Papias the Bishop

Papias, the pupil of John and bishop of Hierapolis in Asia, wrote only five volumes, which he entitled Exposition of the Words of Our Lord. In his preface he declared that he did not follow various opinions but had the apostles as his authority, and he said: “I considered what Andrew and Peter said, what Philip, what Thomas, what James, what John, what Matthew or any other of the disciples of our Lord, and what Aristion and the elder John, disciples of the Lord, had said; not so much that I have their books to read, as that their living voice is heard to this day in the authors themselves.” This list of names makes it plain that the John placed among the disciples is not the same as the elder John, whom he places after Aristion in his list. We say this, moreover, because of the opinion mentioned above, where we recorded that many declare the last two letters of John to be the work not of the apostle but of the presbyter. [a]

He is said to have published The Second Coming of Our Lord, or the Thousand Years. Irenaeus and Apollinaris and others, who say that after the resurrection the Lord will reign in the flesh with the saints, follow him. Tertullian also, in his work On the Hope of the Faithful, Victorinus of Pettau and Lactantius follow this view. [c]