defense of this theory, which has dominated scholarship ever since, seized upon Schleiermacher's thesis and argued that Papias was attesting a Logienquelle (logia-source), which he designated ? (lambda). When later scholars abandoned the evidence of Papias as an argument, this hypothetical source came to be more neutrally designated as Q (for Quelle), but the reinterpretation of the word logia already had firmly taken hold in scholarship.

Modern scholars are divided on what Papias actually meant, especially