin in his brief life of Papias, evidently understood the phrase
“living voice” in this way. He translates the whole sentence thus:

For books to be read are not so profitable for me as the living voice that even until the present day resounds on the lips of their authors (viva vox et usque hodie in suis auctoribus personans) (De vir. ill. 18).

Jerome here seems to take Papias to mean that he preferred the oral communication of eyewitnesses to the written records of their testimony in the
Gospels. The whole concluding sentence of the passage from Papias, including “a living and surviving voice,” refers most properly to the immediately preceding words: “what Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying.” The words of these surviving witnesses are the most valuable to Papias. What the elders reported of the words of the disciples now dead he collected, but, however illustrious these disciples, the additional distance from direct contact with living witnesses made these traditions less valuable than reports of what still living witnesses were still saying. Papias’s account of what he inquired of the visitors to Hierapolis therefore lists the disciples who were no longer alive first but climaxes with the most valuable information he obtained. Though this came from only two disciples still alive and geographically proximate enough for Papias’s visitors to have sat at their feet and to have much to report from their words, it may well be that, just as the number of the seven named disciples is symbolic, so also Papias evokes the symbolism of the number two, the number required for adequate witness. Though only two, Aristion and John the Elder are sufficient for their witness to be valid.

Therefore Papias’s use of the verb menein (“to remain, to survive”) in the phrase “a living and surviving voice” (zoes phones kai menouses) can be
compared with Paul’s when he writes that, of the more than five hundred who saw the Lord, “most are still alive (menousin heos arti), though some have died” (1 Cor 15:6), or, as we have already suggested, with the words of Jesus about the Beloved Disciple at the end of the Gospel of John: “If it is my will that he remain (menein) until I come” (John 21:22, 23). These texts refer to the survival of those who had seen the Lord. If, as I have argued elsewhere79 and will argue again in chapter 16 of this book, Papias considered John the Elder to be the Beloved Disciple and the author of the Fourth Gospel, the resemblance to John 21:22, 23, would be especially apt, and an actual allusion to this text would seem rather probable. But nothing in our present argument depends on this possibility.

Once again, we should notice a key implication of Papias’s words: he does not regard the Gospel traditions as having by this date long lost a living
connection with the eyewitnesses who originated them. Whether these eye-witnesseswere still living would not matter if the oral tradition were essentially independent of them. Papias assumes that the value of oral traditions depends on their derivation from still living witnesses who are still themselves repeating their testimony.80 Now that these are few, secondhand reports of what eyewitnesses now dead used to say are valuable, but Papias’s whole statement implies that the value of oral tradition decreases with distance from the personal testimony of the eyewitnesses themselves. In fact, the period he writes about, when he collected his traditions, was virtually the last time at which such collecting would be worth doing, and this, of course, is why Papias collected the traditions at that time, wrote them down, and eventually made a book of them. It is surely not accidental that this was also the period in which the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John were being written.

Of the traditions of the words and deeds of Jesus that Papias collected very few have come down to us in the extant fragments of his work. From
Eusebius’s remarks it is clear that he recorded many Gospel traditions especially from Aristion and John the Elder, and that more than the few that have survived were without parallels in our canonical Gospels (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39. 7, 12, 14). But we should probably assume that the majority were simply versions of stories and sayings to be found in the Gospels, of which, by the time he wrote his book, Papias knew at least those of Matthew, Mark, and John. (Papias’s book probably consisted of collections of Gospel traditions along with commentary on them. It belonged, then, to the familiar ancient genre of authoritative text [often oral teachings committed to writing] along with commentary thought necessary for students to fully appreciate the text. In Papias’s case he seems to have offered not so much his own commentary [at least, little of that survives], but rather the comments offered by the Elders he so revered.)

This passage from Papias’s Prologue can usefully be compared with the Prologue to Luke’s Gospel, probably written around the time when Papias
was engaged in the collecting of traditions that he describes in the passage. In his relationship to the eyewitnesses Luke is comparable with those
Papias calls “the elders” (though this terminology was probably confined to Asia). That is, Luke received traditions directly from the eyewitnesses. As
Martin Hengel puts it:

As the emphatic “just as they were delivered to us”[Luke 1:2] shows, between Jesus and the earliest “literary sources” about him (including Luke, the author himself) stand only those who had been direct eye-witnesses of the activity of Jesus from the beginning. . . . Luke was an author at the end of the second generation.81

It is particularly significant that Luke refers to the eyewitnesses, those whom Papias calls “disciples of the Lord,” as “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses (autoptai) and ministers of the word.”82 These are certainly a single group of people, not two.83 They are disciples who accompanied Jesus throughout his ministry (cf. Acts 1:21) and who were prominent teachers in the early church. They certainly include the Twelve (cf. Acts 6:4) but also others, since Luke’s Gospel and Acts make it particularly clear that Jesus had many disciples besides the Twelve (Luke 6:17; 8:1-3; 10:1-20; 19:37; 23:27; 24:9, 33; Acts 1:15, 21-23), and the possibility that Luke’s informants included such disciples must be taken seriously. The fact that these informants — whether the Twelve or other disciples — were not only eyewitnesses but also prominent teachers in the early Christian movement shows, in coherence with what we have learned from Papias, that they did not merely start the traditions going and then withdraw from view but remained for many years the known sources and guarantors of traditions of the deeds and words of Jesus. Like Papias, Luke will have inquired and learned what Peter or Cleopas or Joanna or James had said or was saying

FransJVermeiren wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2017 4:51 amI set aside the most fundamental ones for the second part of my review. Let’s start with two ‘minor’ objections that question Bauckham’s intellectual honesty.

