30 May
339 A.D. Eusebius, Early Church
Historian, Dies
An online version of his Church history
is available here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf201.toc.html. A hard copy is available at: http://www.amazon.com/Eusebius-Ecclesiastical-History-Complete-Unabridged/dp/1565633717/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401447809&sr=8-1&keywords=eusebius+ecclesiastical+history
Graves, Dan. “Eusebius, 1st Church
Historian.” Christianity Today. May 2007.
http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/301-600/eusebius-1st-church-historian-11629659.html. Accessed Apr 24, 2014.
We tell the
story elsewhere, but Dan tells it this way.
Suppose you
are a survivor of an outlawed organization whose origins go back to around
1700, seventy-six years before America became an independent nation. "Tell
the story of your people," you are urged.
The problem is, your people were
an illegal group. In fact, the government tried to exterminate them! Their
leaders were captured and killed and many letters and books burned. They left
no public festivals, no monuments--very little by which historians ordinarily
trace history. And to make your task more challenging, your people were
scattered over most of the known world. How could you possibly put together
their story? That is the kind of task Eusebius tackled.
His people were the Christians who had been persecuted for
almost three hundred years. A measure of peace came to the believers when
Constantine became emperor. At last the story of the church could be told.
Eusebius was the one for the job.
He had already prepared a chronology of the Bible and early church, trying to
establish the dates of Christ's death and the events that followed. This was a
difficult undertaking because many different calendars were in use at the time
and he had to match up events recorded under one system to events recorded
under others.
Eusebius' ten-volume history is
our best authority for early Christian
history. We owe
him a special debt because he quotes from many sources that no longer exist. We
are blessed that he showed interest in a broad range of material. He traced the
lines of apostolic succession in key cities. Thus we know how the church
progressed in the big towns. The church has always been nourished with the
blood of martyrs. Eusebius told the stories of many who suffered for Christ.
He was also interested in debates
over which books should be in the Bible and he gave us various views of the
matter. Because of this we know a good deal about how we got the New Testament.
Eusebius also traced the threads of heresy. Through him we know of challenges
to orthodoxy in the early centuries of the faith. Above all, Eusebius described
how God preserved the church and poured his grace upon it. Eusebius even
followed the woeful fate of the Jews and their struggles.
Late in life, Eusebius was
invited to become bishop of Antioch. He turned down the offer. His backers
appealed to the Emperor to compel him to accept. Instead, Constantine praised
Eusebius for refusing.
Eusebius died on this day, May 30, 339. He was seventy-four years
old. In addition to all his other writings, he left behind him commentaries on
Isaiah and on the Psalms, a geography of the Bible, and a concordance of the
Gospels. He wrote books to clear up differences in the Gospels. Finally he
produced an account of the Martyrs of Palestine whom he had personally known.
But his history remains his most important contribution to the church, and the
one by which his name will always be remembered, for it gave us our past.
Bibliography:
1. Aland, Kurt. Saints and Sinners;
men and ideas in the early church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970.
2. Bacchus, F. J. "Eusebius of
Caesaria." The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton, 1914.
3. Barnes, Timothy David.
Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
1981.
4. "Eusebius: He Saved our
Family History." Glimpses #91. Worcester, Pennsylvania.
5. "Eusebius." The Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A.
Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
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