The Memoirs of Hegesippus.

        Luke's two volumes on Christian beginnings had pointed the way for the Christian historian, but for a long time little was done to carry on the work of a history of the church. The first writer to take any steps in that direction was Hegesippus. He came from the East, and his knowledge of Aramaic and Hebrew led Eusebius to think he must have been of Jewish birth, but this is more than doubtful. Probably he was a gentile Christian of Syria. He traveled from the East to Corinth, and spent some time there, proceeding thence to Rome, perhaps about A.D. 155-60, and later returning to the East to write, or at least to finish, his book, which he completed while Eleutherus was bishop of Rome (A.D. 174-89), probably about A.D. 180.

        The real motive of Hegesippus in writing his five books of Memoirs was polemical rather than historical. He wrote to prove the superior claims of Christian apostolic tradition against the vagaries of the sects. Agrippa Castor, about A.D. 135, had begun the literary warfare against Gnosticism, with his Refutation, which was particularly directed against Basilides (Church History iv. 7. 6-8). Later Justin carried on the fight in his lost book Against All Heresies, and Dionysius, bishop of Corinth (ca. A.D. 170), wrote a letter to the church of Nicomedia, in Bithynia, attacking Marcion's views, as Eusebius informs us (Church History iv. 23. 4.). Eusebius reports a whole series of books entitled Against Marcion about this time, as we have seen in connection with Justin and Tatian.

        Hegesippus was widely traveled and knew the East as well as the West, and he made use of a variety of historical materials, most uncritically, of course, in championing apostolic Christianity as he understood it against the sects. He said that on his journey to Rome he met many bishops and received the same doctrine from them all (Church History iv. 22. 1). Hegesippus gives a list of the Christian sects and describes the Marcionites and Gnostics as arising from a Jewish sect, the Masbotheans. He lists the seven Jewish sects, as Justin had done (Dialogue lxxx. 4), but agrees with Justin in only four of the seven named. But it is likely that he made use of Justin's book Against All Heresies, which had appeared some twenty-five years before (ca. A.D. 150).

        The Memoirs have unfortunately disappeared, but Eusebius made a good deal of use of Hegesippus, especially valuing the pieces of Christian Palestinian tradition that he supplied. He often quotes him at length, his most notable use of Hegesippus being the latter's account of the life and martyrdom of Jesus' brother James, who was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and then stoned and beaten to death by the Jews (Church History ii. 23. 3-18). Of almost as much interest is his story of Domitian and the grandsons of Jesus' brother Jude. He says that the emperor was seeking out any descendants of David, as possible leaders of insurrection, and his agent found two grandsons of Jude who were farmers, cultivating a little farm of thirty-nine acres. They showed their toilworn hands, and were so manifestly harmless peasants that the emperor let them go (Church History iii. 20. 1-8). So, however careless Hegesippus was, his book would be of great interest to students of primitive be found.

        The Memoirs were used almost immediately by Irenaeus, A.D. 18 r-89, in his great work against heresies, or Refutation ofGnosticism, and by Clement of Alexandria, in his lost Outlines, as Eusebius' references to the two writers show (Church History ii. i. 3, 4; 23. 3). Neither Clement nor Origen actually mentions Hegesippus, in such of their writings that are extant, but Eusebius owed much to him, perhaps even more than he credits him with. Indeed both historical and polemical writers were indebted to Hegesippus. But his work does not seem to have long survived; as the sects disappeared, books about them, like those of Justin, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, and Hippolytus, likewise disappeared; they were no longer of interest. Jerome and Sozomen (ca. 440) probably knew Hegesippus only from Eusebius' account of him. But Philip of Side made use of his work in his Christian History, written about A.D. 430 but now for the most part lost;[60] and Photius, about A.D. 890 (Bibliotheca, cod. 232), quotes a passage from Hegesippus that he had found in the work of Stephen Gobarus, now lost.

        It would be difficult to name a lost book of early Christian literature that would be more warmly welcomed than the five books of the Memoirs (Hyponmemata) of Hegesippus. They may possibly be preserved somewhere under the name of Josephus, which was sometimes confused with that of Hegesippus in the Middle Ages.[61]