Ecclesiastical History — Book III

Eusebius of Caesarea · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

arg| The third book of the Ecclesiastical History has these contents. 1. Where in the world the apostles preached Christ. 2. Who first presided over the Roman church. 3. Concerning the apostles' letters. 4. Concerning the first succession from the apostles. 5. Concerning the final siege of the Jews that came after Christ. 6. Concerning the famine that oppressed them. 7. Concerning Christ's predictions. 8. Concerning the signs that preceded the war. 9. Concerning Josephus and the writings he left behind him. 10. How he makes mention of the divine books. 11. How, after James, Simeon leads the church in Jerusalem. 12. How Vespasian orders a search for the descendants of David. 13. How Abilius leads the Alexandrians as the second. 14. How Anencletus also becomes the second bishop of the Romans. 15. How Clement is third after him. 16. Concerning Clement's letter. 17. Concerning the persecution under Domitian. 18. Concerning John the apostle and the Revelation. 19. How Domitian orders the descendants of David's family to be put to death. 20. Concerning the relatives of our Savior. 21. How Cerdo leads the church of the Alexandrians as the third. 22. How Ignatius is second in the church of the Antiochenes. 23. A story about John the apostle. 24. Concerning the arrangement of the gospels. 25. Concerning the divine scriptures, those acknowledged and those not. 26. Concerning Menander the sorcerer. 27. Concerning the Ebionites' heresy. 28. Concerning Cerinthus, the heresiarch. 29. Concerning Nicolaus and those named for him. 30. Concerning the apostles who were shown to have lived in marriage. 31. On the deaths of John and Philip. 32. How Simeon, the bishop in Jerusalem, was martyred. 33. How Trajan forbade Christians to be sought out. 34. How Evarestus leads the church of the Romans as the fourth. 35. How Justus is the third of the church in Jerusalem. 36. On Ignatius and his letters. 37. On the evangelists who were still prominent at that time. 38. On the letter of Clement and the writings falsely attributed to him. 39. On the writings of Papias.

1.1| Such, then, was the course of affairs among the Jews. Meanwhile the holy apostles of our Savior, and his disciples, were scattered across the whole inhabited world. Thomas, as tradition holds, was allotted Parthia; Andrew, Scythia; John, Asia, where he lived among the people and died at Ephesus;

1.2| and Peter appears to have preached to the Jews of the Dispersion across Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia and Asia. At the end he came to Rome, and there he was crucified head downward, for he himself had asked to suffer in this way.

1.3| What need is there to speak of Paul, who fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ from Jerusalem as far as Illyricum, and afterward was martyred in Rome under Nero? This is what Origen says, word for word, in the third volume of his commentaries on Genesis.

2.1| When Paul and Peter had been martyred, Linus was the first to obtain the episcopal office in the church of the Romans. Paul names him in a letter to Timothy written from Rome, in the greeting at its end.

3.1| Of Peter, then, one letter, the one called his first, is acknowledged, and the elders of old used it freely in their own writings as beyond dispute. The so-called second letter, we have been taught, does not belong to the covenant; yet since it seemed useful to many, it has been diligently read along with the other scriptures.

3.2| As for the book called his Acts, the gospel named after him, the work called his Preaching, and the so-called Revelation, we know that these have not at all been transmitted among the catholic writings, because no church writer, whether of the ancients or of our own day, has used testimonies taken from them.

3.3| As the history proceeds, I shall take care to note, along with the successions, which church writers of each age have used which of the disputed works, and what has been said by them about the scriptures that belong to the covenant and are acknowledged, and what about those that are not.

3.4| That is all, then, on the writings called by the name of Peter, among which I have found only one letter genuine, one also admitted by the elders of former times. The fourteen letters of Paul are plain and evident.

3.5| Yet it is not right to ignore that some have rejected the letter to the Hebrews, saying that the church of the Romans disputes it as not being Paul's. What those before us have said about this letter too I shall set out at the proper time. Nor, indeed, have I received the so-called Acts of Paul among the undisputed books.

