Eusebius

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MrMacSon
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Eusebius

Post by MrMacSon »

From these posts - http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 276#p59276 - on another thread -
Peter Kirby wrote:
Eusebius converted a quote of Origen into text of Josephus. It never got inserted, so far as we know.

Eusebius, H.E., 2.23.20 -
Josephus, at least, has not hesitated to testify this in his writings, where he says, These things happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus, that is called the Christ. For the Jews slew him, although he was a most just man.
Eusebius took this quote not from Josephus but rather, at second hand, from Origen (Commentary on Matthew 10.17) -
And to so great a reputation among the people for righteousness did this James rise, that Flavius Josephus, who wrote the Antiquities of the Jews in twenty books, when wishing to exhibit the cause why the people suffered so great misfortunes that even the temple was razed to the ground, said, that these things happened to them in accordance with the wrath of God in consequence of the things which they had dared to do against James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ. And the wonderful thing is, that, though he did not accept Jesus as Christ, he yet gave testimony that the righteousness of James was so great; and he says that the people thought that they had suffered these things because of James. -- http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101610.htm
By itself, this only shows that Eusebius is capable of quoting Josephus without manuscript support (with high probability, anyway). It leaves open the possibility that Eusebius found this Testimonium somewhere else and thought it something Josephus said or would likely say (or that, like other quotes, it had already "landed"). It is primarily (but not exclusively) the work of Ken Olson that supports the opinion, to the contrary, that the text was more likely composed by Eusebius. And this other example supports the likelihood that Eusebius could quote it with or without first having it in a manuscript.
Ben C. Smith wrote:
What I would love to see is a reasoned argument in favor of Eusebius having composed something himself while attributing it to somebody else. The example you cite is exactly the sort of thing which proves that Eusebius is capable of trusting other people's references either without checking them for himself or without daring to ask. Is there a similar example which would seem to prove that Eusebius is capable of making something up from scratch without relying on an Origen, as it were?

In his chapter of Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations, Ken Olson mentions Life of Constantine 2.5.3–41 as a possibility, of which he writes:
Modern scholars have long been skeptical about Licinius’ speech as recorded by Eusebius. Some defended Eusebius by claiming that he merely reports in good faith what his sources told him. In recent scholarship, however, there seems to be a tendency among commentators to ascribe the composition of Licinius’ speech to Eusebius himself.

But this is hardly a smoking gun, is it? This is a trend in scholarship, is it not? Olson continues:
If Cameron and Hall are correct, Eusebius apparently provided his own allegedly outside witness to the truth of Christianity.

That "if" is the catch here, since if the protasis is incorrect then Eusebius did once again as we can find him usually doing, quoting texts which, when and where we are able to check, do actually exist apart from Eusebius (works by the NT authors, the apostolic fathers, Josephus, Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Abgar... the list goes on and on). So... is there a more ironclad example, one of equal weight to the example which demonstrates that Eusebius can misquote through a forebear in the faith?

(Note that this question is quite independent of whether the Testimonium is a forgery; it can still be a forgery without Eusebius having authored it.)
Peter Kirby wrote:
Good question, but I'm not sure Eusebius did it more than once, let alone that we can prove it. I tend to agree that he's rather observant of sources (this should be a doctoral dissertation or two - who's done this work?), so this may be his terrible sin. Perhaps there are other peccadillos, but I don't know offhand what they are. I'd assume, generally, that where the offense is real, so is the motive. So you'd have to ask where else Eusebius had good motive, if you wanted to pursue this further. (Perhaps regarding Origen himself, under attack at the time? Perhaps, but I don't know for sure.)

In which case, you may be right that the parallel example available is less valuable than a full parallel, but that's the trouble with parallels in general. The discussion always seems capable of moving to the discussion of difference. In this case, I think it is a distinction that makes a difference. But I'll still let it stand as reason to credit, generally, that Eusebius might have quoted or invented the passage on Jesus without having it in the text of Josephus before him. (Even though the parallel is only exact for the "quoted.")
What I would love to see is a reasoned argument in favor of Eusebius having composed something himself while attributing it to somebody else.
Unfortunately, the best such example that could be shown (with some real level of evidence) would, I guess, be the Testimonium. Other arguments would likely be weaker, unless there is something I don't know about, which is also quite possible -- and I'd also like to see it.

