The Living and Abiding Voice

[Five books of Papias are in circulation, and they are called An Explanation of the Lord’s Sayings. Irenaeus mentions them as the only works Papias wrote, in these words: “Papias, a man of the early time, who was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp, bears witness to these things in writing, in the fourth of his books; for he composed five books.” So Irenaeus wrote. Papias himself, in the preface to his books, makes it clear that he was not a hearer and eyewitness of the holy apostles; he says that he received the things of the faith from people who had known them [the apostles]. These are his words:] [a]

I will not hesitate to set down for you, alongside my explanations, everything I ever carefully learned from the elders and carefully stored up in my memory, and I can vouch for its truth. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who had a great deal to say, but in those who taught the truth; and not in those who repeat commandments that come from elsewhere, but in those who repeat the commandments the Lord gave to faith, commandments that come from truth itself. Whenever anyone came who had been a follower of the elders, I would ask closely after the elders’ words — what Andrew or Peter had said, or what Philip said, or Thomas, or James, or John, or Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples; and what Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that anything I could get out of books would help me as much as what comes from a living and abiding voice.

[The early Christians] called those who practiced a godly innocence “children.” [So Papias says in the first book of the Lord’s Explanations, and Clement of Alexandria in his Instructor.] [h]

Judas went about in this world a great example of ungodliness. His body swelled so much that he could not get through a space where a chariot passed easily; he was crushed by the chariot, and his insides spilled out. [i]

[The elders who saw John the Lord’s disciple remembered hearing from him how the Lord used to teach about those times. He said:] “Days are coming when vines will grow, each with ten thousand branches; and on each branch, ten thousand twigs; and on each twig, ten thousand shoots; and on each shoot, ten thousand clusters; and on each cluster, ten thousand grapes; and every grape, when pressed, will give about 150 gallons of wine. And when one of the holy ones takes hold of a cluster, another will call out, ‘I am a better cluster — take me; bless the Lord through me.’ In the same way a grain of wheat will produce ten thousand heads, and every head will have ten thousand grains, and every grain will yield about seven pounds of clear, clean, fine flour. And apples and seeds and grass will bear in the same proportion; and all the animals, feeding then only on what the ground produces, will become peaceable and in harmony with one another, and completely subject to human beings.” [j]

[Papias, a man of the early time, who was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp, bears witness to these things in writing, in the fourth of his books; for he composed five books. And he added: “These things are believable to those who believe.” And he says that when Judas the traitor did not believe, and asked, “How, then, will the Lord bring about such growth?” the Lord said, “Those who come into those times will see.” These, then, are the times the prophet Isaiah spoke of: “And the wolf will lie down with the lamb,” and the rest.]

As the elders say: those who are counted worthy of a home in heaven will go there, others will enjoy the delight of paradise, and others will have the splendor of the city; for the Savior will be seen everywhere, in the measure that those who see him are worthy. This is the difference between the dwelling of those who bear a hundredfold, and that of those who bear sixty, and that of those who bear thirty: the first will be taken up into the heavens, the second will live in paradise, and the last will occupy the city. That is why the Lord said, “In my Father’s house are many dwelling places.” For everything belongs to God, who supplies everyone with a fitting place to live, just as his own word says that a share is given to all by the Father, to each as he is or will be worthy. And this is the couch on which those invited to the wedding will recline for the feast. [l]

The elders, the disciples of the apostles, say that this is the ordering and arrangement of those who are saved, and that they advance by steps of this kind; and further, that they climb through the Spirit to the Son, and through the Son to the Father, and that in due time the Son will hand over his work to the Father, just as the apostle says: “For he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” For in the times of the kingdom, the righteous man who is on the earth will forget how to die. “But when it says that all things are put under him, it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things under him. And when everything has been made subject to him, then the Son himself will also be made subject to the one who made everything subject to him, so that God may be all in all.”

[The Papias we are now speaking of states that he received the words of the apostles from those who had followed them, and he also says that he himself heard Aristion and the elder John. So he mentions them often by name, and gives their traditions in his writings. It may not be useless to notice these things. And it may be worth adding to the passages of Papias already quoted other places where he tells of certain miracles, saying that he learned of them from tradition. That the apostle Philip lived at Hierapolis with his daughters has been mentioned above. We must now point out that Papias, who lived at the same time, tells of a remarkable account he had from Philip’s daughters: he reports that in his own day a dead man was raised to life. He also mentions another wonder concerning Justus, also called Barsabbas — that he drank a deadly poison and came to no harm, by the grace of the Lord. The same man has set down other things that came to him from unwritten tradition, including some strange parables and teachings of the Savior, and some other things of a rather fabulous kind. Among these he says that after the resurrection of the dead there will be a thousand years, when the kingdom of Christ will be set up in bodily form on this earth. He also hands on, in his own writing, other accounts of the Lord’s sayings given by the Aristion already mentioned, and the traditions of the elder John. For these we can only refer our readers to the books themselves. But to the extracts already made we must now add, as a matter of first importance, a tradition about Mark, who wrote the Gospel, which Papias gives in these words:] [n]

And the elder used to say this: Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered — though not in order — of the things said or done by Christ. For he had neither heard the Lord nor followed him; but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who used to adapt his teaching to what his hearers needed, with no intention of making an ordered arrangement of the Lord’s sayings. So Mark did nothing wrong in writing down some things just as he remembered them. He had one concern only: to leave out nothing he had heard, and to state nothing in it falsely. [That is what Papias says about Mark. About Matthew he makes this statement:] Matthew arranged the sayings [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each person interpreted them as best he could. [The same man uses proofs from the first letter of John, and from the letter of Peter in the same way. And he also gives another story about a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is found in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.]

Papias says this, word for word: To some of them [the angels] he gave rule over the ordering of the world, and he charged them to rule well. And immediately after this he says: But it turned out that their ordering came to nothing. [q]

As for the inspiration of the book [Revelation], we think it unnecessary to add another word; for the blessed Gregory the Theologian and Cyril, and men of still earlier date as well — Papias, Irenaeus, Methodius and Hippolytus — bore entirely satisfactory witness to it. [r]

Taking their lead from Papias of Hierapolis, the illustrious, a disciple of the apostle who leaned on Christ’s chest, and from Clement, and Pantaenus the priest of the church of the Alexandrians, and from the learned Ammonius — the ancient and earliest interpreters, who agreed with one another, who understood the work of the six days as referring to Christ and the whole church. [s]

(1) Mary the mother of the Lord; (2) Mary the wife of Clopas, or Alphaeus, who was the mother of James the overseer and apostle, and of Simon and Thaddaeus, and of one Joseph; (3) Mary Salome, wife of Zebedee, mother of John the evangelist and of James; (4) Mary Magdalene. These four are found in the Gospel. [t]

James and Judas and Joseph were sons of an aunt of the Lord — the second Mary. James and John were sons of another aunt of the Lord — the third. The second Mary, mother of James the younger and of Joseph, the wife of Alphaeus, was the sister of Mary the mother of the Lord; John names her as the wife of Clopas, either after her father, or after the family of the clan, or for some other reason. The third, Mary Salome, is called Salome either after her husband or after her village. Some say she is the same as Mary of Clopas, because she had two husbands.