Bishop of Hierapolis and Early Christian Writer • Early Church
Papias was an early Christian bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor and the author of a work traditionally known as Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord, which survives only in fragments quoted by later writers. Papias valued testimony received from those connected with the earliest disciples and preserved traditions concerning the origins of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. His surviving fragments make him an important witness to how early Christians remembered the apostolic generation and the transmission of Jesus' teachings.