LOGIA. - A Greek term (λόγια) which in secular literature normally denoted “sayings, divine oracles” (Herodotus, VIII, 60, 3; Thucydides, II, 8, 2); so too among the Therapeutae, in Philo and the Apostolic Fathers. In the New Testament it indicates the revelations made by God to Moses (Acts 7:38), the revelations contained in the Old Testament, especially messianic prophecies (Rom 3:2), Christian Revelation (Heb 5:12), and the utterances of charismatics (Rom 12:6 ff.; 1 Cor 12:8 ff.; 1 Pt 4:11). St Polycarp (7:1) calls the sayings of Jesus “the logia of the Lord.”
St Papias wrote a five-book work entitled *Interpretations of the Logia of the Lord* (λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξηγήσεως), in which he comments not only on the sayings but also on the deeds of Jesus. In the fragments preserved by Mark (v.) did not wish to produce “a compilation of the logia of the Lord” (συνταξιῶν τῶν κυριακῶν λογίων); “Matthew, on the other hand, compiled them in the Hebrew language” (τὰ λόγια συνταξάτω); some manuscripts read “συνεργάσιος”; “each then interpreted them as best he could” (Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.*, III, 39; F. X. Funk, *Patres Apostolici*, I, Paderborn 1905, p. 358; PG 20, 300). From these words of Papias many scholars, following Schleiermacher (1817), Matthew (v.) did not write our entire first Gospel but only a collection of the Lord’s sayings (λόγια), which later served as a source (in German *Quelle*, abbreviated Q), combined with Mark (or a proto-Mark) in the composition of the Synoptic Gospels (v. SINOTTICI, VANGELI).
From the comparison cited between Papias’s statements about Mark and Matthew one may simply deduce that Mark, in the Gospel that has come down to us, did not compile the Lord’s discourses, whereas Matthew, in the Gospel we possess, did compile them. Others reply that for Papias the term λόγια signifies both sayings and deeds: this can be inferred both from the fragments of his work and from the fact that in the same context, speaking of Mark, it is said that he did not write “in order the things said or done by the Lord” (τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ Κυρίου ἢ λεγόντων ἢ παραγόντων).
The English scholars B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt designated as λόγια Ἰησοῦ several sayings attributed to Jesus with the formula “Jesus says” (ἐγένετο), found in two Oxyrhynchus papyri published in 1897 and 1904. These are extracts from canonical and apocryphal Gospels collected for liturgical or catechetical purposes; others call them “agrapha” (v. AGRAPHON).