Papias was a chiliast. His teacher evidently taught him chiliasm and was looking forward to the thousand year reign. He does NOT seem to know of John’s gospel. This is evident from the fact that no Church Father cites him as a source from whom the authorship of John can be determined; neither does he mention it himself which is odd if he was the disciple of John at the time. Eusebius, who had access to his 5 volume work is also adamant that Papias didn’t know John the Apostle and that Iranaeus was wrong about this. Papias rather is most probably familiar with John the Elder, an unknown 2nd generation traditionalist with a Chiliastic worldview who authored Revelation and thus reflects this position. It is equally important to note that this was written around 110 CE meaning after the gospel was published according to the traditional dating which is perplexing to say the least if the Christian tradition is wholly authentic. If we compare the use of the word presbyter by Papias, Irenaeus, and Clement, we find that the first and the last agree most closely with each other. In their writings the presbyters are teachers, whose oral tradition is handed on to the pupil.
On Papias and John the Elder in his quote:
Attempts which have been made to connect John the apostle and the presbyter must be rejected. It would be unnatural to describe the same person in this way with an interval of barely more than a line. There seems to be no reason for such an artificial device, when it would have been quite sufficient for Papias to have referred to the apostle together with Aristion. We must assume that the other John, who was both a “disciple of the Lord” and a “presbyter,” but not an apostle (nor an apostle’s disciple), being the only duplicate in the list of names, had to be distinguished from his great namesake by a description that indicated that this was John the non-apostle. Both Aristion and John were bracketed together against the seven apostles, the likely reason being they were prominent 2nd generation preachers. He also seems to understand that it is these 2 that are still preaching to his day. Equally important is the lack of reference to John’s gospel, best explained by the idea that he was unaware of it, which is telling, considering the fact that he wrote his exposition around 100-110 AD. His elder John and Aristion are majhoul. Interestingly enough, some of Papias’ words can be construed to mean that he wasnt in direct contact with this ‘John the Elder’ which is abnormal if he knew him well.
C.K. Burrett explains using the greek the plausibility of a generational gap: