2. The date of Papias.
The next question on which I will touch is the date of Papias, which has a subordinate but rather important bearing upon the group of questions with which he is connected.
I am by no means sure that the late date now commonly assigned to him is right (c. 145-60, Harnack). It turns upon a statement in De Boor’s fragment, supposed to be made by Papias, that some of those who were raised from the dead by Christ lived till the time of Hadrian. A very similar statement is quoted by Eusebius from the Apology of Quadratus (H. E. iv. 3, 2). I suspect that there has been some confusion at work here. Experience shows that nothing is commoner than for the same story to be referred to different persons. In the case of Quadratus we have his own words in black and white, whereas the attribution to Papias is vague and may be only a slip of memory[[83]]. On the other hand Irenaeus expressly calls Papias ‘one of the ancients’ (ἀρχαῖος ἀνήρ), a phrase that I do not think he would have used of a time so near his own as 145-60. Besides, when we look into the great passage, Eus. H. E. iii. 39, the standpoint appears to be that, at latest of the third generation, or more strictly where the second generation is passing into the third, if we suppose that Aristion and the Presbyter John were still alive. The natural date for the extracts in this chapter seems to me to be circa 100.