3.6| Since the same apostle, in the greetings at the end of the letter to the Romans, mentions among others Hermas, who they say is the author of the book called the Shepherd, it is to be known that this book too has been disputed by some, and for that reason it could not be counted among the acknowledged writings; yet others have judged it most necessary for those who especially need elementary instruction. For this reason we know that it has already been read publicly in the churches, and I have discovered that some of the earliest writers have used it.

3.7| Let this suffice to set out which of the divine writings are undisputed and which are not agreed upon by everyone.

4.1| That Paul, when preaching to the Gentiles, had laid the foundations of the churches that extend from Jerusalem round about as far as Illyricum, is clear from what he himself said and from what Luke recorded in the Acts.

4.2| From the words of Peter, too, it would be evident in how many provinces he preached Christ to those of the circumcision and handed down the message of the new covenant; this is clear from the letter we have mentioned as acknowledged, in which he writes to the Hebrews dispersed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.

4.3| How many of these followers, and which, proved to be genuine zealots and were judged capable of shepherding the churches those apostles founded, is not easy to say, beyond as many as one might gather from the words of Paul.

4.4| Countless people became his fellow workers and, as he himself named them, fellow soldiers, most of whom he thought worthy of undying remembrance, since he recorded his lasting testimony about them in his own letters; and Luke too, in the Acts, lists his acquaintances and mentions them by name.

4.5| Timothy, for his part, is recorded as the first to have received the episcopate of the diocese at Ephesus, as Titus did of the churches in Crete.

4.6| Luke, who was Antiochene by birth and a physician by profession, was for the most part a companion of Paul, and he had no casual dealings with the other apostles either. He left us, in two divinely inspired books, models of the soul-healing skill he had gained from them: first the Gospel, which he testifies he wrote down according to what was handed on to him by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, all of whom, he says, he had followed closely from the very first; and then the Acts of the Apostles, which he put together having received his material not by hearsay but with his own eyes.

4.7| They say that Paul was in the habit of mentioning Luke's gospel whenever, writing as though of some gospel of his own, he said, "according to my gospel."

4.8| Of Paul's other followers, Crescens is attested to have been sent by him to the Gauls; and Linus, whom Paul mentions as being with him in Rome in the second letter to Timothy, was, as has already been shown, the first after Peter to be allotted the bishopric of the Roman church.

4.9| Clement too, who was himself appointed the third bishop of the church of the Romans, is attested by Paul as his fellow worker and fellow combatant.

4.10| In addition to these, that famous Areopagite, whose name was Dionysius, and who, as Luke recorded in the Acts, was the earliest believer once Paul had addressed the Athenians in the Areopagus, is reported by another Dionysius, an ancient writer who was shepherd of the Corinthian community, to have become the first to hold the bishopric of the Athenian church.

4.11| But as we proceed along our way, the succession of the apostles through the times will be told at the proper moment; for now let us go on to what follows in the history.

5.1| After Nero had held power for thirteen years, and the circle of Galba and Otho had passed a year and six months, Vespasian, distinguished by his campaigns against the Jews, was proclaimed emperor in Judea itself, hailed as emperor by the armies there. He set out at once for Rome, and put his son Titus in charge of the war against the Jews.

5.2| After the ascension of our Savior, the Jews, besides their daring deed against him, had by now devised very many plots against his apostles as well. Stephen was the first to be put to death by them with stones; after him came James, John's brother and the son of Zebedee, who was beheaded; and finally James, who was first to receive the episcopal throne there after the ascension of our Savior, departed this life in the manner already described. The remaining apostles, against whom plots had been laid countless times with death in view, were driven out of the land of Judea, and set out for all the nations to teach the proclamation, by the power of Christ, who had told them, "Go, and make all the nations your disciples in my name,"

5.3| and moreover the people of the church in Jerusalem, by an oracle given through revelation before the war to those there who were approved, were commanded to leave the city and live in a certain city of Perea, which they call Pella. There those who believed in Christ migrated from Jerusalem, so that, once holy men had entirely abandoned the royal capital of the Jewish people and the entire land of Judea, the justice of God could at last pursue them, as men who had committed so many lawless acts against Christ and his apostles, and wipe that ungodly generation utterly from among men.

