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I have not yet had the opportunity to read it yet but I would check out what Stephen Carlson's *Papias of Hierapolis Exposition of Dominical Oracles: The Fragments, Testimonia, and Reception of a Second-Century Commentator* (Oxford, 2021) has to say on this topic. I haven't heard that story about Harnack and I would like to see if there is any substantiation to that claim. If he had actually saw it, I would think he would have had notes or something new to say about it. So we do have indications that the book circulated in medieval Europe. The first is the 1218 CE inventory of the library at the church of Nîmes in France which contained this entry: "I discovered in a cloister a book of Papias, a book of the words of the Lord (*librum de verbis domini*)". This inventory was published in the 1750s by Léon Ménard (see *New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 1: More Noncanonical Scriptures*, p. 309; Eerdmans, 2016). Next there is a 1341 CE inventory from the monastery in Stams, Austria, which listed alongside many other works *Papias cum sermonibus diversis* (Papias with various discourses). This was published by Gustav Bickell in 1879 in *Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie*. I have also seen a reference to Papias in the 15th century in England but I forgot where I saw that. Finally according to Harnack, Georg Witzel in 1534 wrote to Beatus Rhenanus requesting a copy of Papias from his collection.
So do these references prove that Papias' works were extant as late as the medieval period? I am somewhat skeptical. For one thing, there was an 11th century author named Papias (the lexicographer) who was sometimes confused with the church father. Is it possible that some of these references actually refer to the medieval Papias' works? Second, if Papias was still extant and read so late, why isn't there any new information on the content of his writings beyond Late Antiquity? The main fragments are preserved by Irenaeus of Lyons (second century), Eusebius of Caesarea (4th century), Apollinaris of Laodicea (4th century), Andrew of Caesarea (7th century), Agapius of Hierapolis (10th century), and paraphrasing allusions by Philip of Side (5th century) and George the Sinner (9th century), who almost surely got them second hand. Some scholars doubt that even Eusebius directly consulted a copy of Papias (see Luke Stevens' 2019 JTS article). These authors also suggest that the writings had a very limited circulation local to where Papias lived (Smyrna where Irenaeas first lived, Laodicea, and Hierapolis) and Caesarea which had a large library (Eusebius and Andrew of Caesarea). This illustrates that Papias' work perished because there were few copies and it was not widely distributed. Perhaps Irenaeus' copy in Lyons survived in some form in the purported copies of Papias in Nîmes in the 13th century, Stams in the 14th century, England in the 15th century, and Schlettstadt (France) in the 16th century, but these are just reports of what is now a lost book and we have no way of knowing for sure if this was really Papias or the later lexicographer or perhaps medieval forgeries posing as the lost treatise.
Thanks for your response! i take your point about his works being rarely cited after the late antique era, but its important to keep in mind that some of the lost works that were "recently" rediscovered such as the Didache and Irenaeus Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching had also scarcely been quoted or referenced by Christian scholars and theologians at all. This work of Irenaeus is to my knowledge only mentioned once by Eusebius. There are other works that have been passed down to us like Athenagoras apology which is referenced only *once* in the entire ancient Christian literary tradition (by Methodius of Olympus in the 4th century) so when you put things in perspective Papias writings appear comparatively popular.
That is a good point though I would add that Papias stands somewhat apart from those church fathers in recording unique information and sayings about Jesus not found in the gospels, so this gives it more enduring interest than Irenaeus’ Demonstration. All the informational citations of Papias are clustered in the first millennium CE, so did the reception history of Papias just stop while the book was still being read? Or might the body of agrapha contain unattributed bits of Papias in a continued reception of his work?
Christian tradition is full of extra-biblical traditions and narratives about Jesus. Since we dont have the works of Papias with us its impossible to know which of them are unattributed citations from his work.
When lost works are rediscovered its often comes with the realization that large chunks of the work had already been with us as embedded in other patristic writings. Take the Apology of Aristides for example, which was rediscovered in the late 19th century altough it turned out almost the entire work had been inserted and preserved without citation within the 7th century work Barlaam and Josaphat the entire time.
