PAPIAS.
The first information we get concerning this Father shows him to have been acquainted with other stories than those found in our Gospels. It occurs in Irenæus against Heresies (book v., chap. xxxiii., sec. 3 and 4, p. 146, vol. ix., Ante-Nicene Christian Library). Speaking of the rewards which will come in the flesh to Christians, he tells us that "elders who saw John the disciple of the Lord, related that they had heard from him how the Lord used to teach in regard to these times, and say: The days will come in which vines shall grow, each having ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in each one of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters ten thousand grapes, and every grape when pressed will give five and twenty metretes of wine. And when any one of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another cry out, 'I am a better cluster, take me; bless the Lord through me.'"
Taking Smith's Bible Dictionary as authority for the value of a metrete, viz., eight and two-thirds of a gallon, it follows that the product of one millenial grape-vine will make a quantity of wine equal in bulk to the planet Mercury, and allowing to the thousand million of the earth's inhabitants enough to keep them constantly intoxicated, say two gallons of wine a day to each person, it would keep them all dead drunk for the space of thirty thousand million years! What a jolly old Father was this! or, if he is to believed, what a jolly Jesus to promise and jolly John to report such a millenial prospect. It beats the Mahommedan Paradise. Irenæus continues:—
"In like manner [the Lord declared] that a grain of wheat would produce ten thousand ears, and that every ear should have ten thousand grains, and every grain would yield ten pounds of clear, pure, fine flour; and that all other fruit-bearing trees, and seeds and grass, would produce in similar proportions; and that all animals feeding on the productions of the earth should become peaceful and harmonious among each other, and be in perfect subjection to man. Sec. 4. And these things are borne witness to in writing by Papias, the hearer of John, and a companion of Polycarp, in his fourth book; for there were five books compiled by him. And he says in addition, 'Now these things are credible to believers.' And he says that when the traitor Judas did not give credit to them, and put the question, 'How then can things, about to bring forth so abundantly, be wrought by the Lord? The Lord declared, They who shall come to these [times] shall see.'" Which, in evasiveness, is on a par with some of the utterances of Jesus in the Gospels. Dr. Donaldson ("Apostolical Fathers," p. 897,1874,) says: "There is nothing improbable in the statement that the Lord spoke in some such way, and it is not at all improbable that Papias took literally what was meant for allegory." Dr. Giles seems to concur in the view that Papias repeated words of Jesus.
J. Jones (on the Canon, vol. i., p. 370,1827,) thinks Papias both the manufacturer of the doctrine of the Millenium and of this passage ascribed to Christ calculated to support it. The idea he considers borrowed from the Jews. Perhaps it was, but it certainly finds some countenance in the Apocalypse.
The statement that Papias was a hearer of the Apostle John conflicts with the account in Eusebius (Ec. Hist, iii., 89), which implies that he received information from John the Presbyter after all the Apostles were dead. According to Eusebius (Ec. Hist, iii, 36,) and Jerome (De Viri Illust. xviii.), Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis, a city of Phyrgia. He is supposed to have suffered martyrdom about 163 or 167. His work, in five books, was entitled "An Exposition of the Oracles (or Words) of the Lord." Eusebius, in the third book of his Ecclesiastical History, chapter 39, gives us most of our information about Papias. His estimate of him, as a man of very limited understanding, does not deter us from regretting the loss of his writings. The fragments which remain cast such radiance on some of the dark points of the Christian evidences. Paley and all the school of evidence-writers cite him as proving the existence of our Matthew and Mark. But he is now generally seen to prove the very reverse.
Let us first examine his statement in regard to Matthew. As given on the authority of Eusebius, it reads that "Matthew composed the logia [oracles or sayings] in the Hebrew dialect, and everyone interpreted them as he was able."
Now it is somewhat curious that Papias, probably in the second half of the second century, should be the first to give currency to the tradition that Matthew wrote a Gospel if that Gospel had been in existence 100 years.
But that the work referred to was not the same we now have is manifest from its name logia, discourses, sayings, or oracles. It would be an utter misnomer for an historical narrative beginning with a detailed history of the genealogy, birth and infancy of Jesus, and the preaching of John the Baptist, and concluding with an equally minute account of his betrayal, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection, giving all his movements and miracles, and which has for its evident aim throughout the demonstration that Jesus was the Messiah. Our Gospel, not written by, but according to Matthew, has no such title.