[161:2] Compare also the language of Hippolytus respecting the books of the Naassenes; Hær. v. 7, 'These are the heads of very numerous discourses ([Greek: pollôn panu logôn]), which they say that James,' etc.
[161:3] This same epithet 'foreign' ([Greek: allotrios]) is applied several times in the Ignatian Epistles to the Gnostic teaching which the writer is combating; Rom. inscr., Trall. 6, Philad. 3.
[161:4] Reasons are given by Dr Westcott in the fourth edition of his History of the Canon p. 288.
[Footnote 5] Strom. iv. 12, p. 599.
[162:1] The following passage in Supernatural Religion is highly instructive, as showing the inconsistencies involved in the author's view (I. p. 485): 'It is not possible that he [Papias] could have found it better to inquire "what John or Matthew, or what any other of the disciples of the Lord … say," if he had known of Gospels such as ours,' ['and believed them to have been' inserted in the Complete Edition] 'actually written by them, deliberately telling him what they had to say. The work of Matthew which he mentions being, however, a mere collection of discourses of Jesus, he might naturally inquire what the Apostle himself said of the history of the Master.' Here the author practically concedes the point for which I am contending, and which elsewhere he resists; for he states that Papias as a sane man must, and as a matter of fact did, prefer a book to oral tradition. In other words, he allows that when Papias disparages books (meaning Evangelical records, such as the St Matthew of Papias was on any showing), he cannot intend all books of this class, but only such as our author himself arbitrarily determines that he shall mean. This point is not at all affected by the question whether the St Matthew of Papias did or did not contain doings, as well as sayings, of Christ. The only escape from these perplexities lies in supposing that a wholly different class of books is intended, as I have explained in the text.
[163:1] S.R. I. p. 445. It is not likely that our author would appreciate the bearing of these references to St Mark, because, as I pointed out in my first article [see above, p. 8], he mistranslated [Greek: ouden hêmarte] 'did no wrong,' instead of 'made no mistake,' thus obscuring the testimony of Papias to the perfect accuracy of the result of St Mark's conscientious labours. The translation is altered in the last edition, but the new rendering, 'committed no error in thus writing,' is ambiguous, though not incorrect.
[165:1] I. p. 456.
[165:2] I. p. 460. [So too ed. 6; but struck out in the Complete Edition.]
[166:1] I. p. 459.
[167:1] I. p. 460. [So also ed. 6; the word 'ever' disappears in the Complete Edition.]