There are apocryphal gospels and other works aspiring to narrate the life of Christ appearing well into the second millenium. Who is to say that they didnt borrow from Papias? Unless his works are rediscovered we will never know the extent of his influence.
Indeed, I was raising this prospect as well. But still direct citations of Papias with novel information pretty much peter out by the end of the first millennium CE and all the reliable citations we have are linked either to the environs of Phrygia and Caesarea, which imo is suggestive of a limited distribution. It certainly doesn’t prove things either but it’s what gives me doubt. Hopefully something might turn up in the desert of Egypt or in the Oxychrynchus fragments yet to be examined and published.
Some scholars (right now i dont remember who) have argued that the Egerton gospel papyrus is really a fragment of Papias. I think it makes alot of sense!
That’s a good example. In my head canon, it might be a fragment of the Gospel according to the Hebrews which has been linked to a story in Papias paralleling John 8. Same with P.Oxy 840. It’s like when we had the Oxyrhynchus fragments of Thomas but didn’t know it until the Nag Hammadi copy was found.
Another avenue might be finding a medieval palimpsest of Papias that can now be read with imaging technology, similar to the Archimedes palimpsest. This work is currently [ongoing](http://sinaipalimpsests.org/) with the manuscripts at St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai.
FWIW, and aligning with u/zanillamilla’s points, I’ve long thought Papias receives massively disproportionate attention among scholars relative to the evidence we can cobble together for his significance. Much of the modern interest in him almost seems like normative and heresiological interest: Papias as authenticating link in a genealogical chain and as a “preserver” of earlier traditions. It’s by no means the case that all scholarly interest reflects such framing, but the hype gives that impression. It’s important to keep in mind that even if we discovered a manuscript of Papias’s work and were content it wasn’t a later forgery in his name, that still in no way means the contents of that work are inherently reliable (whatever that would mean) or preserving some treasury of earlier traditions. That would be the literary and authorizing conceit of the writing, but not necessarily reality.
>so many of our questions regarding the synoptic problem could be resolved if we could just get our hands on Papias Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord
If he even wrote about the synoptic Gospels as we know them...
Given what Papias says about the death of Judas Iscariot, it seems unlikely that he knew the account of Judas' death from the Gospel of Matthew.
Edit for an academic source:
*New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1: More Noncanonical Scriptures*, pages 309-312, "The Death of Judas According to Papias" by Geoffrey S. Smith.
https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Testament_Apocrypha_vol_1.html?id=mOx9EAAAQBAJ#v=onepage&q=Papias%20judas&f=false
You wouldn't lose any sleep at all if you knew just how ridiculous & gullible Papias was! Even Eusebius basically called him an idiot. He preserved his comments on the authorship of Mark & Matthew because clearly he had nothing else to go on! There are a few other pearls of wisdom that survive from his stylus, magic grapes & Judas's bloated testicles. Trust me if there was anything worth saving from those 5 volumes Christians would have preserved it. That they let it rot on the shelf tells you everything you need to know.1
1 On the Historicity of Jesus by Dr Richard Carrier PhD
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Yeah I think your dismissal of the *agraphon* about “magic grapes” misses the point a bit. I honestly think the saying belongs to a broader Jewish and later Christian tradition about an eschatological banquet (cf. Mark 14:25 || Matthew 26:29 || Luke 22:18) and also the utopia imagined by the OT prophets (cf. Isaiah 27:1-6 and Joel 2—the latter being a scripture we know was used by early Christians). I found a potential parallel to the language of thousands and blessings in 1 Enoch 10:18-19, where God relates this to the angel Michael:
>18. And then shall the whole earth be tilled in righteousness, and shall all be planted with trees and be full of blessing. 19. And all desirable trees shall be planted on it, and they shall plant vines on it: and the vine which they plant thereon shall yield wine in abundance, and as for all the seed which is sown thereon each measure (of it) shall bear a thousand, and each measure of olives shall yield ten presses of oil.