5.4| As for the evils that at that time poured over the whole nation in every place, how the inhabitants of Judea were driven to the last extremities of misfortune, how many tens of thousands of every age, together with women and children, fell to the sword, to famine, and to countless other forms of death, how many and what kinds of sieges there were of the Jewish cities, and what terrible things, and worse than terrible, those saw who had taken refuge in Jerusalem itself as in a most secure capital, the manner of the whole war and each event of it in turn, and how finally the abomination of desolation, of which the prophets had spoken, stood in the very temple of God, once so celebrated, which suffered total destruction and final obliteration by fire: anyone who wishes may read all this accurately in the history written by Josephus.

5.5| But it is necessary to point out that this same author records that, in the days of the Passover festival, about three million of those gathered from the whole of Judea were shut up, in his own words, as if in a prison, in Jerusalem.

5.6| It was fitting, then, that in the very days when they had devised the sufferings of Christ, the Savior and Benefactor of all, God's Christ, they should be shut up as if in a prison and receive the destruction that the divine justice brought upon them.

5.7| Passing over the particular things that happened to them, all that was done against them by the sword and in other ways, I think it necessary to set out only the disasters caused by the famine, so that readers of this work may know in part how soon the punishment from God overtook them for their lawlessness against the Christ of God.

6.1| Come then, take up again the fifth book of the Histories of Josephus, and go through the tragedy of what was done then. "For the well-to-do," he says, "to remain was equally ruinous; on the pretext of desertion a man was killed for his property. The madness of the rebels grew together with the famine, and every day both horrors blazed higher.

6.2| Grain was nowhere to be seen, but they burst into houses and searched them; then, if they found any, they abused the people for having denied it, and if they found none, they tortured them for having hidden it too carefully. The bodies of the wretched people were the proof of whether they had food or not: those still in good condition were thought to be well supplied, while those who were wasting away were passed over, and it seemed senseless to kill people who would soon die of want anyway.

6.3| Many secretly exchanged their possessions for a single measure, wheat if they happened to be richer, barley if poorer. Then, locking themselves in the inmost rooms of their houses, some in extreme want ate the grain unprepared, while others baked it, as necessity and fear counseled,

6.4| and no table was set anywhere; snatching the food from the fire while it was still raw, they tore it apart. The nourishment was pitiable and the sight worthy of tears, as the stronger grabbed more than their share and the weak lamented."

6.5| Famine overpowers every other passion, and nothing it destroys so completely as shame; for what would otherwise deserve respect is despised in its grip. Wives, at any rate, snatched food from husbands, and children from fathers, and, most pitiable of all, mothers from their infants, taking it from their very mouths; and while their dearest ones wasted away in their arms, they did not hesitate to take from them the last drops that kept them alive.

6.6| Yet even when they ate such things they did not escape notice, for the rebels stood everywhere ready to plunder even this. Whenever they noticed a house barred, this was a signal that people inside were taking food; at once they broke down the doors, sprang in, and, all but squeezing the morsels out of people's throats, carried them off.

6.7| Old men were beaten for holding fast to their food, and women who hid what they held in their hands were dragged about by the hair. There was no pity for grey hair or for infants; they lifted up the children who hung on to their scraps and shook them down onto the ground. To those who had anticipated their entry and swallowed down in advance what was to be seized, they were still more savage, as though they had been wronged,

6.8| and they devised terrible methods of torture to search out food, stopping up the urinary passages of the wretched victims with vetches and driving sharp rods up their seats. A man suffered things dreadful even to hear of, to make him confess to a single loaf, or to reveal one handful of hidden barley meal.

6.9| Yet the torturers were not even hungry (their cruelty would have been less savage had it come from necessity); they were exercising their madness and laying in supplies for themselves for the days ahead.

6.10| When people crept out at night toward the Roman guard to gather wild herbs and grass, the rebels met them, just when they thought they had escaped the enemy, and snatched away what they had brought. Though the victims often begged, and invoked the most awesome name of God, to be given some portion of what they had brought at the risk of their lives, the rebels gave them nothing at all; the victims counted themselves lucky not to be killed as well as robbed.

