Papias was the most influential of the early chiliasts. His purported connection with the
apostolic authorities lent his teaching great weight among men like Irenaeus, and even with
Jerome, a sharp critic of chiliasm. Speaking of his chiliasm, Eusebius belittled both the
intelligence and apostolic connections of Papias:
[Papias] gives also other accounts which he says came to him through unwritten tradition,
certain strange parables and teachings of the Savior, and some other more mythical things. To
these belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the
resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this
very earth. I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts,
not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures. For he appears to
have been of very limited understanding, as one can see from his discourses. (Hist. eccl. 3.23)
But the general opinion during the early post-apostolic years was that this was a man who had
enjoyed direct contact with the apostles' teaching. People accepted his claim, "It is not so
much that I have their books to read as that their living voice is heard until the present day in
the authors themselves."
25
When he ascribed to Jesus himself a prophecy of a marvelously
productive earth, in terms similar to a messianic prophecy in 2 Baruch 19, people took notice.
After describing his own millenarian position, Irenaeus looked back: "These things were born
witness to in the writing of Papias, the hearer of John, and a companion of Polycarp, in his
fourth book; for there were five books compiled ()." And he concluded, "Now
these things are credible to believers" (Haer. 5.33.34). In fact, Papias pictures Judas Iscariot
not believing in such fecundity, but all believers accepting it as fulfillment of the prophecy as
"the wolf shall lie down with the lamb" (Isa 11:6ff.). For not accepting this, Judas was pictured
in the most disgusting terms: "For his body was so swollen that he could not pass where a
chariot could pass easily, and he was crushed by the chariot, so that his intestines gushed out"
(ANF, 1.153).
In teaching about millennial fecundity, Papias may indeed have been making some use
of a common mythological utopian motif;
26
however, we need look no further than the Old
Testament to see its likely sources. Amos was one such source:
12
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25
Jerome, Lives of Illustrious Men, 18.
26
Gregory has a thorough discussion of the possible sources and influences manifested
in Papias's use of this concept (Gregory, "Chiliastic Hermeneutic," 87113).