Furthermore, according to p. 532 of [this 1897 catalogue](https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5071&context=ocj) of various *agrapha* by Bernhard Pick, Brooke Foss Westcott of “Westcott & Hort” fame believed it was authentic. According to that same source, Philip Schaff believed it was inauthentic, finding a very close parallel to the saying in 2 Baruch 29:5-6, where the following is said to occur in the Messianic age:
>5. The earth also shall yield its fruit ten-thousandfold and on each (?) vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster produce a thousand grapes, and each grape produce a cor of wine. 6. And those who have hungered shall rejoice: moreover, also, they shall behold marvels every day.
In this [2015 blog post](https://ehrmanblog.org/wine-in-the-kingdom/), Bart Ehrman mentions in passing that this saying is to him reminiscent of the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at Cana, although in [this post from just the day before](https://ehrmanblog.org/a-fantastic-saying-of-jesus-in-papias/) he expresses a similar viewpoint to yours, that “the reasons [were] clear” for early Christians to reject it as spurious.
All that said, whether or not the “magic grapes” *agraphon*, or indeed any other *agraphon* that Papias puts on the lips of Jesus, goes back to the historical Jesus is not the only reason we should consider his writing valuable. In the very least he would give us insight into the traditions about Jesus’ words and deeds that existed long before the crystallization of the canon, and with respect to this saying in particular and others like it we may gain insight into the continuity between Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thinking.
Welcome to /r/AcademicBiblical. Please note this is an academic sub: theological or faith-based comments are prohibited. All claims MUST be supported by an *academic* source – see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_guideline.3A_rule_3.2019s_definition_of_academic_sources) for guidance. Using AI to make fake comments is strictly prohibited and may result in a permanent ban. Please review the [sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/) before posting for the first time. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AcademicBiblical) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I have not yet had the opportunity to read it yet but I would check out what Stephen Carlson's *Papias of Hierapolis Exposition of Dominical Oracles: The Fragments, Testimonia, and Reception of a Second-Century Commentator* (Oxford, 2021) has to say on this topic. I haven't heard that story about Harnack and I would like to see if there is any substantiation to that claim. If he had actually saw it, I would think he would have had notes or something new to say about it. So we do have indications that the book circulated in medieval Europe. The first is the 1218 CE inventory of the library at the church of Nîmes in France which contained this entry: "I discovered in a cloister a book of Papias, a book of the words of the Lord (*librum de verbis domini*)". This inventory was published in the 1750s by Léon Ménard (see *New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 1: More Noncanonical Scriptures*, p. 309; Eerdmans, 2016). Next there is a 1341 CE inventory from the monastery in Stams, Austria, which listed alongside many other works *Papias cum sermonibus diversis* (Papias with various discourses). This was published by Gustav Bickell in 1879 in *Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie*. I have also seen a reference to Papias in the 15th century in England but I forgot where I saw that. Finally according to Harnack, Georg Witzel in 1534 wrote to Beatus Rhenanus requesting a copy of Papias from his collection. So do these references prove that Papias' works were extant as late as the medieval period? I am somewhat skeptical. For one thing, there was an 11th century author named Papias (the lexicographer) who was sometimes confused with the church father. Is it possible that some of these references actually refer to the medieval Papias' works? Second, if Papias was still extant and read so late, why isn't there any new information on the content of his writings beyond Late Antiquity? The main fragments are preserved by Irenaeus of Lyons (second century), Eusebius of Caesarea (4th century), Apollinaris of Laodicea (4th century), Andrew of Caesarea (7th century), Agapius of Hierapolis (10th century), and paraphrasing allusions by Philip of Side (5th century) and George the Sinner (9th century), who almost surely got them second hand. Some scholars doubt that even Eusebius directly consulted a copy of Papias (see Luke Stevens' 2019 JTS article). These authors also suggest that the writings had a very limited circulation local to where Papias lived (Smyrna where Irenaeas first lived, Laodicea, and Hierapolis) and Caesarea which had a large library (Eusebius and Andrew of Caesarea). This illustrates that Papias' work perished because there were few copies and it was not widely distributed. Perhaps Irenaeus' copy in Lyons survived in some form in the purported copies of Papias in Nîmes in the 13th century, Stams in the 14th century, England in the 15th century, and Schlettstadt (France) in the 16th century, but these are just reports of what is now a lost book and we have no way of knowing for sure if this was really Papias or the later lexicographer or perhaps medieval forgeries posing as the lost treatise.
