Please also see Diagram (7) below showing a proposed alternative chronology.
(1) Original authorship (apparently continuous for a number of centuries).
(2) Consequent preservation of older texts prior to codex publication in the 4th century.
The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography
Arnaldo Momigliano
Sather Classical Lectures (1961-62)
Volume Fifty-Four
University of California Press, 1990
Part II
p.138
"Simple and majestic Eusebius of Caesarea claims for himself the merit of
having invented ecclesiastical history. This merit cannot be disputed.
"Sozomenus though that Eusebius had been preceded as an ecclesiastical historian
by Clemens, Hegesippus, and Julius Africanus. None of these names can really
compete with that of Eusebius."
Clemens the alleged author of the Gospel of Peter - not an ecclesiastical history.
Sextus Julius Africanus - was a chronographer
The more mysterious Hegesippus -- appears to be an anti-Gnostic apologist 2nd CE
p.139
"Preparatio evangelica is one of the boldest attempts ever made to show
continuity between pagan and Christian thought."
"[Eusebius], the witness of the last persecution and the advisor and apologist
of Constantine was in a vantage position to appreciate the autonomy and strength
of the institution that had compelled the Roman state to surrender at the Milvian
Bridge in 312. Though anxious to preserve the pagan cultural heritage in the new
Christian order - indeed very anxious, as we shall soon see, to use the pagan tradition
for his Ecclesiastical History - Eusebius knew that the Christians were a nation,
and a victorious nation at that; and that their history could not be told except
within the framework of the Church in which they lived. Furthermore, he was well
aware that the Christian nation was what it was by virtue of its being both the
oldest and the newest nation of the world."
p.140
"Apostolic succession and the doctrinal orthodoxy were pillars of the new Christian
nation; its enemies were the persecutors and the heretics. Thus ecclesiastical
history replaced the battles of ordinary political history by the trials inherent
in resistence to persecution and heresy.
**** paraphrased:
It is obvious that in developing this conception Eusebius had before him
the Old Testament (Struggle against persecutors had its precedent in the Books of Maccabees)
Flavius Josephus (idea of a holy nation,also in Bible), and
the Acts of the Apostles (classic document of the spreading of Christianity).
"One of the important factors of Christian historiography is that there was no
continuation to the Acts of the Apostles. They remained a document of the heroic
age of Christianity, to be put together with the Gospels. More than two hundred
years later Eusebius made a new start on a completely different basis: he was not
primarily concerned with the spread of Christianity by propaganda and miracle,
but with its survival of persecution and heresy from which it was to emerge victorious."
"Novelty -- "heresy" in the Christian sense is absent from the Bible and Josephus.
"One kind of account in pagan historiography Pagan historiography could help Eusebius
considerably. That was the history of philosophical schools - such as we find in
Diogenes Laertius.
****
(1) the idea of succession was equally important in philosophical schools and
and in Eusebius' notion of Christianity. The bishops were the diadochoi
of the Apostles, just as the scholarchai were the diadochoi of
Plato, Zeno, and Epicurus.
(2) Like any philosophical school, Christianity
had its orthodoxy and its deviationists.
(3) Historians of philosophy in Greece used antiquarian methods and quoted documents
much more frequently and thoroughly than than their colleagues, the political historians.
p.141
re: both Eusebius and Diogenes Laertius ...
"Direct original evidence was essential to establish the rightful claims of orthodoxy
against external persecutors and internal dissidents. Here again we can be certain that
Jewish influences were not without importance for Eusebius. The idea of scholarly
succession is fundamental to rabbinic thought, which had developed in its turn under
the impact f Greek theory."
"It was Hellenic scholarship that Eusebius drew upon to shape the new model of
ecclesiastical history. In this he was faithful to the Hellenistic tradition of
his teachers and to his own programme in the Praeparatio evangelica.
The immense authority which Eusebius gained was well deserved.
He had continuators but no rivals."
p.141
"Eusebius' History of the Church ideally reflected the moment in which
the Church had emerged victorious under Constantine - a separate body
within the Roman Empire. With all his gifts Eusebius could not shape
his historiography in such a way as to envisage situations in which
it would be impossible to separate what belonged to Caesar from what
belonged to Christ."
There was a very real duality in Eusebius' notion of eccesiastical history:
p.141/142:
"on the one hand eclesiastical history was the history of the Christian nation
now emerging as the ruling class of the Roman Empire. On the other hand it was
the history of a divine institution not contaminated by political problems."
