Papias - Scripture and Tradition

Papias

Bishop Papias of Hierapolis (in modern Turkey, but then a Greek-speaking community) was called by St. Irenaeus "a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, a man of old time". He wrote a work in five books, Logion Kyriakon Exegesis (An Explanation of the Accounts of The Lord). Unfortunately, the original is long lost, but we have many quotations from this work in many other authors. He is counted as an Apostolic Father. No account of his life has survived. He was obviously writing in his old age, some time between the years 115 and 140AD.

Of importance for us is the testimony he gives about how he received the Gospel. The 'Bible-Only' Protestants believe that the New Testament was written down by the Apostles and passed down to the various Christian communities, who were completely independent of each other. Each group, after the death of the Apostles, looked to the written word of Scripture alone as the source of the Faith. They are trying to model their own organisation on this pattern. But the actual historical record tells another story. Papias, who lived through the first generation to see the death of the last apostle, writes:

I will not hesitate to add also for you, to my Exegesis, what I formerly learned with care from the Presbyters and have carefully stored in memory, giving assurance of its truth. For I did not take pleasure, as the many do, in those who speak a great deal; but in those who teach what is true: nor in those who relate foreign precepts, but in those who relate the precepts which were given by the Lord to the Faith and came down from the Truth itself. And also if any follower of the Presbyters happened to come, I would inquire for the sayings of the Presbyters, what Andrew said, or what Peter said, or what Philip or what Thomas or James or what John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which other of the Lord's disciples, and for the things which Aristion and the Presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying (The Greek words here mean that John, unlike the other Apostles, was still alive at the time). For I considered that I should not get so much advantage from matter in books as from the voice which yet lives and remains.

Notice that Papias is not saying that he spoke to the Apostles personally, but that he spoke to those who had done so, before his own time. And he most definitely does not state that he opened the Bible, read it, and the Holy Spirit showed him how to interpret it.

External link: See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11457c.htm

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