But I shall not hesitate also to put down for you along with my interpretations whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders, and carefully remembered guaranteeing their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those that speak much, but in those that teach the truth; not in those that relate strange commandments, but in those that deliver the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and springing from the truth itself. If, then, any one came, who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders - what Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.
Papias [floruit c.A.D. 130]
Further reading
Papias describes listening carefully to people who carried the memories of earlier Christian teachers. Rod Bennett’s Four Witnesses introduces a neighboring world of testimony through Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus of Lyons.
Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words by Rod Bennett (paperback) on Amazon (paid link)