nachronisms and other inaccuracies; but the mention of
Papias here courts inquiry, and time will not be ill spent in the
endeavour to account for it. It will be worth while, at all events, to
dispose of an erroneous explanation which has found some favour. When
attention was first called to this passage by Aberle and Tischendorf,
Overbeck met them with the hypothesis that the notice was taken from a
spurious work ascribed to Papias. He supposed that some one had forged
five additional books in the name of this father, in which he had
gathered together a mass of fabulous matter, and had entitled them
'Exoterica,' attaching them to the genuine five books. To this work he
assigned also the notice respecting the four Maries which bears the name
of Papias [210:2]. This explanation might have been left to itself if it
had remained as a mere hypothesis of Overbeck's, but it has been
recently accepted by Hilgenfeld. He speaks of these five 'exoteric'
books, as attached to 'the five esoteric or genuine books;' and to this
source he attributes not only the account of the four Maries, but also a
notice relating to the death of St John which is given by Georgius
Hamartolos on the authority of Papias [211:1].

This however seems to be altogether a mistake. We find no notice or
trace elsewhere of any such spurious work attributed to Papias. Moreover
these titles are quite unintelligible. There is no reason why the five
genuine books should be called 'esoteric,' or the five spurious books
'exoteric.' About the notice of the four Maries again Hilgenfeld is in
error. It is not taken from any forged book fathered upon the bishop of
Hierapolis, but from a genuine work of another Papias, a Latin
lexicographer of the eleventh century. This is not a mere hypothesis, as
Hilgenfeld assumes, but an indisputable fact, as any one can test who
will refer to the work itself, of which MSS exist in some libraries, and
which was printed four times in the fifteenth century [211:2]. Nor again
does the passage in Georgius Hamartolos give any countenance to this
theory. This writer, after saying that St John survived the rest of the
twelve and then suffered as a martyr ([Greek: marturiou katexiotai]),
continues:--

For Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis, having been an eye-witness of
him, says in the second book [Greek: logo] of the 'Oracles of the
Lord' ([Greek: ton kuriakon logion]) that he was slain by the Jews,
having, as is clear,