6.11| After this, following some intervening matter, he continues, saying: For the Jews, once the exits were cut off, all hope of safety was gone, and the famine, sinking ever deeper, fed on the people house by house and family by family. The roofs were full of women and infants, utterly spent,

6.12| the lanes full of dead old men, and boys and youths, swollen like phantoms, roamed the marketplaces and collapsed wherever the affliction overtook them. Those who were sick could not bury their kin, and those with some strength held back, both because of the number of the dead and because of the uncertainty of their own fate; many, at any rate, died on top of those they were burying, and many went out to the tombs before the fatal moment had come.

6.13| In these calamities there was neither lamentation nor wailing; famine had stifled the feelings. Those dying hard looked with dry eyes at those who had found rest ahead of them. A deep silence enveloped the city, and a night full of death.

6.14| And the brigands were harsher than all this. Breaking into the houses as grave-robbers do, they plundered the dead, stripped off the coverings from the bodies, and went out laughing. They tried the edges of their swords on the corpses, and ran through some of the fallen who were still alive, to test the iron; those who begged them to lend a hand and a sword they left, in their contempt, to the famine. Each of the dying stared fixedly at the temple, leaving the rebels behind alive.

6.15| The rebels at first ordered the dead to be buried from the public treasury, since they could not bear the smell; then, when this was not enough, they threw them from the walls into the ravines. When Titus made the circuit of these and saw them full of corpses and a thick discharge flowing from the rotting bodies below, he groaned, and, he stretched out his hands and called God as witness that the deed was none of his.

6.16| After saying this, and adding some intervening matter, he continues, saying: I would not shrink from saying what my grief commands. I think that if the Romans had delayed against these wretches, the city would have been engulfed by a chasm, or flooded, or had a share in Sodom's thunderbolts; for it produced a generation far more godless than those who suffered such things. At any rate, through the madness of these men the whole people perished with them.

6.17| And in the sixth book he writes in these words: Of those destroyed by the famine in the city, the number who fell was beyond counting, and the sufferings that occurred cannot be told. In every house, if even the shadow of food appeared anywhere, there was war, and the dearest of friends came to blows with one another, snatching away the wretched provisions of life; and not even the dying were believed when they claimed to have nothing,

6.18| The brigands even searched people who were still breathing, in case someone was hiding food in the fold of his garment and merely pretending to be dying. Gaping with hunger like rabid dogs, others stumbled and were swept along, battering against doors like drunkards, and in their helplessness they burst into the same houses two or three times within a single hour.

6.19| Necessity put everything between the teeth. They gathered what even the filthiest of the dumb animals would not take, and brought themselves to eat it. In the end they did not spare even belts and shoes, and they stripped the hides from their shields and chewed them. Some had as food shreds of old hay, for certain people gathered the fibres and sold a tiny weight of them for four Attic drachmas.

6.20| But why speak of the hunger's shamelessness toward lifeless things? For I am about to report a deed of it such as has been recorded neither among Greeks nor among barbarians, dreadful to tell and incredible to hear. I myself would gladly have passed over the calamity, so as not to seem to later generations to be inventing marvels, had I not had countless witnesses from my own time. Besides, I would be repaying my homeland a cold favor if I suppressed the account of the deeds she suffered.

6.21| A woman of those living beyond the Jordan, Mary by name, daughter of Eleazar, from the village of Bethezor (this means House of Hyssop), distinguished by birth and wealth, had fled to Jerusalem with the rest of the crowd and was besieged along with them.

6.22| The tyrants had plundered the rest of her property, all that she had packed up and carried into the city from Peraea, and the bodyguards burst in every day and seized what remained of her treasures and any food that might be contrived. A terrible anger came over the poor woman, and by often reviling and cursing the plunderers she provoked them against herself.

6.23| But when no one, either in a rage or out of pity, put her to death, and whatever food she found she toiled to find for others, and finding it was by now impossible everywhere, while the hunger ran through her entrails and marrow, and her fury burned hotter even than the hunger, she took anger together with necessity as her counselor and turned against nature itself. Seizing her child, an infant at the breast,

6.24| she said: "Wretched baby, in war and famine and sedition, for whom am I keeping you? Life under the Romans is slavery, even if we survive to meet them, and hunger outruns slavery, and the rebels are harsher than either. Come, be my food, a fury to the rebels, and a tale for the world, the only thing still lacking in the calamities of the Jews."

