His interpretations would have been a prime early authority in the exegesis of the sayings of Jesus, some of which are recorded in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, however the book has not survived and is known only through fragments quoted by later writers; Irenaeus of Lyons's (d. 202) Against Heresies and later by Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339) in Ecclesiastical History, the earliest surviving history of the early Church.
One of these fragments, quoted by Eusebius in his History of the Church (Book III, chapter 39), reads:
But I shall not be unwilling to put down, along with my interpretations, whatsoever instructions I received with care at any time from the elders, and stored up with care in my memory, assuring you at the same time of their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those who spoke much, but in those who taught the truth; nor in those who related strange commandments, but in those who rehearsed the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and proceeding from truth itself. If, then, any one who had attended on the elders came, I asked minutely after their sayings,--what Andrew or Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the Lord's disciples: which things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I imagined that what was to be got from books was not so profitable to me as what came from the living and abiding voice.[4]
There is a statement by Irenaeus that Papias was "a hearer of John, and companion of Polycarp, a man of old time." (Adversus Haereses V 33.4) If Polycarp was in fact born not later than AD 69, then there may be no reason to depend on a further, but disputed tradition, that Papias shared in the martyrdom of Polycarp (ca AD 155). It is possible that Irenaeus thought of Papias as Polycarp's contemporary and "a man of the old time," together with the affinity between the religious tendencies described in the fragment from Papias's Preface quoted by Eusebius and those reflected in the Epistles of Ignatius and of Polycarp, all point to his having flourished in the first quarter of the 2nd century.
Eusebius suggests that he wrote "as early as 110 and probably no later than the early 130s, with several scholars opting for the earlier end of the spectrum".
No known fact is inconsistent with c. 60-135 as the period of Papias's life. It should be noted that, though he was probably writing as an old man in Hierapolis, the enquiries he made took place a long time beforehand, and some of his eyewitnesses could well have met Jesus or the Apostles, or both. Eusebius calls him "bishop" of Hierapolis, but whether with good ground is uncertain. In this putative capacity as bishop, Papias was supposedly succeeded by Abercius of Hieropolis.
