Papias of Hierapolis
Papias was bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, a friend of Polycarp, and was believed to have been a disciple of the apostle John. He wrote five books of Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord, all of which are lost except for fragments quoted by later writers, chiefly Eusebius.
Those fragments are precious because they are the oldest account of the origins of the Gospels. Papias reported that Matthew first compiled the Lord’s sayings in Hebrew, and he described how Mark wrote:
Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered.… For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements.1 Papiasas preserved by Eusebius, Church History 3.39
Papias also looked for a literal reign of Christ on the earth for a thousand years, a hope shared by Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, and most of the church of the first three centuries.
His Legacy
Papias’s witness to the apostolic origin of the Gospels helped the church recognize the books it had received. His millennial hope, however, did not survive in the West. Origen’s allegorical method and Augustine’s teaching that the thousand years are the present age prevailed, and Augustine’s amillennialism became the settled position of the medieval church.2
