Sárospataki Füzetek 16. (2012)

2012 / 3-4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK

Jerusalem the mother Church

believing Christian, had his own perspective on the church and the world. He makes horizontal as well as vertical connections. Hengel has rightly described him as a ‘theological historian’3. Luke is writing redemptive history, but he does so in a way that does justice to its historical scholarship. In the preface to his gospel, Luke notes that he has carefully investigated everything from the beginning, so that Theophilus might know the certainty of the things he had been taught (Luke 1:4).

Research into the geographic and topographic information given in the Book of Acts, the personal titles, and other details have increasingly confirmed, after some initial scepticism, that Luke carried out painstakingly careful work. True, he has stylistically edited the apostles’ discourses, but without harming the authenticity of their content. In doing so, Luke follows the lead of the Greek historian Thucydides who, with his account of the Peloponnesian War, set the standard for the historiography of his time. Thucydides, in recording a number of discourses throughout his works, took great pains to represent the speakers’ lines of thought accurately, whenever a verbatim account was not available.4

One must then, even if some questions might arise at specific points of detail, read the Book of Acts as a piece of serious historiography. This historical source is invaluable for our knowledge of earliest Christianity.

3. The second source: Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History

Eusebius (circa 263-339 AD), who was a student of Pamphilius of Caesarea, and who later succeeded him as bishop, is often considered the father of church history.5 This is largely due to his impressive ten-part Ecclesiastical History, in which he “purposed to record in writing the successions of the sacred apostles, covering the period stretching from our Saviour to ourselves” {EcclesiasticalHistory I 1,1).

Eusebius painstakingly searched archives and libraries to find material from the first three centuries of the history of the Christian church. In contrast to the historiographical tradition that Thucydides and Luke followed, Eusebius includes very few addresses or discourses in his work. Sometimes he does insert older documents, or excerpts from them. For example, he quotes Flavius Josephus approximately thirty times. It should also be noted that Eusebius does not restrict his quotes and references to Jewish authors. He also makes particular use of various early Christian authors: Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Justin, Hegesippus, Origen and Dionysius of Alexandria. In addition, he refers to the writers of the ancient classics, and the philosophical streams that flowed from them. Eusebius’ History, supported by source references and quotations, is a complex whole, mentioning what is — for modern readers — a dizzying array of names.

Of course, Eusebius is no modern historian. While he occasionally takes a critical view of his sources, to modern historians he comes across to as being too credulous. He passes on stories that modern readers would find hard to believe. He comments

3 Martin Hengel, Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity (London: SCM, 1979), 59.

4 Armin Daniel Baum, Pseudepigraphie und literarische Fälschung im frühen Christentum (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001).

5 Friedhelm Winkelmann, Euseb von Kaisarea. Der Vater der Kirchengeschichte (Berlin: Verlags-Anstalt Union, 1991).

2012/3-4 Sárospataki Füzetek 13