"How to deal with this divine institution's very earthly relations with other
institutions in terms of power, violence and even territorial claims?
"How would the continuators of Eusebius deal with the politics of the emperors,
the plotical intrigues of the bishops?"
"If we had the Christian History which the priest Philip of Side wrote
about 430, we would know more about the significance of the predominance
of the Eusebian model. It is evident that Philip of Side tried to go
his own way and to avoid imitating Eusebius..."
CONTINUATORS OF EUSEBIUS:
in order of appearance by Momigliano ....
### NAME Wrote Span of Ecclesiastical History NOTES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
101 Ammianus M 390? 91 to 390 NB: (Pagan) Political History
102 Nichomachus F 5th CE NB: (Pagan) Political History
103 Zosimus 5th CE NB: (Pagan) Political History
-1- Philipe of Side 430 Origin of World to 430 Did not survive
-2- Gelasius of Caesarea ?? Wrote 365-400 (Bishop) Recovery of lost work
000 Rufinus Not considered as an historian AM considers as translator
001 Socrates 303 to 439
002 Sozomenus 303 to 421
003 Theodoretus 303 to 428
004 Gelasius of Cyzicus 475 324 to 475 (Constantine)
005 Philostorgius 425? 317 to 425 (Arian controversy) "An Arian of the Eunomian variety"
006 Procopius
007 Agathias
008 John of Ephesus 585 "monophysite" wrote in Syria
009 Euagrius Scholasticus 594
--- The last ecclesiastical historians who can claim direct descent from Eusebius.
--- Nicephorus Callistus (writing 1320) "regretted that Euagrius had no successor"
p.147
"Abandonment (in the West, of the Eusebian form of ecclesiastical historiography)
was not complete because each writer kept faith with the Eusebian premise of the
existence of a Universal Church and of the necessity for documentary evidence."
p.149/150
"In 1519 Luther made himself familiar with Eusebius in Rufinus' translation.
In 1530 Caspar Hedio published the Chronica der alten christlichen Kirchen
aus Eusebius und der Tripartita. Flacius Illyricus and his team of
centuriators knew their Eusebius by heart, of course - and the same can be
said of all the ecclesiatical historians who worked after them, be it in the
Protestant or the Catholic camp. What both Protestants and Catholics wanted
to prove was that they had the authority of the first centuries of the Church
on their side."
p.150 re:the universal church
"Eusebius dealt with heresies, but he had no suspicion that the very course of
events of the first Christian centuries could be disputed and that there might
be more than one interpretation of basic events. The position of St. Peter,
the development of ecclesiastical hierarchy, the origin and development of at
least certain sacraments were not a matter of controversy for him. They were,
needless to say, at the centre of attention both by Flacius Illyricus and by
Caesare Baronio, who, after attempts by others, at last produced the Catholic
answer to the Protestant ecclesiastical historiography. What characterises the
new historiography of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation is the search
for the true image of Early Christianity to be opposed to the false ones of the
rivals."
p.151
"As long as the notion of a Universal Church was not in dispute, Eusebius remained
the source of inspiration for ecclesiatical historians. The enormous, almost
pathological, output of ecclesiastical history in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries becomes more and more involved in the discussions of details, and more
and more diversified in theological outlook, but it never repudiates the basic
notion that a Universal Church exists beyond the individual Christian comminities."
Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D. * This essay first appeared in A. Momigliano, ed., The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79—99 (1) "Athanasius’ life of St Anthony belongs to the years around 360 .... "Eusebius made history positively and negatively by creating ecclesiastical history and by leaving political history alone. In a comparable manner another Christian invented the biography of the saints and left the biography of generals and politicians to the pagans. The inventor was Athanasius, whose life of St Anthony was promptly made available in Latin by Euagrius. The complicated pattern of suggestions which, lies behind the rise of hagiography - exitus illustrium virorum, Jewish legends, lives of philosophers, ‘aretalogies’, etc. cannot detain us here. The studies by K. Holl amid R. Reitzenstein seem to have established that Athanasius was more directly inspired by the Pythagorean type of the theios aner, such as we find in the life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus and in the life of Pythagoras himself by Iamblichus (26).
(1) An alternative is proposed where the New Testament Apocryphal Corpus is authored after the Council of Nicaea.
(2) The original greek authorship is then preserved in Coptic and Syriac documents.
(3) The codices containing these new testament apocryphal texts are then buried for preservation.