Whether those arguments on Eusebius and the TF "move the needle" for anyone, personally, is another question...

If someone thinks it stronger instead to propose a third or early fourth century creator of the TF that duped Eusebius, a likely culprit would be a list of extracts. This would preserve the argument about the confusion regarding where Jesus appears in Josephus (perhaps because it came next in the list).
- a wider issue is raised (to me, at least) of what Eusebius influenced, and why.

One example is the purpose and influences of his Chronicon, such as its influence on Christian chronology -
"Theories as to the purpose of this chronicle vary. One common view is that Eusebius produced the work as a preparatory step towards the writing of his Ecclesiastical History, because he needed to reconcile the chronological data from various Greek sources —Porphyry, Castor, Erastothenes, and so on— with that found in Scripture. The problem with this view is that the chronological scope of the two works is so very different. Another view is that the aim was to show how the national histories of the Mediterranean world fitted into the overarching scheme of Salvation History —how, that is, they fitted into God’s grand plan for the redemption of humanity. The problem with this theory is that Eusebius starts, not with creation, but with the birth of Abraham—at a point when the world was already, according to his reckoning, 3,184 years old. Another approach focuses on Eusebius’s revision of the received Christian chronology of Sextus Julius Africanus. Whereas Sextus had placed Christ’s death in the 5,500th year of world, Eusebius’s chronology implied that Christ was born in its 5,199th year. This can be seen as an attempt to deflate millennial expectations, because the former dating when combined with the belief that the world would last six millennia —an idea that Sextus had helped to promote— implied that the Second Coming would take place in AD 500. Eusebius’s revised chronology, on the other hand, rejuvenated the world, implying that the sixth age would continue until 799/800. The problem with this theory is that Eusebius does not use annus-mundi chronology as his fundamental system of reference, nor does he make mention in his chronicle of the dangers of millennarianism. There were chroniclers who were much involved with countering this danger, such as Bede and Isidore of Seville, but they are wholly explicit about their concerns, and they use annus-mundi chronology to organise their annals.

http://www.historyofinformation.com/exp ... hp?id=3804
That web-page discusses other views -

"Another view is that the purpose was to help new converts to the faith to assimilate the historical traditions of the Middle East and the Jews —traditions which would have been alien to those who had been educated according to the established norms of Greco-Roman education. ‘Visually and succintly’, as McKitterick puts it, ‘it sets out and locates in time the relationship between the various elements of an educated Christian’s universe.’ Of the various theories this one is the most in keeping with the words of Eusebius’s preface, which stresses the simple utility of his tabular arrangement for translating dates from one chronological system to another. We have, he explains, placed the series of years in opposition to each other ‘so as to provide a simple method for discovering in which era, Greek or barbarian, the prophets, kings, and priests of the Hebrews existed, likewise when falsely-believed gods of various nations existed, when demi-gods, when any city was founded, concerning illustrious men, when philosophers, poets, princes, and writers of various works appeared, and any other ancient event, if it was thought deserving of recording’ "(http://www.lancs.ac.uk/staff/haywardp/h ... htmOffsite Link, accessed12-23-2012).
  • "Ancient and medieval historians had their own techniques of chronological notation. From the fourth century in Europe, the most powerful and typical of these was the table. Though ancient chronologies were inscribed in many different forms, among scholars the table form had a normative quality much as the timeline does today. In part, the importance of the chronological table after the fourth century can be credited to the Roman Christian scholar Eusebius. Already in the fourth century Eusebius had developed a sophisticated table structure to organize and reconcile chronologies drawn from historical sources from all over the world. To clearly present the relations between Jewish, pagan, and Christian histories, Eusebius laid out their chronologies in parallel columns that began with the patriarch Abraham and the founding of Assyria. The reader who moved through Eusebius's history, page by page, saw empires and kingdoms rise and fall, until all of them —even the kingdom of the Jews— came under Rome's universal rule, just in time to make the Savior's message accessible to all of humanity. By comparing individual histories to one another and the unform progress of the years, the reader could see 'the hand of providence' at work.