The first one is that Bauckham is discrediting two early Christian writers, Quadratus and Philip of Side (and Papias of Hierapolis together with the latter one). The information these authors provide is quite embarrassing for anyone accepting the traditional chronology of the origins of Christianity, so Bauckham tries to get rid of them. Quadratus reports that some of those who were healed or raised by Jesus (who, according to the gospels, was crucified around 30 CE) were still alive in 125 CE, the year to which Quadratus’s work can be dated with certainty. Philip of Side, a fourth century Christian writer, mentions Papias of Hierapolis, a contemporary of Quadratus, and according to the former Papias gives exactly the same information: ‘about those who were raised from the dead by Christ, he says they survived until Hadrian’. Hadrian was the Roman emperor from 117 to 138 CE. Bauckham postulates that Philip of Side has mistaken Papias for Quadratus, and ‘one source, no source’, he deceitfully disposes of these two important witnesses. However, in the Papias fragment he provides, Philip of Side shows that he is well-informed about Papias, so I think these two fragments independently inform us about a chronology problem in the origins of Christianity as presented in the gospels.

My second ‘intellectual honesty’ objection is the way Bauckham discusses three of the apostle names: Iskarioth, Zealot and Bariona. For Judas Iskarioth he only gives the explanation ‘from (the village of) Kerioth’, not even mentioning the ‘Iskarioth = sicarios’ hypothesis, which shows Judas as a possible ‘dagger fighter’, a member of the guerilla fighters faction which was active in the 50s and 60s of the first century CE, the decades preceding the war against the Romans. The same for Simon the Zealot, about whom Bauckham develops a strange argument: because in the relevant sources the name Zealot does not appear before the outbreak of the Jewish war in 66 CE, Simon is not a real (military and insurrectionist) zealot, but a zealot in a broader sense, to be interpreted as ‘zealous for the law’. For Bariona (Simon Bariona), Bauckham uses the same method of silence as for Iskarioth. He does not mention the possibility that Bariona is not ‘bar Jonah’ meaning ‘son of Jonah’, but may refer to Simon as a member of the biryonim (singular biryona), the ‘outlaws’ or ‘brigands’ who are also associated with the rebellion against the Romans. Bauckham deceitfully writes these apostles away from the war period.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2017 6:02 am What does everyone think is Bauckham's strongest evidence for Papias knowing our gospel of John? I am not quite sure I see a strong argument for this other than his interest in John the elder.

I think Papias made no comparison between Mark and Matthew. My impression is rather that Papias preferred the oral tradition handed down by Aristion and the presbyter.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2017 6:02 am What does everyone think is Bauckham's strongest evidence for Papias knowing our gospel of John? I am not quite sure I see a strong argument for this other than his interest in John the elder.

Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2017 6:11 am I think you are far too quick to level charges of intellectual dishonesty where simple bias will do. I find Bauckham to be very tendentious in places. But your examples above fall far short of intellectual dishonesty, since Bauckham is not hiding or falsifying evidence. That he is interpreting evidence in a way you disagree with is not intellectual dishonesty.

JoeWallack wrote: ↑Fri Jul 07, 2017 6:41 am

Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Jul 05, 2017 6:11 am I think you are far too quick to level charges of intellectual dishonesty where simple bias will do. I find Bauckham to be very tendentious in places. But your examples above fall far short of intellectual dishonesty, since Bauckham is not hiding or falsifying evidence. That he is interpreting evidence in a way you disagree with is not intellectual dishonesty.

JW:
Alright, you don't think Bauckham was proven to be dishonest based on what you responded to above. But in general, while Bauckham claims/postures that he is a modern scientific historian, he completely ignores (not just denies) the issue of supposed testimony that consists mainly of the impossible.

1. Miracles sometimes happen, and this was an example.
2. Miracles sometimes happen, but this was a mundane event which got reported as a miracle.
3. Miracles do not happen, and this was a mundane event which got reported as a miracle.
4. Miracles do not happen, and the eyewitness has completely fabricated at least that element of the event.

These impossible claims are in fact the best evidence we have regarding the quality or lack there of of the "testimony". Contra Bauckham, the only related conclusion we can be certain of is that there were no eyewitnesses to impossible events. This means it is unlikely (very) that any eyewitness claimed they were an eyewitness to an impossible event. While it is possible that an eyewitness claimed to witness the impossible, that they did not so claim is an exponentially better conclusion than any that are made by Bauckham.

So Bauckham is just another theologian masquerading as a scientist.

If this is not dishonesty than what is your explanation? Stupidity or poor writing skills? Or is religious belief a defense against dishonesty all by itself?