preserved,
chiefly by Irenaeus and Eusebius. The object and contents of this work
will be discussed hereafter; but it is necessary to quote at once an
extract which Eusebius has preserved from the preface, since our
estimate of the date and position of Papias will depend largely on the
interpretation of its meaning.

Papias then, addressing (as it would appear) some friend to whom the
work was dedicated, explains its plan and purpose as follows [143:1]:--

But I will not scruple also to give a place for you along with my
interpretations to everything that I learnt carefully and
remembered carefully in time past from the elders, guaranteeing
their truth. For, unlike the many, I did not take pleasure in those
who have so very much to say ([Greek: tois ta polla legosin]), but
in those who teach the truth; nor in those who relate foreign
commandments, but in those [who record] such as were given from the
Lord to the Faith, and are derived from the Truth itself. And
again, on any occasion when a person came [in my way] who had been
a follower of the elders ([Greek: ei de pou kai parekolouthekos tis
tois presbuterois elthoi]), I would inquire about the discourses of
the elders--what was said by Andrew, or by Peter, or by Philip, or
by Thomas or James, or by John or Matthew or any other of the
Lord's disciples, and what Aristion and the Elder John, the
disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not think that I could get so
much profit from the contents of books as from the utterances of a
living and abiding voice ([Greek: ou gar ta ek ton Biblion tosouton
me ophelein hupelambanon, hoson ta para zoses phones kai
menouses]).

This passage is introduced by Eusebius with the remark that, though
Irenaeus calls Papias a hearer of John,

Yet Papias himself, in the preface to his discourses, certainly
does not declare that he himself was a hearer and eye-witness of
the holy Apostles, but he shows, by the language which he uses,
that he received the matters of the faith from those who were their
friends.

Then follows the extract which I have given; after which Eusebius
resumes:--

Here it is important to observe, that he twice mentions the name of
John. The former of these he puts in the same list with Peter and
James and Matthew and the rest of the Apostles, clearly intending
the Evangelist;