Essays on the work entitled "Supernatural Religion" Part 25

[145:1] _Haer._ iv. 27. 1, 3; iv. 30. 1; iv. 31. 1; v. 5. 1; v. 33. 3; v. 36. 1, 2.

[145:2] _Ref. Haer._ vi. 42, 55, 'The blessed elder Irenaeus.' Clement of Alexandria uses the same phrase of Pantaenus; Euseb. _H.E._ vi. 14.

[145:3] _H.E._ iii. 3; v. 8; vi. 13.

[145:4] Heb. xi. 2.

[146:1] Weiffenbach _Das Papias-Fragment_ (Giessen, 1874) has advocated at great length the view that Papias uses the term as a t.i.tle of office throughout, p. 34 sq; but he has not succeeded in convincing subsequent writers. His conclusions are opposed by Hilgenfeld _Papias von Hierapolis_ p. 245 sq (in his _Zeitschrift_, 1875), and by Leimbach _Das Papias-Fragment_ p. 63 sq. Weiffenbach supposes that the elders are distinguished from the Apostles and personal disciples whose sayings Papias sets himself to collect. This view demands such a violent wresting of the grammatical connection in the pa.s.sage of _Papias_ that it is not likely to find much favour.

[146:2] In ill.u.s.tration of this use, it may be mentioned that in the Letter of the Gallican Churches (Euseb. _H.E._ v. 1) the term is applied to the Zacharias of Luke i. 5 sq.

[146:3] 1 Tim. v. 1, 2, 17, 19.

[147:1] See above, p. 103 sq.

[147:2] See Clinton, _Fast. Rom._ II. p. 385.

[147:3] This difficulty however cannot be regarded as serious. At the last (the sixtieth) anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, the _Times_ gave the names of no fewer than seventy-six Waterloo officers as still living.

[148:1] _Chron. Pasch._ p. 481 sq (ed. Bonn.); Euseb. _H.E._ iv. 15.

[148:2] There is no indication that the author of this Chronicle used any other doc.u.ment in this part besides the History of Eusebius and the extant Martyrology of Polycarp which Eusebius here quotes.

[149:1] The martyrdom of Papias is combined with that of Polycarp in the Syriac Epitome of the _Chronicon of Eusebius_ (p. 216, ed. Schone). The source of the error is doubtless the same in both cases.

[149:2] _S.R._ i. p. 448.

[149:3] I had taken the latter view in an article on Papias which I wrote for the _Contemporary Review_ some years before these Essays; but I think now that the Apostle is meant, as the most ancient testimony points to him. I have given my reasons for this change of opinion in _Colossians_ p. 45 sq.

[149:4] Acts xxi. 9.

[150:1] See above, p. 90.

[150:2] The chapter relating to Papias is the thirty-ninth of the third book; those relating to Polycarp are the fourteenth and fifteenth of the fourth book, where they interpose between chapters a.s.signed to Justin Martyr and events connected with him.

[150:3] It is true that he uses the present tense once, [Greek: ha te Aristion kai ho presbuteros Ioannes ... _legousin_] [see above, p. 143], and hence it has been inferred that these two persons were still living when the inquiries were inst.i.tuted. But this would involve a chronological difficulty; and the tense should probably be regarded as a historic present introduced for the sake of variety.

[150:4] _S.R._ I. p. 444, 'About the middle of the second century.'

Elsewhere (II. p. 320) he speaks of Papias as 'flouris.h.i.+ng in the second half of the second century.'

[151:1] Justin Martyr _Dial._ 51 sq (p. 271 sq), 80 sq (p. 307); Irenaeus _Haer._ v. 81 sq; Tertullian _adv. Marc._ iii. 24, _de Resurr.

Carn._ 24.

[151:2] _Ep. Barn._ -- 15.

[151:3] See above, p. 32 sq.

[152:1] See above, p. 41 sq.

[152:2] These are the expressions employed elsewhere of this Gospel; _H.E._ iii. 25, 27; iv. 22.

[152:3] _H.E._ iii. 39 [Greek: hen to kat' Hebraious euangelion periechei].

[152:4] Clem. _Strom._ ii. 9 (p. 453). Our author says, 'Clement of Alexandria quotes it [the Gospel according to the Hebrews] with quite the same respect as the other Gospels' (_S.R._ i. p. 422). He cannot have remembered, when he wrote this, that Clement elsewhere refuses authority to a saying in an Apocryphal Gospel because 'we do not find it in the four Gospels handed down to us' (_Strom._ iii. 13, p. 553).

