Tάξει in Papias: Again

In a series of articles over a number of years Kürzinger has argued that Papias was indebted to the language of the rhetorical schools. More precisely he argues that in his treatment of Mark Papias is asserting that Mark is an unordered collection of chreiai.¹ Kürzinger's argument is fundamentally lexical, but he also points out that Papias as a native of Hierapolis might be expected to exhibit the same rhetorical interests as his contemporaries.² As Black points out, this attempt to understand Papias from the standpoint of the rhetorical schools is not new.³ A similar point was independently made by Grant, who suggests that Papias, using the word , is recalling Theon's definition of a chreia as resembling an .⁴

Kürzinger has found little support, although his comments on Papias' witness to Matthew have proved more controversial than those on Mark. He is discounted out of hand by Hengel with little argument.⁵ Wenham discounts his thesis on the grounds that the hearers of Papias and the elder would not recognise the language of the rhetorical schools.⁶ Why ever not? Although Butts is prepared to accept the possibility that Peter gave his teaching in chreia form, he is concerned to discover chreiai for himself in the Gospels.⁷ Davies and Allison doubt whether the wording can be made to stand the weight Kürzinger puts on it.⁸ Black accepts as feasible but not proven the rendition of the passage concerning Peter as indicating that his teaching was given as a collection of chreiai.⁹

The interpretation of as "for the chreiai" is surely bound up to Papias' earlier statement that Mark did not write the things done and said by the Lord τάξει, a term the meaning of which is currently disputed. This article hopes to show that a correct understanding of this term is consistent with the rhetorical interpretation of Papias' statement about Mark, and that a coherent picture thereby emerges which tends to support Kürzinger's case.

A significant question, and one which may have some bearing on the meaning of τάξις in this context, is that of Papias' motivation. Kürzinger suggests that Papias' argument is solely stylistic.¹⁰ However, may this stylistic argument nonetheless have theological significance?

Papias' statement that Mark did nothing wrong in writing things as he remembered them would indicate that some at least thought that he had. A clue to the implied criticism leveled at Mark and the significance of it may be found in Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae I.1 where Dionysius writes that it is simply not fitting that the history of men who have held great power should be written in a careless or offhand manner. Thus it is possible that the witness of Mark was being discounted in the church on the grounds of its poor arrangement. This is to understand taxis with Kürzinger as a reference to taxis in its Aristotelian sense, that is taxis as the arrangement of a work, as opposed to lexis, or style.¹¹ It is also possible that Mark is being discounted on grounds of poor lexis, a charge which surely has some grounds. The Rhetorica ad Alexandrum uses the term taxis, apparently meaning "style"; this, in view of what Dionysius says about the manner in which the history of great men should be written may in fact be the grounds on which the objections are being made. As we shall see, however, this is not the sense in which Papias understands the criticisms, even if it is that of the objectors.¹²

Two alternative explanations have however been offered for a theological motivation. Martin suggests that the criticism implied by Papias' defence was Marcionite, since Luke (if by virtue of his preface alone) could be claimed by its supporters as being a proper rhetorical presentation of a historical theme.¹³ He suggests that Papias has been influenced by the vocabulary of Luke's prologue, and it is the occurrence of cognates of τάξις as a key term in both Papias and Luke that he sees as his fundamental...