Papias' Logia: JE Bio by Iain Murray

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

JE Bio by Iain Murray - Chapter 1

This is a good book, and I don't normally read bios!

Chapter One gives a background to JE's family, starting with his grandfather and father. It gave me a good context for how he became the man he was. His father Timothy was a pastor and a skilled tutor, so much so that when his pupils would be examined for college, that it was said, "Mr Edwards pupils need no examination". Here is where JE learned Latin, Greek and Hebrew, all before he went to college at age 13 - which blows my mind.

JE was also the only son, but had 10 sisters! It would seem that each of them was tall for the day(about 6 foot tall), because it is was said "Mr. Edwards(Timothy) sixty feet of daughters".

His mother was the daughter of Solomon Stoddard, one of the more famous pastors of the day. During his time, Solomon Stoddard was considered to be the most powerful New England clergyman.

He also seems to have been voracious reader as well as a proficient writer, even at a young age. He wrote a treatise on spiders that was influential in its observations. This seems to have set him on the path that later on in his life he would continue his learning.

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About my namesake...

Papias wrote in the first half of the second century and was one of the early leaders of the Christian church. Church historian Eusebius calls him the "Bishop of Hierapolis" (modern Pamukkale, Turkey) which is 22 kilometers from Laodicea near Colossae (see Colossians 4:13).

His “Interpretations of the Sayings of the Lord” (his word for "sayings" is "logia") in five books, would have been a prime early authority in the exegesis of the sayings of Jesus. His treatise, however, has utterly disappeared, and is known only through fragments quoted by later writers, with approval by Irenaeus in "Against Heresies", and later with scorn by Eusebius of Caesarea in "Ecclesiastical History."

Eusebius calls Papias "a man of small mental capacity" (Hist. Eccl. 3.39.13), who mistook the figurative language of apostolic traditions. Whether this was so is difficult to judge without the text available; it is thought that perhaps Eusebius objected to Papias' premillenialism (chiliasm), which by the fourth century had been supplanted by the common church doctrine of amillennialism.

It was thought that Papias was "a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, a man of old time." According to another tradition, Papias shared in the martyrdom of Polycarp, (c. AD 155). Eusebius, who places him with Clement and Ignatius under the reign of Trajan, suggests that he wrote about AD 115. In all likelihood, he wrote his treatise in the first quarter of the second century. What remains today are only fragments of his Treatise quoted in the writings of Irenaeus and Eusebius.