    "Eusebius created his visually lucid Chronicle just when he and other Christians were first adopting the codex, or bound book, in place of the scroll. Like other Christian innovations in book design, the parallel tables and lucid, year-by-year, decade-by-decade order of the Chronicle reflected the desire of early Christian scholars to make the Bible and the sources vital for understanding it available and readily accessible for quick reference. The Chronicle was widely read, copied, and imitated in the Middle Ages. And it catered to a desire for precision that other popular forms —like the genealogical tree— could not satisfy" (Rosenberg & Grafton, Cartographies of Time. A History of the Timeline [2010] 15-16).
http://www.historyofinformation.com/exp ... hp?id=3804
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Peter Kirby
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Re: Eusebius

Post by Peter Kirby »

Hmm. The writing prompt is "Eusebius."

/RAMBLING ON

Just going to put out there that there is something of a modern mythology developing around Eusebius. You know -

Eusebius the Liar, Eusebius the Forger, Eusebius the Heresy Hunter, Eusebius the Canon Organizer, Eusebius the Bible Burner, Darth Eusebius -

Some of the more vocal of this sort have been ejected from the forum (banished to the mountains), but there's still that undercurrent.

I am more willing to grant that the task Eusebius set himself towards sorting out in his history was extremely difficult and beset with all kinds of hopelessness even at the outset of the fourth century... even for a better man... and surely like any other he had his biases, faults, agendas, and must be read critically against the grain.

But there is a long, wide gulf between assigning him the composition of a paragraph (as Ken Olson does), and making him the "Forger of the Gaps" whenever someone is needed to reconcile the gap between the existence of a text and its inconvenience when taken as written.

Where things really go off the rails is where Eusebius becomes the "Fourth Derivative Forger," carefully crafting back stories, intrigues, heresies, counter-heresies, orthodoxies, counter-orthodoxies, slips, archaisms, motives, narrative arcs, personalities, and so on -- and often with nothing more than a glib "you are naive" if you think the text might actually be that dirty word... authentic. Usually there is not even the energy to work out the details of the forgery. After all, Eusebius was such a busy guy, there's no way we could keep up with him and catalog his affairs. Besides, he had an army of postmodernist deconstructionist archaeo-documentarian literary subordinates to make it happen.

After all, this is Caesarea-wood, where dreams happen and patristics come to be made! And the show must go on!

/RAMBLING OFF
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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MrMacSon
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Re: Eusebius

Post by MrMacSon »

I think that's a pretty good commentary, Peter. We just need to work out where Eusebius was an accurate chronicler, and where he was less accurate; or worse. And whether people after him have put words in his mouth.

eta: or whether words of others have been taken by him or attributed to him.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Eusebius

Post by MrMacSon »

The Chronicle of St. Jerome
Jerome and Eusebius

St. Jerome as a young man spent time in the East and became familiar with a great deal of the scholarship of the school of Origen and Eusebius. He came across a copy of the Chronological Canons and recognised its importance. As with other works by Eusebius, such as the Onomasticon, he arranged to translate it. He had a skilled scribe draw up a volume with the numerals in Latin rather than Greek – no trivial task –, and then dictated a translation of the contents.

He also added his own comments where he felt that Roman history had been neglected. Finally he composed a continuation down to his own times, ending with the disastrous defeat and death of the emperor Valens at the hands of the Goths at Adrianople in 378 AD.

This continuation was of the utmost importance for the future. The esteem in which Jerome was held was great in the succeeding decades and centuries, and the monastic scribes did not hesitate to follow his example and write further continuations to the text. This practice undoubtedly contributed to the preservation of the work and its centrality to all future historical work.

Jerome made revisions to the text as time went on. He made an error in transcribing 'Alcamenes' in one entry, mistaking the numeral theta that preceded it as part of the name. The text 'Thalcamenes' appears in numerous manuscripts, including 'O'; but is corrected in others. It shows clearly the manner in which the Greek practise of using letters as numerals facilitated corruption of both the numbers and the text.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/jerom ... eintro.htm (retrieved today)
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