Layman

A complete copy of Papias? That's be quite a find. Methinks "fascinating" is an understated term.

Roger Pearse

It won't be found there, tho. Papias was a Greek text, and the Greek Mss of the Vatican were all acquired via several hands in a very public manner.

It's possible that a copy might exist on Mount Athos somewhere, although I doubt this -- the collection seems to have been thoroughly pruned by book dealers over the last 5 centuries. Perhaps the best chance would be if a portion existed in a palimpsest somewhere. There are around 50,000 Greek manuscripts in existence, and if we had any real energy in manuscript studies, we'd have a list of the lot and checks for lower texts on the lot. After all, a band of 1000 students could do the lot in a year, in principle, and if paid $10,000 each to live on the total cost would be $10m -- nothing, in the great scheme of things.

The other alternative would be a papyrus find. Papias was still circulating in the 4th century, as Eusebius of Caesarea had a copy before him. So it is not entirely impossible that a copy is sat in a jar somewhere in the Egyptian desert. Possibly a Syriac version might exist.

I don't know if people know that reports of the complete Greek Irenaeus and Hegesippus were still circulating in the 17th century? I have a couple of academic papers from ca. 1900 which I translated out of the German and put online, but seem to have attracted little interest.

Zahn and Meyer

Other booklists with other contents also exist. I also have online a list of books to look for given to a pair of Cardinals ca. 1430 by Niccolo Niccoli -- they were used by book hunters to plan expeditions. However, some of these 'book lists' were created by dealers in 'bait-and-switch' operations, and at least one appears to be a in-joke, according to Dr. Nigel Wilson, the authority on such things.

All the best,

Roger Pearse