Toto

Eusebius was known to spin the facts or even make things up where needed, and this is a place where he needed to show a connection between those who knew Jesus and the later scriptures. And he might have confused John the Elder with another John who was not a disciple.

Doug Shaver

Yes, and -- unlike you -- I'm prepared to prove the assertion if the need arises.

gnosis92

Is there a reason he'd spin facts or make things up re: Papais?

mountainman

Dear gnosis,

Is there any reason that you can think of that Eusebius would, at a particularly shameful hour, pen the interpolation into Josephus? It's all about establishing credibility where none had previously existed, by fraud.

Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

Isn't that what I tried to explain?

mountainman

On this poll I would not accept their claim as historical because every single one of their claims are all, the whole lot of them, lock, stock and barrel reported by one single sponsored author in the fourth century called Eusebius, and we have no external corroborating evidence from the field of archaeology (when we should have some) to support such assertions and mass movements. Show me some early inscriptions for example and I'd find them adding far more weight to any HJ. The documents (by) themselves are too late IMO. Paul is just another module of the purely literary fabrication of the NT.

aa5874

Your assumption about Paul is not justified.

Ben C Smith

Not in this case. Irenaeus had read Papias and concluded that Papias had heard John personally (Against Heresies 5.33.3-4). Eusebius read Irenaeus and assumed (possibly incorrectly) he was talking about John the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve. Eusebius did not like this conclusion, because Papias was a chiliast (and so was Irenaeus) who supported the apocalypse of John, and Eusebius, following both a penetrating analysis by Dionysius of Alexandria (Eusebius, History of the Church 7.25.1-27 ) and his own antichiliastic instincts, held that the apocalypse was written by a different John, not by John of Zebedee.

So Eusebius quotes Papias in order to show that the John whom Papias claims to have heard from was not John of Zebedee (History of the Church 3.39.5). That way he can lay the apocalypse at the feet of a nonapostle (History of the Church 3.39.6). In this context, it makes absolutely no sense to suppose that Eusebius inserted the bit about John and Aristion being disciples of the Lord; the further this John stood from the apostolic circle (or from the Lord himself), the better for Eusebius.

In short, the report of Papias is in all probability authentic, and Papias thus claimed to be a contemporary of a disciple named John. Both Irenaeus and Eusebius probably overinterpreted Papias to be saying that he himself heard from John in person, but Papias claims only to have inquired as to what John and Aristion were saying.

Ben.

aa5874

Isn't your question a bit rhetorical? If you have assumed in advance that Papias wrote what Eusebius claimed, then it can not be assumed or argued that Eusebius made anything up.