6.25| As she said this she slaughtered her son, then roasted him and ate half, and covered up the rest and kept it. At once the rebels were upon her, and catching the savor of the unholy meat, they threatened to cut her throat immediately unless she showed them what she had prepared. She said she had saved them a fine portion too, and uncovered the remains of her child.

6.26| Horror and loss of their senses seized them at once, and they stood rigid at the spectacle. Then she said: "This child is my own, and the deed is mine. Eat, since I too have eaten. Do not be softer than a woman or more tender than a mother. And if you are pious and recoil from my sacrifice, then I have eaten in your place, and let the rest be kept for me."

6.27| After this some went out trembling, cowards in this one thing only, and they had barely yielded even this food to the mother. At once the whole city was filled with the abomination, and each man, setting the suffering before his eyes as though it had been dared by himself, shuddered.

6.28| The starving hurried toward death, and they counted those blessed who had gone before they could hear or see such evils.

7.1| Such was the wages of the Jews' lawlessness and impiety against the Christ of God. It is right to set beside it the unfailing prediction of our Savior, in which he foretells these very things, prophesying somewhat as follows: "Woe to those who are with child and to those who are nursing in those days. Pray that your flight may not happen in winter nor on a sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not occurred from the world's beginning until now, nor ever will."

7.2| After totalling the number of all those who were destroyed, the author says that one million one hundred thousand perished by famine and the sword. The remaining rebels and brigands, he says, were informed against by one another after the capture and were put to death. The young men, the tallest and those distinguished by bodily beauty, were kept back for the triumph. As for the rest of the multitude, those over seventeen years of age were sent in chains to the works in Egypt, and still more were dispersed among the provinces to be destroyed in the theaters by the sword and wild beasts. Those under seventeen were led off as captives and sold, and the number of these alone reached ninety thousand men.

7.3| These things happened in this way in the second year of Vespasian's reign, in accordance with the predictions of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. By divine power he had foreseen them as though they were already present, and he wept and lamented over them, as the writing of the holy evangelists records; they have set down his very words, sometimes where he said, as if to Jerusalem herself:

7.4| "If you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you, when your enemies will throw up a rampart around you, and encircle you, and hem you in on every side, and they will dash you and your children to the ground,"

7.5| and sometimes where he spoke of the people: "For there will be great distress on the land, and wrath upon this people. They will fall by the mouth of the sword and be taken captive among all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the nations, until the seasons of the nations are fulfilled." And again: "But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has drawn near."

7.6| Anyone who compares our Savior's words with the rest of the author's account of the whole war must surely marvel, and must acknowledge that our Savior's foreknowledge and prediction were truly divine and beyond all wonder.

7.7| As for what befell the whole nation after the Savior's passion and after those cries in which the Jewish multitude begged that the robber and murderer be spared death, but pleaded that the Author of life be taken away from among them, nothing need be added to the history. But it is right to add this,

7.8| which would show the loving-kindness of the all-good providence: for a full forty years after their daring deed against Christ it postponed their destruction. During those years a good number of the apostles and disciples, along with James himself, the first bishop here, known as the Lord's brother, were still living and spent their time in the city of Jerusalem itself, and remained there like a most secure bulwark for the place,

7.9| while the divine oversight still held back in patience, in case they might at some time repent of what they had done and obtain pardon and salvation. And besides such long patience, it gave them extraordinary divine signs of what was going to befall them unless they repented. These too the aforementioned author has deemed worthy of record, and nothing is better than to set them before those who come to this writing.

8.1| Take, then, and read what he has set out in the sixth book of his History, in these words: "At that time the wretched people were being persuaded by impostors and false speakers for God, but to the plain portents that foretold the coming desolation they neither gave heed nor gave credence. As if thunderstruck, and having neither eyes nor mind, they paid no attention to the proclamations of God.

8.2| There was a star that stood over the city, like a sword, and a comet that continued for a year. And again, before the revolt and the stirring toward war, when the people were gathering for the Unleavened Bread festival, on the eighth day of the month Xanthicus, in the ninth hour of the night, a light so great shone around the altar and the temple that it looked like bright day, and this lasted half an hour. To the inexperienced this seemed a good sign, but the sacred scribes at once interpreted it, before the events came to pass.

