Early church writer

Papias of Hierapolis

About AD 60 to 130 (approximate)

Papias was bishop of Hierapolis, a city in Phrygia in what is now Turkey. Irenaeus calls him a hearer of John and a friend of Polycarp, though the early writer Eusebius, drawing on Papias's own words, suggests he may have heard from followers of the apostles rather than from the apostles themselves. Scholars still discuss which John is meant.

He wrote a five-volume Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord, which has not survived. The surviving fragments, preserved by Irenaeus, Eusebius and later writers, include some of the earliest remarks about how the Gospels of Mark and Matthew came to be written. They also show that Papias valued the oral memory of people who had known the apostles and held hopes about the future that later writers, including Eusebius, regarded with caution.

Read Papias of Hierapolis on this site

Fragments of Papias

Papias of Hierapolis · About AD 100 to 140 (debated)

The scraps that survive from a lost book by a bishop who collected the memories of people who had known the apostles, including early remarks on how the Gospels of Mark and Matthew began.

9-minute read Medium

Dates are traditional or approximate, and scholars debate many of them. Who were the church fathers?