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Papias (flourished 2nd century) was a bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia (now in Turkey), and one of the Apostolic Fathers. His work Explanation of the Sayings of the Lord, although extant only in fragments, provides important apostolic oral source accounts of the history of primitive Christianity and of the origins of the Gospels. According to the 2nd-century theologian St. Irenaeus, Papias had known the Apostle John. The 4th-century church historian Eusebius of Caesarea critically records...