Author: Eusebius Bishop of Caeserea

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2013-11

Total Pages: 104

ISBN-13: 9781493706358

The manuscript from which' this work of Eusebius has been at length recovered, after the lapse of several centuries, is that wonderful volume of the Nitrian CollectionS now in the British Museum, whose most curious and remarkable history I have already made known in the Preface to my edition of the Festal Letters of St. Athanasius. It is not necessary, therefore, for me in this place to give any further account of it than to state that it was transcribed fourteen hundred and fifty years ago,-as early as the year of our Lord four hundred and eleven. The several works contained in it are now all printed, and thereby rescued from the cbance of being lost for all future time. The first-a Syriac translation of the Recognitions of St. Clement, which I once intended to publish, and had transcribed the greater part of it for that purpose- has been edited by Dr. P. de Lagarde, to whom I gave my copy. The transcript w~s completed by him, and compared with another manuscript of the same work, and afterward printed with that great care and accuracy which gives so much value to all the Syriac texts which he has edited. The second treatise in this manuscript is the book of Titus, Bishop of Bostra, or Bozra, in Arabia, against the Manicheans. Weare also indebted for the publication of this important work to Dr. de Lagarde. The third is the book of Etisebius on the Theophania, or Divine Manifestation of our Lord .... The text of this was edited by the late Dr. Lee,b who also published an English translation of it,C with valuable notes and a preliminary dissertation. The last is this history of the Martyrs of Palestine, also written by the same Author.In the eighth book of the Ecclesiastical History, upon the occasion of his giving a short account of certain Bishops and others, who sealed their testimony for their faith with their blood, Eusebius stated his intention of writing, in a distinct treatise, a narrative of the confession of those Martyrs with whom he had himself been acquainted.Up to the time of the discovery of this Syriac copy, no such work was known to exist in a separate form, either in Latin or Greek. There is indeed a brief history of those contemporaries of Eusebius who suffered in the persecution of the Christians in Palestine, found in several ancient Greek manuscripts, inserted as a part of it, and combined with the Ecclesiastical History: but it does not occupy the same place in all the copies of that work. In one it is placed after the middle of the thirteenth chapter of the eighth book; in two at the end of the tenth book; and in several, at the end of the eighth; while from two others,d as well as from the Latin version made by Ruffinus it is omitted altogether.