PAPIA of HIERAPOLIS. — Lived around 130; author of a work in 5 books that also bore the title: 5 books of exegesis of the words of the Lord (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., III, 39, 1). The exegeses are based on the words (λόγια) of Jesus in the written Gospels, but expanded through the use of oral traditions, transmitted to P. by means of the «presbyters», that is, teachers who transmitted Christian oral tradition in a manner analogous to the rabbis.
P. declares that he would have been critical of the various forms of oral traditions (39, 4), but does not conceal a certain preference for oral tradition (39, 4), a fact that perhaps reveals some Judaizing tendency in him. Indeed, it can be established that the millenarian traditions he accepts come from a Jewish milieu (v. Gry, in Revue Bibl., 53 [1946], p. 197 ff). According to Irenaeus, Haer., V, 33, 4, P. was a disciple of John the Apostle and a contemporary of Polycarp (d. in 1567); the objections raised by Eusebius against Irenaeus’s assertion (Hist. eccl., II, 39, 2-7) arise from the difficulty that in the preface P. mentions John twice (Eusebius, op. cit., II, 39, 4), which led Eusebius to distinguish between two Johns, one the Apostle and the other a presbyter. P. would have heard only the presbyter. Eusebius’s hypothesis is untenable. In the preface John is mentioned in his dual capacity as apostle and presbyter. But this does not mean that P. identified the Apostles with the presbyters (against Gutwenger). For Eusebius P. is a man of little intelligence (III, 39, 12), certainly on account of his millenarianism. Besides the canonical Gospels, P. knew the Gospel of the Hebrews and the first Epistles of s. John and s. Peter (III, 39, 17), as well as the Apocalypse (frg. IV exegesis of Apoc., 12, 7).
Gutwenger’s thesis that P. had written before the publication of this work is therefore erroneous. Important are the traditions of the presbyters that P. inserted in his book concerning the origin of the Gospel of s. Mark (Eusebius, op. cit., III, 39, 15) and of s. Matthew (III, 39, 16). P. influenced s. Irenaeus.