PAPIAS, of Hierapolis in Phrygia, one of the "Apostolic Fathers" (q.v.). His Exposition of the Lord's Oracles, the prime early authority as to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark (see GOSPELS), is known only through fragments in later writers, chiefly Eusebius of Caesarea (H.E. iii. 39). The latter had a bias against Papias on account of the influence which his work had in perpetuating, through Irenaeus and others, belief in a millennial reign of Christ upon earth.
About his date, which is important in connection with his wit ness, there is some doubt. Setting aside the exploded tradition that he was martyred along with Polycarp (c. A.D. 155), we have the witness of Irenaeus that he was "a companion (iraIpos) of Polycarp," who was born not later than A.D. 69. We may waive his other statement that Papias was "a hearer of John," owing to the possibility of a false inference in this case. But the fact that Irenaeus thought of him as Polycarp's contemporary and "a man of the old time" (apxaCos aviip) together with the affinity between the religious tendencies described in Papias's Preface (as quoted by Eusebius) and those reflected in the Epistles of Polycarp and Ignatius, all point to his having flourished in the first quarter of the 2nd century. Indeed, Eusebius, who deals with him along with Clement and Ignatius (rather than Polycarp) under the reign of Trajan, and before referring at all to Hadrian's reign (A.D. 117—
138), suggests that he wrote about A.D. 115. It has been usual, however, to assign to his work a date c. 130-140, or even later.
No fact is known inconsistent with c. 60-135 as the period of Papias's life. Eusebius (iii. 36) calls him "bishop" of Hierapolis, but whether with good ground is uncertain.
Papias uses the term "the Elders," or Fathers of the Christian community, to describe the original witnesses to Christ's teaching, i.e., his personal disciples in particular. It was their traditions as to the purport of that teaching which he was concerned to pre serve. But to Irenaeus the term came to mean the primitive custodians of tradition derived from these, such as Papias and his contemporaries, whose traditions Papias committed to writing.
Not a few such traditions Irenaeus has embodied in his work Against Heresies, so preserving in some cases the substance of Papias's Exposition. (See Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, 1891, for these, as for all texts bearing on Papias.) See articles in the Dict. of Christian Biog., Dict. of Christ and the Gospels, and Herzog-Hauck's Realencyklopadie, xiv., in all of which further references will be found; also Lightfoot, Essays on Supernatural Religion (1889).