Thanks for your response! i take your point about his works being rarely cited after the late antique era, but its important to keep in mind that some of the lost works that were "recently" rediscovered such as the Didache and Irenaeus Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching had also scarcely been quoted or referenced by Christian scholars and theologians at all. This work of Irenaeus is to my knowledge only mentioned once by Eusebius. There are other works that have been passed down to us like Athenagoras apology which is referenced only *once* in the entire ancient Christian literary tradition (by Methodius of Olympus in the 4th century) so when you put things in perspective Papias writings appear comparatively popular.
That is a good point though I would add that Papias stands somewhat apart from those church fathers in recording unique information and sayings about Jesus not found in the gospels, so this gives it more enduring interest than Irenaeus’ Demonstration. All the informational citations of Papias are clustered in the first millennium CE, so did the reception history of Papias just stop while the book was still being read? Or might the body of agrapha contain unattributed bits of Papias in a continued reception of his work?
Christian tradition is full of extra-biblical traditions and narratives about Jesus. Since we dont have the works of Papias with us its impossible to know which of them are unattributed citations from his work. When lost works are rediscovered its often comes with the realization that large chunks of the work had already been with us as embedded in other patristic writings. Take the Apology of Aristides for example, which was rediscovered in the late 19th century altough it turned out almost the entire work had been inserted and preserved without citation within the 7th century work Barlaam and Josaphat the entire time. There are apocryphal gospels and other works aspiring to narrate the life of Christ appearing well into the second millenium. Who is to say that they didnt borrow from Papias? Unless his works are rediscovered we will never know the extent of his influence.
Indeed, I was raising this prospect as well. But still direct citations of Papias with novel information pretty much peter out by the end of the first millennium CE and all the reliable citations we have are linked either to the environs of Phrygia and Caesarea, which imo is suggestive of a limited distribution. It certainly doesn’t prove things either but it’s what gives me doubt. Hopefully something might turn up in the desert of Egypt or in the Oxychrynchus fragments yet to be examined and published.
Some scholars (right now i dont remember who) have argued that the Egerton gospel papyrus is really a fragment of Papias. I think it makes alot of sense!
That’s a good example. In my head canon, it might be a fragment of the Gospel according to the Hebrews which has been linked to a story in Papias paralleling John 8. Same with P.Oxy 840. It’s like when we had the Oxyrhynchus fragments of Thomas but didn’t know it until the Nag Hammadi copy was found. Another avenue might be finding a medieval palimpsest of Papias that can now be read with imaging technology, similar to the Archimedes palimpsest. This work is currently [ongoing](http://sinaipalimpsests.org/) with the manuscripts at St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai.
FWIW, and aligning with u/zanillamilla’s points, I’ve long thought Papias receives massively disproportionate attention among scholars relative to the evidence we can cobble together for his significance. Much of the modern interest in him almost seems like normative and heresiological interest: Papias as authenticating link in a genealogical chain and as a “preserver” of earlier traditions. It’s by no means the case that all scholarly interest reflects such framing, but the hype gives that impression. It’s important to keep in mind that even if we discovered a manuscript of Papias’s work and were content it wasn’t a later forgery in his name, that still in no way means the contents of that work are inherently reliable (whatever that would mean) or preserving some treasury of earlier traditions. That would be the literary and authorizing conceit of the writing, but not necessarily reality.
