Will Christ reign on earth for a thousand years?

Papias of Hierapolis (as Eusebius reports) c. 60–c. 130 ADExpositions of the Lord's Sayings, in Eusebius, Church History 3.39.12–13

Among these he says there will be a thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, when the kingdom of Christ will be set up bodily on this earth. I think he got these ideas by misunderstanding the apostolic accounts, not seeing what they had said mystically in figures. For he was a man of very little understanding, as his own words show.

Papias, who had heard John's disciples, is the earliest witness to the thousand-year reign. Eusebius, who did not share the view, reports it with scorn and notes that Irenaeus followed Papias.

Justin Martyr c. 100–c. 165 ADDialogue with Trypho 80.2, 5

I admitted to you earlier that I and many others hold this, so that we are fully sure it will happen; but I also told you that many Christians of pure and godly mind do not accept it. ... But I, and any others who are right-minded Christians in all things, know that there will be a resurrection of the flesh and a thousand years in Jerusalem rebuilt, adorned and enlarged, as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and the others declare.

Justin both holds the millennium and admits that good Christians disagree.

Irenaeus of Lyons c. 130–c. 202 ADAgainst Heresies 5.33.2-3

The blessing just spoken of, then, belongs without contradiction to the times of the kingdom, when the just, rising from the dead, will reign, and when creation, renewed and set free, will bear fruit in abundance of every kind of food, from the dew of heaven and the richness of the earth. ... The days will come when vines will grow, each with ten thousand branches.

Irenaeus reads Jacob's blessing (Genesis 27) as a promise for the kingdom: Jacob never received it in this life, so it waits for the resurrection, when the just reign in a renewed creation. The saying about the vines, and the wheat and the animals at peace that follow, he passes on from the presbyters who had heard John the Lord's disciple; Papias, whom he names just after (5.33.4), wrote it in his fourth book. Book 5 survives in its ancient Latin translation; the text here is Harvey's edition (1857), whose OCR is poor.

Tertullian c. 155–c. 220 ADAgainst Marcion 3.24.3–4

For we confess that a kingdom is promised to us on earth, but before heaven and in another state: after the resurrection, for a thousand years, in the divinely built city of Jerusalem let down from heaven.

Tertullian cites the "new prophecy" of the Montanists as confirming it.

Origen of Alexandria c. 185–c. 254 ADOn First Principles 2.11.2

Some, refusing the labour of understanding, and following the bare surface of the letter of the law, and indulging their own pleasure and lust, disciples of the letter only, think the promises to come should be expected in bodily pleasure and luxury. That is why they long for flesh again after the resurrection, flesh of a kind that will never lack the power to eat and drink and do everything that belongs to flesh and blood, and they do not follow the apostle Paul's teaching about the resurrection of a spiritual body.

Origen names no one, but the target is the earthly kingdom read by the letter: a rebuilt earthly Jerusalem, marriages and children after the resurrection, eating and drinking without end. Against it he sets Paul: the body rises spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:44), and the saints' food in the kingdom will be the bread of life, wisdom itself (2.11.3). In Rufinus's Latin, from the Lommatzsch witness in the store; the passage still wants a locked library section.

Dionysius of Alexandria (as Eusebius reports) d. c. 265 ADOn the Promises, in Eusebius, Church History 7.24.1–2

Nepos, a bishop in Egypt, taught that the promises made to the saints in the divine Scriptures would be fulfilled in a more Jewish way, and supposed there would be a thousand years of bodily luxury on this earth. Thinking he could prove his view from the Revelation of John, he wrote a book called "Refutation of the Allegorists". Dionysius opposes him in his books On the Promises.

Dionysius met the Egyptian millenarians, debated for three days, and persuaded them. He also doubted that John the apostle wrote Revelation.

Augustine of Hippo 354–430 ADCity of God 20.7.1

Those who, because of these words of this book, suspected that the first resurrection would be bodily, were moved above all by the number of a thousand years, as if there ought to be a sabbath rest of that length for the saints after the labors of six thousand years ... This opinion would be tolerable if they believed the saints would have spiritual delights in that sabbath through the Lord's presence. For we too once held this view. But since they say that those who rise then will spend their time in immoderate fleshly feasts ... these things can be believed only by carnal people.

Augustine then reads the thousand years as the present age of the Church, with the first resurrection as the soul's rebirth. This became the Western view.