dog-on

In other words, he guessed...

mountainman

Arnaldo Momigliano on Eusebius'
incompetence as a chronographer:

"At the beginning of the fourth century Christian chronology had already passed its creative stage. What Eusebius did was to correct and to improve the work of his predecessors, among whom he relied especially on Julius Africanus (14). He corrected details which seemed to him wrong even to the extent of reducing the priority of the Biblical heroes over the pagan ones. Moses, a contemporary of Ogyges according to Julius Africanus, was made a contemporary of Kekrops with a loss of 300 years.

Eusebius was not afraid of attacking St Paul’s guesses about the chronology of the Book of Judges. He freely used Jewish and anti-Christian sources such as Porphyrios. He introduced a reckoning from Abraham which allowed him to avoid the pitfalls of a chronology according to the first chapters of Genesis. He seems to have been the first to use the convenient method of presenting the chronology of the various nations in parallel columns. None of the earlier chronographers seems to have used this scheme, though it has often been attributed to Castor or to Julius Africanus. He made many mistakes, but they do not surprise us any longer.

Fifty years ago Eduard Schwartz, to save Eusebius’ reputation as a competent chronographer, conjectured that the two extant representatives of the lost original of Eusebius’ Chronicon — the Latin adaptation by St Jerome and the anonymous Armenian translation — were based on an interpolated text which passed for pure Eusebius. This conjecture is perhaps unnecessary; nor are we certain that the Armenian version is closer to the original than St Jerome’s Latin translation. Both versions reflect the inevitable vagaries of Eusebius’ mind to whom chronology was something between an exact science and an instrument of propaganda.

But we recognize the shrewd and worldly adviser of the Emperor Constantine in the absence of millenarian dreams"

--- Arnaldo Momigliano - "Pagan and Christian
Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D."

aa5874

But Eusebius himself contradicts you in his 'Church History'.

'Church History' Book 6.20, " There flourished many learned men in the Church at that time, whose letters to each other have been preserved and easily accessible. They have been kept in the library of Aelia established by Alexander, who at that time presided over that church. We have been able to gather from that library material for our present work.


Eusebius made refences to many writers in Church History, including Josephus, Philo, Irenaeus, Origen, Plutarch, Africanus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Justin, Hegesippus, Ignatius, Papias, Quadratus, Polycarp, Dionysius, Theophilus, Philip, Melito and many other writers whose writings may be non-extant.

And Eusebius had the ability to visit the extant historical sites, structures, churches, geographical locations and meet with people who played a prominent role in relation to the history of Chucrh.

To try to portray Eusebius, one most distinguished Church Father, as naive and working from vague documents is completely out of character.

Minimalist

Actually Herodotus is the poster boy for credulous ancient historians. He repeats whatever he is told from the Egyptians building the pyramids with armies of slaves ( slavery was not big in AE until relatively modern times) or Xerxes' armies consisting of 2+ million men for the invasion of Greece ( the tail of the column would have starved to death passing through lands devastated by the front of the column!) Much of what is written should be classified as folklore not "history" and certainly not history in the modern sense. Is such writing valuable? Yes, but only in the sense that there is nothing else and it should all be taken cum grano salis.

andrewcriddle

The point is that Eusebius had lots of documents but little precise dating.

HIs statements as to when something happened (eg the martyrdom of Ignatius) are less reliable than his claim that it did happen.

Andrew Criddle

spin

I hope you listen to Eusebius more about the fourth century than you do about anything before then, just like you should listen to Josephus more when he deals with the first century.

A historian is as good as his times and his sources. We have difficulties with Herodotus because he collected a great deal of hearsay and tradition, though when he was dealing with what was from his own time he becomes much more reliable for he went out and got the information himself. Thucydides stuck to what he knew and gave us the material of history. We listen to Polybius because we know that he was writing about things that he himself could get direct information about. There is an important historiographical tradition here. Herodotus had the right idea but he was close to the beginning of the process -- they were just inventing the trade.

Eusebius doesn't belong to this tradition (though Ammianus Marcellinus tends to). He is going beyond his competence, but he does belong to another tradition, one which goes back to Diodorus and Livy, who attempted to give the full story, relying on the sources that came before them and thus becoming victims to those sources. The material that they provide is a minefield: they have no way of knowing what they are on. They take their sources by faith and anyone who uses their material is liable to needing a similar quantity of faith in their often unnamed sources.

I know who Eusebius was from his vast amount of writings and where he was coming from, and thus I know somewhat how to deal with what he says about his own times, but how can you evaluate his sources for earlier times?

You seem to think that an Ignatius got martyred. How did you come to that conclusion? Hopefully, Eusebius was not your principal source on the issue, but other independent materials would surely provide you with historical information and in so doing confirm Eusebius's source. What might those sources be?

There certainly was an Ignatius industry in the church: spurious materials were churned out, letters considered authentic somehow have been expanded or contracted. How do you separate the fat from the friction? And how does Eusebius fit into this Ignatius industry?

I am not picking on Eusebius here. It is a matter of good methodology. How can someone extract history from, for example, the Historia Augusta? We need quality control and I can't see any when using Eusebius as so many would.


spin

aa5874

I differ completely. It is not a coincidence to me that Eusebius got somethings right and everything about Jesus seemingly wrong. Eusebius, according to a poster, got the 28th year after the death of Cleopatra and Anthony right with respect to the 42nd year of the reign of Augustus, but Eusebius seems not to get the taxation of Cyrenius right.

It appears to me to be deliberate, Eusebius apparently could not account for Jesus in history and probably fabricated the birth of Jesus.

spin

You know where Eusebius probably got the taxation of Cyrenius. It's straight out of Luke. Take it up with his sources. He couldn't know. He's not a relevant source, unless you can show him to be one. Please try to show him to be.

You may eventually convince yourself.


spin

Roger Pearse

Yes, that was what I was trying to point to. Eusebius was extremely well-informed, and had all these wonderful resources. But he lived in a society which had no proper framework of reference to determine when things happened. The writers whom he could consult did not either. Being the man he was, and writing the works he did, he proceeded to create such a framework.

The risk is that we practise an anachronism. We're accustomed to presuming that dates come first; that we know the rough sequence of events, we have all these numerals, and then we fit the events to the table of years. So there could be a presumption that if Eusebius wrongly dates an event that somehow says that the event did not happen, or whatever. But in reality, and unlike everyone after him, he had no table of years, and the events were what he started with.

All the best,

spin

Actually there were mechanisms which provided such references. Olympic games were often referenced as a framework on which to hang historical information on. Eponym lists were a functional way of hanging history. Roman consuls were used to provide such a chronological framework. In fact, Roger has not got any justification for his statement. But it is nice apologetics.

I think aa5874 misses the point with his claims about Eusebius's chronological indications. His fanciful claim that Eusebius "apparently could not account for Jesus in history and probably fabricated the birth of Jesus" simply shows his lack of methodology. Eusebius simply gives indications gleaned from sources for what he understood as the date of the birth of Jesus. He has done nothing new or unusual in doing so. And I don't understand why Roger thinks differently. No, he didn't have any table of years. His choice of indications shows he didn't really need or want one. He worked from what he already had, be it indications from classical sources or gospel sources (here, Luke).


spin