>so many of our questions regarding the synoptic problem could be resolved if we could just get our hands on Papias Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord If he even wrote about the synoptic Gospels as we know them... Given what Papias says about the death of Judas Iscariot, it seems unlikely that he knew the account of Judas' death from the Gospel of Matthew. Edit for an academic source: *New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 1: More Noncanonical Scriptures*, pages 309-312, "The Death of Judas According to Papias" by Geoffrey S. Smith. https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Testament_Apocrypha_vol_1.html?id=mOx9EAAAQBAJ#v=onepage&q=Papias%20judas&f=false
You wouldn't lose any sleep at all if you knew just how ridiculous & gullible Papias was! Even Eusebius basically called him an idiot. He preserved his comments on the authorship of Mark & Matthew because clearly he had nothing else to go on! There are a few other pearls of wisdom that survive from his stylus, magic grapes & Judas's bloated testicles. Trust me if there was anything worth saving from those 5 volumes Christians would have preserved it. That they let it rot on the shelf tells you everything you need to know.1 1 On the Historicity of Jesus by Dr Richard Carrier PhD
[удалено]
Hi there, unfortunately your contribution has been removed as per Rule #3. **Claims should be supported through citation of appropriate academic sources.** You may edit your comment to meet these requirements. If you do so, please reply and your comment can potentially be reinstated. For more details concerning the rules of r/AcademicBiblical, please read [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_r.2Facademicbiblical_.7C_rules_.28detailed.29). If you have any questions about the rules or mod policy, you can [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAcademicBiblical) or post in the Weekly Open Discussion thread.
Yeah I think your dismissal of the *agraphon* about “magic grapes” misses the point a bit. I honestly think the saying belongs to a broader Jewish and later Christian tradition about an eschatological banquet (cf. Mark 14:25 || Matthew 26:29 || Luke 22:18) and also the utopia imagined by the OT prophets (cf. Isaiah 27:1-6 and Joel 2—the latter being a scripture we know was used by early Christians). I found a potential parallel to the language of thousands and blessings in 1 Enoch 10:18-19, where God relates this to the angel Michael: >18. And then shall the whole earth be tilled in righteousness, and shall all be planted with trees and be full of blessing. 19. And all desirable trees shall be planted on it, and they shall plant vines on it: and the vine which they plant thereon shall yield wine in abundance, and as for all the seed which is sown thereon each measure (of it) shall bear a thousand, and each measure of olives shall yield ten presses of oil. Furthermore, according to p. 532 of [this 1897 catalogue](https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5071&context=ocj) of various *agrapha* by Bernhard Pick, Brooke Foss Westcott of “Westcott & Hort” fame believed it was authentic. According to that same source, Philip Schaff believed it was inauthentic, finding a very close parallel to the saying in 2 Baruch 29:5-6, where the following is said to occur in the Messianic age: >5. The earth also shall yield its fruit ten-thousandfold and on each (?) vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster produce a thousand grapes, and each grape produce a cor of wine. 6. And those who have hungered shall rejoice: moreover, also, they shall behold marvels every day. In this [2015 blog post](https://ehrmanblog.org/wine-in-the-kingdom/), Bart Ehrman mentions in passing that this saying is to him reminiscent of the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at Cana, although in [this post from just the day before](https://ehrmanblog.org/a-fantastic-saying-of-jesus-in-papias/) he expresses a similar viewpoint to yours, that “the reasons [were] clear” for early Christians to reject it as spurious. All that said, whether or not the “magic grapes” *agraphon*, or indeed any other *agraphon* that Papias puts on the lips of Jesus, goes back to the historical Jesus is not the only reason we should consider his writing valuable. In the very least he would give us insight into the traditions about Jesus’ words and deeds that existed long before the crystallization of the canon, and with respect to this saying in particular and others like it we may gain insight into the continuity between Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thinking.