Doug Shaver

Papias's own writings do not support that tradition.

Irenaeus thought that Papias knew and was quoting the author of John's gospel. Eusebius thought otherwise, and he based his conclusion on an obviously careful reading of Papias's text.

Papias claims to have known a "presbyter" named John. He also refers to the John who was Jesus' disciple without claiming to have met the man. There is no sensible interpretation that makes those two Johns the same person.

S.C.Carlson

According to Papias, both Johns are disciples of Jesus.

Doug Shaver

OK. I'll rephrase my assertion.

Papias claims to have known a "presbyter" named John. He also refers to the John who was one of Jesus' original 12 disciples, and to whom Christian tradition attributes authorship of the fourth gospel, without claiming to have met the man.

Ben C Smith

Your observations are good. And I actually agree with you that John of Zebedee is not the author of our fourth canonical gospel. The reason I made this correspondence number 6 (the last) is because, in order to really appreciate it, you have to have read either Hengel, The Johannine Question, or Bauckham (or both).

If you want to push the correspondence back by one level, it would look like this:

The gospel of Mark marches alongside those of Matthew and Luke fairly well, but is noticeably out of order compared to the gospel of John, and Papias quotes somebody named John to the effect that the gospel of Mark is out of order.

This, of course, is not quite so striking as before, but it is still a correspondence that deserves to be read alongside the others.

I still stand by my original statement, however, based both on actual church tradition (which made the two Johns one) and on Hengel and Bauckham (who see two Johns, like Eusebius, but use other evidence to argue that the elder John authored the gospel by that name). But to run through the arguments fully would take more time than I have right now.

Ben.

Doug Shaver

And responding to them would take more time than I have. So, I'm OK leaving it at that.