A couple of AF articles are featured in the latest issues of JTS and CBR, so I thought I’d mention them.

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The Journal of Theological Studies 70.1 (2019) includes an article tackles the question “Did Eusebius Read Papias?,” by Luke J. Stevens. Here goes the abstract:

Although the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius of Caesarea is our principal source of information on Papias of Hierapolis and his lost Exegesis of Dominical Oracles, it is here argued that Eusebius knew the work only at second hand. Several Papian fragments preserved elsewhere demonstrate his ignorance, and his citations of the Exegesis consistently differ in style from those of works certainly known to him at first hand. Apparently, the same intermediary that informed him about both Papias’s Exegesis and Hegesippus’s Hypomnemata was also used in the de Boor Fragments, and this intermediary’s author, perhaps Pierius of Alexandria, has handed down further Papian fragments through other works. Eusebius’s lack of first-hand knowledge prevents us from fully trusting the integrity of his summaries, from giving credence to his charges of chiliasm, and from drawing any conclusions from his silence, especially on what Papias may have said about Luke and John.

The previous issues of the same journal, JTS 69.2 also included an article by Stephen C. Carlson, who I think is preparing an edition and commentary on the Papias fragments, on the curious early modern history of a saying misattributed to Papias: “‘Lasst uns zur Freundlichkeit Gehen’: A Saying Misattributed to Papias of Hierapolis.” Abstract:

Theodor Zahn mentions a saying, ‘Lasst uns zur Freundlichkeit gehen’, attributed to Papias of Hierapolis in the works of C. F. D. Schubart (1739–91) and other German devotional writers. Zahn knew that it did not belong to Papias but nonetheless asked his fellow scholars where it came from. This article traces the convoluted history of this saying back to its origin in the early modern period.

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Finally, Currents in Biblical Research 17.3 (2019) features a useful survey on some four decades of scholarship on the Didache by Shawn J. Wilhite, “Thirty-Five Years Later: A Summary of Didache Scholarship Since 1983:”

This article provides a summary of Didache scholarship over the past 35 years (1983–present). The review of literature focuses on the individual participants, including notable Didache scholars such as Jonathan Draper and Clayton Jefford, and the field’s respective contributions to Didache research. This article directly considers the vision of the Didache and its role in early Christianity via the literature of participants in Didache research. I consider the individual treatments of numerous Didache scholars and a list of their publications. In the conclusion, I highlight some points of agreement and disagreement to prompt further areas of specific research. I offer four suggestions to continue the work in Didache studies: (1) Wirkungsgeschichte and reception theory; (2) social-scientific methodologies (social identity theory; self-categorization theory); (3) exclusive attention given to H54; and (4) intertextual concerns beyond the Gospel of Matthew and Epistle of James.