Foreword Why should anyone bother reading Athenaeus today? Among the extant corpus of Greek texts, the Deipnosophists is a paradoxical work, such a long and undigested text, with a confusing structure, a text mainly composed of fragments of other texts, of quotations from a lost a library. Athenaeus, like some other polymaths, scholiasts, or lexicographers, is one of those archivists and transmitters of ancient scholarship, providing contemporary… Read more
Afterword. Receptions Jeremy M. Schott Late-ancient and Byzantine Receptions In most respects, Eusebius’ biography is lost to historians. His successor, Acacius, penned a hagiographical Life that has not survived. [1] Eusebius, for his part, authored a Life of his mentor, Pamphilus, in which we might guess that he provided some autobiographical material, but this text has also been lost. Read more
16. Eusebius and Lactantius: Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Christian Theology [1] Kristina A. Meinking Philosophers and theologians of antiquity had long held that the supreme god was impassible and thus not subject to emotions. In his De ira Dei, however, Lactantius argues that the Christian God does have emotions and that anger, in particular, is critical to the divine nature. My aim… Read more
15. Origen, Eusebius, the Doctrine of Apokatastasis, and Its Relation to Christology Ilaria Ramelli In Origen’s thought, the doctrine of apokatastasis is interwoven with his anthropology, eschatology, theology, philosophy of history, theodicy, and exegesis; for anyone who takes Origen’s thought seriously and with a deep grasp of it, it is impossible to separate the apokatastasis theory from all the rest, so as to reject it but… Read more
14. How Binitarian/Trinitarian was Eusebius? Volker Henning Drecoll The Trinitarian theology of Eusebius is one of the crucial problems of the history of theology of the fourth century. It is often assumed that Eusebius’ theology is a kind of standard theology, which was shared by many Eastern bishops in the fourth century. The Creeds of Antioch (especially the so-called second Formula of Antioch) seem to be… Read more
13. Eusebius of Caesarea on Asterius of Cappadocia in the Anti-Marcellan Writings: A Case Study of Mutual Defense within the Eusebian Alliance Mark DelCogliano The theological contributions of Eusebius of Caesarea have long been overshadowed by his achievements as a historian, apologist, and biblical scholar. But in recent scholarship on the fourth-century Trinitarian controversies, he has been identified as one of the leading lights in the… Read more
12. New Perspectives on Eusebius’ Questions and Answers on the Gospels: The Manuscripts [1] Claudio Zamagni Eusebius wrote a large number of works; each of them would probably have been enough to make him one of the major Christian authors of his time. Among his less famous works stand the Questions and Answers on the Gospels, [2]… Read more
11. Origen as an Exegetical Source in Eusebius’ Prophetic Extracts Sébastien Morlet The study of the relationship between Eusebius and Origen as exegetes is still conditioned by Carmelo Curti’s article “L’esegesi di Eusebio di Cesarea: caratteri e sviluppo.” [1] This article contains, in my view, three major hypotheses: Throughout his life, Eusebius was attached to the principle that Scripture contains… Read more
10. The Ends of Transfiguration: Eusebius’ Commentary on Luke (PG 24.549) Aaron P. Johnson In an illuminating treatment of the rise of Platonic commentaries, David Sedley has argued that at the origins of such a parasitic genre as the commentary lies the need to explain a text whose meaning is no longer clear, primarily because of temporal distance, to its readers. [1]… Read more
9. Textuality and Territorialization: Eusebius’ Exegeses of Isaiah and Empire Jeremy M. Schott That we should study Eusebius’ works within the context of late-ancient Roman imperialism appears self-evident. Eusebius lived and wrote in one of Rome’s provincial capitals. He lived under and had direct contact with Roman imperial power—he witnessed the persecution of Christians in Caesarea under the governors Flavianus, Urbanus, and Firmilianus, but also met,… Read more
