=(2) Papias on the First Gospel.=--The earliest extant information about the authorship of the First Gospel is to be found in a fragment which Eusebius, the church historian of the fourth century, has preserved from a lost work of Papias. Papias was bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor in the former half of the second century.
The fragment from Papias, which is found in Eusebius, Church History, iii, 39, 16, may be translated as follows:
"Matthew accordingly wrote [or compiled] the oracles in the Hebrew dialect, and everyone translated them as he was able."
It seems pretty evident that Papias is here referring to the First Gospel. Some, indeed, have supposed that he means by "the oracles" a writing composed almost exclusively of sayings of Jesus, which formed merely one of the sources of our First Gospel. This view is probably incorrect. Papias could designate the Gospel of Matthew as "the oracles" either because of the large place which sayings of Jesus have in this Gospel, as compared, for example, with the Gospel of Mark, or else because the whole Gospel, both speeches and narrative, was of divine, oracular authority. The view that "according to Matthew" in the ancient title and in Christian tradition means not that Matthew wrote the book, but that it is based in some way ultimately on his authority, is opposed by the analogy of Mark. As we shall see, the Gospel of Mark, in early tradition, was referred ultimately to the authority of Peter; if, therefore, "according to" was used in the sense indicated above, the Second Gospel would have been called the Gospel "according to Peter" instead of the Gospel "according to Mark."
The testimony of Papias involves two principal assertions: in the first place, that Matthew wrote the First Gospel; and in the second place, that he wrote it in the "Hebrew" language.
The former assertion, which is supported by a striking consensus of early writers, has already been considered. The latter is much more puzzling.
3. WAS THE FIRST GOSPEL ORIGINALLY ARAMAIC?
=(1) Meaning of "Hebrew."=--By "the Hebrew dialect," Papias no doubt means Aramaic rather than what we call Hebrew. The term "Hebrew" was applied to both of the two closely related languages. Compare Acts 21:40. It is exceedingly unlikely that a Gospel would have been written in Hebrew; for before the time of Christ that had ceased to be the living language of Palestine. What Papias asserts, then, is that Matthew wrote in Aramaic.