Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Is Poppias Generally Trustworthy? By Bart D. Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth in my previous post, I stressed that contrary to what you sometimes may have heard or possibly will hear, Poppias is not a direct witness to what the apostles of Jesus were saying.
[00:00:19] This is an important point because Poppias gives a testimony that is often taken as hard proof that the second Gospel of the NT was written by Mark, the companion of Peter, and that the first Gospel was really and truly written by Matthew, the disciple of Jesus.
[00:00:34] If these claims were right, they would be highly significant.
[00:00:37] Matthew would have been written by someone who was there to see these things happen, and Mark's account would be based on arguably the most important witness to Jesus life.
[00:00:47] Here's what Papias says Remember when he indicates what the elder says, he is indicating what he has learned from a person who was allegedly companion of the elder.
[00:00:57] The elder was someone who allegedly knew the disciples.
[00:01:01] This is what the elder used to When Mark was the interpreter of Peter, he wrote down accurately everything he recalled of the Lord's words and deeds, but not in order for he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him. But later, as I indicated, he accompanied Peter, who used to adapt his teachings for the needs at hand, not arranging, as it were, an orderly composition of the Lord's sayings.
[00:01:28] And so Mark did nothing wrong by writing some of the matters as he remembered them, for he was intent on just one purpose to leave out nothing that he heard or to indicate any falsehood among them.
[00:01:39] And this is what Papias says about and so Matthew composed the sayings in the Hebrew tongue and each one interpreted them to the best of his ability.
[00:01:52] In addition to my general doubts about the reliability of oral transmissions. Recall, these are fourth hand accounts we're hearing from Papias, which I discuss at length in my book Jesus before the Gospels. I have two reasons for thinking that these comments of Poppias are not convincing proof about the authorship of either Matthew or Mark.
[00:02:12] The first is that Poppias can be shown not to preserve historically accurate information passed down from the apostles of Jesus.
[00:02:19] The second is that what Papias actually says about Matthew is not true of our Matthew, but making it appear either that he doesn't have accurate information or that he is referring to some book other than what came to be our Gospel of Matthew.
[00:02:34] And if he's not right about our Matthew, there's no reason to think that he's right about our Mark.
[00:02:41] I'll deal with the first reason in this post.
[00:02:44] The short story is that Papias clearly gives traditions about Jesus that he heard from his sources that simply cannot be trusted.
[00:02:51] Decide for yourself.
[00:02:53] The first is an alleged saying of Jesus.
[00:02:56] Here's Papias. Thus the elders who saw John, the disciple of the Lord, remembered hearing him say how the Lord used to teach about those times, saying, the days are coming when vines will come forth, each with 10,000 boughs. And on a single bough will be 10,000 branches. And indeed on a single branch will be 10,000 shoots, and on every shoot 10, 10,000 clusters. And in every cluster will be 10,000 grapes. And every grape, when pressed, will yield 25 measures of wine.
[00:03:29] And when any of the saints grabs hold of a cluster, another will cry out, I am better. Take me. Bless the Lord through me.
[00:03:38] So too, a grain of wheat will produce 10,000 heads, and every head will have 10,000 grains. And every grain will yield 10 pounds of pure, exceptionally fine flour.
[00:03:49] Unquote.
[00:03:50] This is a very interesting claim about what Jesus taught. I do know people who say, hey, Jesus probably said that. I really don't think so. Jesus did love hyperbole in places, often to good humorous effect.
[00:04:04] But this is making a concrete prediction that is off the charts when it comes to imaginative excess, and there's nothing like it in the nt.
[00:04:13] The idea that a seed scattered on good soil could produce hundredfold is nothing like this.
[00:04:19] Do the math. How many measures of wine will be produced from a single vine? And how many pounds of flour from a single grain?
[00:04:28] The second tradition is even more interesting. Fascinating. Even.
[00:04:32] So, do you wonder how Judas died? Depends on whether you think Matthew 27:3, 10 is right, or Acts 1, 16, 19 is right.
[00:04:42] It can't be both.
[00:04:44] There are straight up contradictions, but neither is inherently implausible.
[00:04:48] Compare them with what Papias tells us, based on the reliable sources that he had at his disposal.
[00:04:56] But Judas went about in this world as a great model of impiety.
[00:05:00] He became so bloated in the flesh that he could not pass through a place that was easily wide enough for a wagon. Not even his swollen head could fit. They say that his eyelids swelled to such an extent that he could not see the light at all.
[00:05:14] And a doctor could not see his eyes, even with an optical device so deeply sunken they were in the surrounding flesh.
[00:05:22] And when his genitals became more disgusting and larger than anyone's, simply by relieving himself to his wanton shame, he emitted pus and worms that flowed through his entire body.
[00:05:33] And they say that after he suffered numerous torments and punishments, he died on his own land, and that land has been, until now, desolate and uninhabited because of the stench.
[00:05:46] Indeed, even to this day, no one can pass by the place without holding their nose.
[00:05:50] This was how great an outpouring he made from his flesh on the ground.
[00:05:56] I don't see any way this could be historical, even though it certainly is intriguing. Here are two traditions firmly asserted by Papias that can be critically examined.
[00:06:06] Both, in my mind, are clearly legendary.
[00:06:09] Everyone I know agrees on the second, and surely it's true of the first. They are not reliable claims about what actually happened.
[00:06:17] But if Poppias is not giving us historically accurate material where he can be checked, why would we automatically assume he is reliable about other things he says, for example about Matthew and Mark?
[00:06:30] Papias has been trusted in these sayings, for example, by conservative New Testament scholars, because these scholars want to trust him in them and for no other reason.
[00:06:42] They want to trust him because he tells them what they want to hear.
[00:06:46] And when he tells them something they don't want to hear, in the other traditions he preserves, they choose not to trust him. This is not critical scholarship, but credulous scholarship.