'Origen,' writes our author again, 'frequently made use of the Gospel according to the Hebrews' (_l.c._). Yes; but Origen draws an absolute line of demarcation between our four Gospels and the rest. He even ill.u.s.trates the relation of these Canonical Gospels to the Apocryphal by that of the true prophets to the false under the Jewish dispensation.

_Hom. I. in Luc._ (III. p. 932). Any reader unacquainted with the facts would carry away a wholly false impression from our author's account of the use made of the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

[152:5] _S.R._ I. pp. 272 sq, 332 sq. The fact that Eusebius did not know the source of this quotation (_H.E._ iii. 36), though he was well acquainted with the Gospel according to the Hebrews, seems to me to render this very doubtful.

[153:1] Boeckh _Corp. Inscr._ 3817, [Greek: Papia Dii soteri].

[153:2] Boeckh 3930, 3912a App.: Mionnet iv. p. 301.

[153:3] Boeckh 3817.

[153:4] Galen _Op._ xii. p. 799 (ed. Kuhn).

[153:5] One Rabbi Papias is mentioned in the Mishna _Shekalim_ iv. 7; _Edaioth_ vii. 6. I owe these references to Zunz _Namen der Juden_ p.

16.

[153:6] See above, p. 142.

[153:7] See above, p. 89 sq.

[154:1] [Greek: ho panu, ho polus]. The first pa.s.sage will be found in the original Greek in Routh _Rel. Sacr._ I. p. 15 (comp. Migne _Patr.

Graec._ lx.x.xix. p. 860, where only the Latin 'clarissimus' is given); the second in Migne _ib._ p. 961 (comp. Routh _l.c._ p. 16, where again only the Latin 'celebris' is given).

[155:1] Whether the first word should be singular or plural, 'Exposition' ([Greek: exegesis]) or 'Expositions' ([Greek: exegeseis]), I need not stop to inquire. The important points are (1) that Papias uses [Greek: logion], not [Greek: logon], 'oracles,' not 'words' or 'sayings'; (2) that he has [Greek: kuriakon logion], not [Greek: logion tou Kuriou]--'Dominical Oracles,' not 'Oracles of the Lord.' I shall have occasion hereafter to call attention to both these facts, which are significant, as they give a much wider range to his subject-matter than if he had used the alternative expressions.

[155:2] _S.R._ I. p. 434 sq.

[156:1] So again, I. p. 484 sq, 'Whatever books Papias knew, however, it is certain, from his own express declaration, that he ascribed little importance to them, and preferred tradition as a more reliable source of information regarding Evangelical history,' etc. See also II. p. 820 sq.

[156:2] _H.E._ iv. 23, v. 8.

[156:3] See below, p. 160.

[157:1] The references will be found above, p. 154.

[157:2] The proper word, if the work had been what our author supposes, was not [Greek: exegesis] but [Greek: diegesis], which Eusebius uses several times of the anecdotes related by Papias; _H.E._ iii. 39.

[158:1] This attempt has recently been made by Weiffenbach _Das Papias-Fragment_ p. 16 sq; and it is chiefly valuable as a testimony to the real significance of the words, which can only be set aside by such violent treatment. Weiffenbach is obliged to perform two acts of violence on the sentence: (1) He supposes that there is an anacoluthon, and that the [Greek: _kai hosa pote_] here is answered by the words [Greek: _ei_ de pou _kai_ parekolouthekos], which occur several lines below. (2) He interprets [Greek: tais hermeneiais] 'the interpretations belonging to them.' Each of these by itself is harsh and unnatural in the extreme; and the combination of the two may be safely p.r.o.nounced impossible. Even if his grammatical treatment could be allowed, the fact will still remain that the _interpretations are presupposed_.

Weiffenbach's constructions of this pa.s.sage are justly rejected by the two writers who have written on the subject since his essay appeared, Hilgenfeld and Leimbach.

[158:2] Haer. v. 33. 1 sq.

[158:3] It may be observed in pa.s.sing, as an ill.u.s.tration of the looseness of early quotations, that this pa.s.sage, as given by Irenaeus, does not accord with any one of the Synoptic Evangelists, but combines features from all the three.