Papias of Hierapolis

Papias was bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia. He wrote five books, the Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, now lost except for quotations in Irenaeus, Eusebius and later writers. He says he preferred ‘the living and abiding voice’ of those who had known the Lord’s disciples to anything in books.

His reports are the earliest statements about the origins of the Gospels: that Mark, Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately but not in order what Peter taught, and that Matthew arranged the oracles in the Hebrew language. Scholars still debate how much weight they bear, but they come from a bishop who sought out those who had known the Lord’s disciples.