EUSEBIUS
618
EUSEBIUS
the creed proffered by Eusebius was drawn up as a
formula to be subscribed by all the bishops. It was
they who were to say that it embodied what they had
been taught as catechumens and had taught as priests
and bishops. This seems to have been the view gen-
erally held before Hort, and was Kattenbusch's view
in 1S'J4 (Das apostolische Symbol, vol. I, p. 231).
One objection to this view may be noted. It makes
all the bishops equivalently say that before they re-
ceived the episcopate they had for some time exer-
cised the duties of the priesthood, (b) Others main-
tain that this creed was not the local creed of Ccesarea,
Isut one dra\s-n up by Eusebius in his own justification
as embodying what he had always believed and
taught. According to this interpretation the prelirn-
uiary statement still remains autobiographical; but it
merely informs us that the writer exercised the office
of priest before he became a bishop. This interpreta-
tion has been adopted by Kattenbusch in his second
volume (p. 239) published in 1900. One of the rea-
sons which he gives for his change of view is that when
he was preparing his first volume he used Socrates,
who does not give the superscription which we have
printed in brackets. It is a vital matter with writers
of the schoolof Kattenbusch not to accept what seems
the natural interpretation of Eusebius's words, viz.,
that the creed he read before the council was actually
the one he had always used. If this is admitted,
"then", to quote Dr. Sanday, "I cannot but think
that the theory of Kattenbusch and Harnack [viz.
that the Eastern creeds were daughters of the early
Roman creed, and this latter did not reach the East
till about A. D. 272] breaks down altogether. Bishop
Light foot . . . puts the birth of Eusebius about
260 A. D., so that he would be something like twelve
years old when Aurelian intervened in the affairs of
Antioch. In other words he was in all probabiUty
already baptized, and had already been catechised in
the Ca;sarean creed at a time when, in the Katten-
busch-Harnack hypothesis, the parent of that creed
had not yet reached Antioch — much less Caesarea or
Jerusalem" (Journ. Th. Studies, I, 15).
The passage just quoted shows that the date of Eusebius's birth is more than a merely curious ques- tion. According to Light foot, it cannot have been "much later than A. D. 260" (p. 309); according to Harnack, " it can hardly be placed later than 260- 265" (Chronologic, I, p."l06). The data from which they argue are the persons and events which Eusebius describes as belonging to " our own times". Thus, at the end of his account of the epistles of Dionysius of Alexandria, he says he is now going to relate the eventsof" our own times" (Kofl* V^'- — H. E., VII, 26). He then recounts how, at Rome, Pope Dionysius (259-268) succeeded Xystus, and about the same time Paul of Samosata became Bishop of Antioch. Else- where (H. E., V, 28) he speaks of the same Paul as reviving "in our own time" (icoff' n/ias) the heresy of Artemon. He also speaks of the Alexandrian Dio- nysius (d. 265) in the same way (H. E., Ill, 28). He calls Manes, whom he places (H. E., VII, 31) during the episcopate of Felix (270-274), " the maniac of yes- terday and our own times" (Theophania, IV, 30). An historian might of course refer to events recent, but before his own birth, as belonging to " our own times " ; e. g. a man of thirty might speak thus of the Franco- German war in 1870. But tiie reference to Manes as " the maniac of yesterday" certainly suggests a writer who is alluding to what happened within his own per- sonal recollection.
Concerning Eusebius's parentage we know abso- lutely nothing, but the fact that he escaped with a short term of imprisonment during the terrible Diocle- tian persecution, when his master Pamphilus and others of his companions suffered martyrdom, sug- gests that he belonged to a family of some influence and importance. His relations, later on, with the
Emperor Constantine point to the same conclusion.
At some time during the last twenty years of the third
century he visited Antioch, where he made the ac-
quaintance of the priest Dorotheus, and heard him
expound the Scriptures (H. E., VII, 32). By a slip of
the pen or the memory, Lightfoot (p. 309) makes
Dorotheus a priest of the Church of Ciesarea. In 296
he saw for the first time the futiu-e Emperor Constan-
tine, as he passed through Palestine in the company of
Diocletian (Vit. Const., I, 19).
At a date which cannot be fixed Eusebius made the acquaintance of Pamphilus, the founder of the mag- nificent library which remained for several centuries the great glory of the Church of Caesarea. Pamphilus came from Phoenicia, but at the time we are consider- ing resided at Caesarea, where he presided over a col- lege or school for students. A man of noble birth, and wealthy, he sold his patrimony and gave the proceeds to the poor. He was a great friend to indigent stu- dents, supplying them to the best of his ability with the necessaries of life, and bestowing on them copies of the Holy Scriptures. Too humble to write anything himself, he spent his time in preparing accurate copies of the Scriptures and other books, especially those of Origen. Eloquent testimonies to the care bestowed by Pamphilus and Eusebius on the sacred text are found in Biblical MSS. which have reproduced their colophons. We give three specimens. (1) The fol- lowing is prefixed to Ezechiel in the codex Marchal- ianus. A facsimile of the original will be found in Mai's " Bib. nov. Pat.", IV, p. 218, and in Migne. It is printed in ordinary type in Swete's O. T. in Greek (vol. Ill, p. viii). It must be remembered that Ori- gen's own copy of the Hexapla was in the library of Pamphilus. It had probably been deposited there by Origen himself.
"The following was transcribed from a copy of the Father ApoUinarius the Coenobiarch, to which these words are subjoined : ' It was transcribed from the editions of the Hexapla and was corrected from the Tetrapla of Origen himself which also had been corrected and furnished with scholia in his own handwriting, whence I, Eusebius, added the scholia, Pamphilus and Eusebius corrected.'"
(2) .\t the end of the Book of Esdras, in the codex Sinaiticus, there is the following note: —
" It was compared with a very ancient copy that had been corrected by the hand of the blessed mar- tjT Pamphilus to which is appended in his own hand this subscription: 'It was transcribed and cor- rected according to the Hexapla of Origen. .Antoni- nus compared, I, Pamphilus, corrected.' " (Swete, vol. II, p. 212.)
(3) The same codex and also the Vatican and Alex- andrine quote a colophon like the above, with the dif- ference tliat Antoninus has become a confessor, and Pamphilus is in prison — " Antoninus the confessor compared, Pamphilus corrected". The volume to which this colophon was subjoined began with I Kings and ended with Esther. Pamphilus was cer- tainly not idle in prison. To most of the books in the Syro-Hexaplar is subjoined a note to the effect that they were translated from the Hexapla in the library of Caesarea and compared with a copy subscribed: " I, Eusebius, corrected [the above] as carefully as I could " (Harnack, " Altchrist. Lit.", pp. 5-14, 545).
May not the confessor Antoninus be the same person as the priest of that name who, later on, with two companions interrupted the governor when he was on the point of sacrificing, and was beheaded? (Mart. Pal., 9.) One member of Pamphilus's household, .\ppiii- anus, had done the same a few years before; and an- other, ^Edesius, after being tortured and sent to the mines, on obtaining his release provoked martj-rdom at .Vlexandria by going before the governor and rebuk- ing him. Towards the end of 307 Pamphilus was ar- rested, horribly tortured, and consigned to prison.
