Could Eusebius Have Done Better?

        A significant comparison can be made between the Church History and the Preparation for the Gospel, which he wrote between 312 and 318. In the latter work his aim was different: he wanted to prove the priority and superiority of “oriental” theologies, especially that of the Hebrews, to the philosophy of the Greeks (his aim was thus essentially the same as that of Hellenistic Jewish writers and earlier Christian apologists), and along the way he returned to several of the Jewish and Christian wettings he had used in the Church History. These include Philo, Josephus, Tatian, Bardesanes, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Dionysius of Alexandria, not to mention the Christian writing by “Maximus” (Methodius). His acquaintance with Hellenistic Jewish thought has been expanded by his readings in Alexander Polyhistor, Aristeas, and Aristobulus. And he has also come to be acquainted with a wide selection of philosophical treatises by Plato-though not by Aristotle-and by representatives of the Aristotelian, Cynic, Epicurean, Middle Platonic, and Neoplatonic schools of the second and third centuries. The general excellence of his sources in the Preparation and his fairly full quotations from them present a rather sharp contrast with the mediocrity of his work in the Church History.

        This contrast can be explained in at least two ways. First, the materials he used in the Preparation were more adequately arranged according to the tradition of the philosophical schools than were his Christian materials. They reflect the teaching tradition of the Neoplatonic curriculum, at least for the most part,[106] where — as Eusebius was himself a pioneer in trying to combine the writings of various Christian schools with those derived from Alexandria. Second, the needs of controversy were more sharply focused in the Preparation than in the Church History. Eusebius had to present a fairly clear picture of philosophical thought in the later work, and thus both precedent and practical occasion resulted in a more adequate use of source materials. In summary, then, we may say that although we owe a good deal of our information about early Christian literature to Eusebius we might owe still more had he written the Preparation first and then movrd toward a more adequate Church History.

        Fortunately we are not entirely dependent on his work, indispensable though it is. (In some measure we may compare it with the Acts of the Apostles, which, taken apart from the letters of Paul-and the gospels, would not provide a very satisfactory picture of the apostolic age). The other materials we possess include small collections of Christian documents copied and recopied in the patristic period, the Byzantine age, and late medieval times.

        Sometimes we have translations of Greek works in Latin, Syriac, Armenian, or Coptic. Beyond such collections lie the works that lucky modern discoveries by archaeologists have given us. Among these should be mentioned Melito's Paschal Homily and Origen's Dialogue with Heraclides, as well as the new Gnostic library from Nag Hammadi. These discoveries encourage the belief that in the future still more will be found.

        The study of early Christian literature has a significant future, especially when it is combined with the history of ideas, both theological and non-theological. The relation of Christian literature to the non-Christian literature of the time remains to be analyzed.