It is possible, but the term logia is not the key to this hypothesis. That term began as a word to describe oracles from a deity, but it ended up as a synonym for scriptures or authoritative writings. I have assembled just some of the evidence in another post. The upshot is that the logia could have included either words or deeds or both; they are words, to be sure, but they can be words either by someone or about someone.davidmartin wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2019 3:01 am Didn't Papias only say that Matthew collected a list of logia, not write a complete gospel?
It possible that the gospel of Matthew was so named because it was based on the sayings collected by Matthew in Aramaic?
Papias himself uses the term logia of a text allegedly written by Mark, which he characterizes as being about the words and the deeds of the Lord. When he wants to talk about sayings which the apostles passed on to their followers, he uses the more appropriate term, logoi.
In the context of two different languages, as we have in Papias, "interpret" most likely means "translate." It is the normal Greek word for translation.Papias also says something like they each 'interpreted them as best they were able' which seems to hint at this
That said, there is possibly a case to be made for an early sayings gospel/text, since we know that the genre existed (the gospel of Thomas, for example, and various Jewish wisdom writings) and that the words of the Lord were given special treatment in early Christianity.
The Elder whom Papias quotes about the Marcan text actually levels a mild criticism at it: it was not written in order. I do not necessarily think this Elder was comparing Mark to a different gospel which was in order; my working hypothesis is that he was comparing Mark to the Asiatic traditions, probably contained both in a developing liturgy (as evidenced a bit later by the Quartodeciman controversy) and in local lore (as evidenced by Papias himself), which eventually coalesced into the gospel of John, which strikingly "corrects" the Marcan record, particularly its order of events, at various points.Further, Papias related John the E defending Mark against critics... could it be that Papias's community only used Mark? Other churches that used different gospels obviously preferred their own ones and objected to those used by others.. a time before multiple gospels becames accepted and way before the 'four' became the standard! wow, we are seeing into the past here!
YMMV.