Page "Prester John" Paragraph 5

Additionally, a kernel of the tradition may have been drawn from the shadowy early Christian figure John the Presbyter of Syria, whose existence is first inferred by the ecclesiastical historian and bishop Eusebius of Caesarea based on his reading of earlier church fathers.

This man, said in one document to be the author of two of the Epistles of John, was supposed to have been the teacher of the martyr bishop Papias, who had in turn taught Eusebius ' own teacher Irenaeus.

However, little links this figure, supposedly active in the late 1st century, to the Prester John legend beyond the name.