Papias' Acceptance Of The Synoptics And John

Another early example of what I discussed in my last post, though a less significant example, is Papias. It's well known that he thought highly of the Synoptics, as cited in Eusebius, Church History 3:39:15-16. Something that gets discussed much less is how various phrases and concepts found in the Johannine literature are found in Papias' writings as well, including in forms very unlikely to be merely coincidental. In all likelihood, Papias was familiar with the Johannine documents in the New Testament and thought highly of them. As I wrote in a post several years ago, "I've already noted Papias' use of 'the elder', a term that John applied to himself. In most lists of the apostles, Peter's name appears first. But in Papias' list, Andrew comes before Peter, followed by Philip. That order (Andrew, Peter, Philip) is identical to the order in which Jesus calls the disciples in John's gospel (John 1:40-41, 1:43). The same passage in Papias uses the phrase 'truth itself' (3 John 12), which is somewhat unusual." For a discussion of some other evidence for Papias' high view of both the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of John, see the sixth paragraph here. Just after discussing Papias' high view of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, Eusebius noted that Papias "uses testimonies from the first Epistle of John" (Church History 3:39:16). And he was a premillennialist and is reported to have corroborated the book of Revelation in some sense (see section E2 here). The sort of high regard for the writings of John suggested by all of these lines of evidence is furthered by Papias' reference to an elder named John who seems to have still been alive for some part of Papias' life and whose testimony Papias is interested in (Eusebius, Church History 3:39:3-4). For an argument that the John Papias refers to there was the son of Zebedee, see here. And see my recent post here for evidence that Irenaeus likely had the son of Zebedee in mind when he referred to Papias as an eyewitness of John (Against Heresies 5:33:4). Papias was a bishop in Asia Minor, the region where the seven churches of Revelation resided. He and the audience for whom he wrote provide further examples of what I referred to in my last post, people who seem to have held views that harmonized what's found in the Synoptics and the fourth gospel. Papias was closely associated with John in a variety of ways (as an eyewitness of John, as somebody who lived in an area of the world where John lived and had a lot of influence, as somebody who thought highly of the New Testament's Johannine documents, etc.), and he held a high view of the Synoptics.