8.3| And at the same feast a cow, brought by the high priest for the sacrifice, gave birth to a lamb in the middle of the temple.

8.4| The eastern gate of the inner court was of bronze and very massive, and at evening it was closed only with difficulty by twenty men. It rested on bars bound with iron and had bolts sunk very deep; yet at the sixth hour of the night it was seen to have opened of its own accord."

8.5| Not many days after the festival, on the twenty-first day of Artemisius, a demonic apparition appeared, too great for belief. What I am about to describe might seem a mere marvel, had it not been recorded by those who saw it, and had the sufferings that followed not been worthy of the signs. For before sunset, chariots and armed battalions were seen in the air over the whole country, darting out of the clouds and encircling the cities.

8.6| At the feast called Pentecost, the priests went into the temple by night, as was their custom, for the services. They said that they first felt a movement and a crash, and after that a sudden voice: "We are departing from here."

8.7| More fearful than these was this. A certain Jesus, son of Ananias, a commoner and a countryman, came to the festival four years before the war began, when the city was at its most peaceful and prosperous, at the time when everyone customarily set up tents for God. Suddenly, in the temple, he started shouting: "A voice out of the east, a voice out of the west, a voice out of the four winds; a voice upon Jerusalem and the temple, a voice upon bridegrooms and brides, a voice upon the whole people." He went about shouting this through all the lanes by day and by night.

8.8| Some of the notable citizens, angered at this ill-omened talk, laid hold of the man and beat him with many blows. But he uttered no word in his own defense, nor any private word to those present, and continued to cry out the same words as before.

8.9| The magistrates, supposing, as was the case, that the man's impulse was something more than human, brought him before the Roman governor. There he was flayed with whips to the bone, yet he neither begged nor wept. Rather, turning his voice as much as he could into a lament, he answered each blow with "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!"

8.10| The same writer records something still more astonishing. He says that an oracle was found in the sacred writings, stating that at that very time a man from their own country would rule the world. He himself took this to have been fulfilled in Vespasian;

8.11| but Vespasian did not rule the entire world, only the part under the Romans. It would be more justly applied to Christ, to whom the Father said: "Request from me, and I will give you nations as your inheritance, and the farthest bounds of the earth as your holding." In that very season the sound of the holy apostles' voice traveled into the whole earth, and their words reached the limits of the world.

9.1| Besides all this, it is right that we not be ignorant of Josephus himself, who has contributed so greatly to the present history: where he came from and of what family he was born. He makes this clear again himself, writing as follows: "Josephus, son of Matthias, a priest from Jerusalem, who himself fought the Romans at first and was present at the later events under compulsion."

9.2| Of the Jews of that time he became the most distinguished man, not merely among his own countrymen but likewise among the Romans, with the result that he was honored with a statue set up in the city of the Romans, and the works he had labored over were deemed worthy of a library.

9.3| He set down the whole of Jewish antiquities in twenty full volumes, and the history of the Roman war of his own time in seven. He himself testifies that he handed these down not only in the Greek language but also in his native tongue, and for the rest of his qualities he deserves to be believed.

9.4| Two other works of his are also in circulation and deserve attention, On the Antiquity of the Jews. In them he also makes replies to Apion the grammarian, who then had composed a speech against the Jews, and to others who likewise tried to slander the ancestral customs of the Jewish nation.

9.5| In the first of these he sets out the number of the writings of the so-called Old Testament, which of them are undisputed among the Hebrews, teaching in these very words, from ancient tradition, about them.

10.1| "We do not have myriads of books among us, discordant and contradicting one another, but only twenty-two books, containing the record of all time, which are justly believed to be divine."

10.2| "Of these, five are Moses', containing the laws and the tradition of the origin of mankind up to his death. This period falls a little short of three thousand years."

10.3| "From the death of Moses until Artaxerxes, who reigned over the Persians after Xerxes, the prophets after Moses recorded what happened in their own days in thirteen books. The remaining four hold hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life."

10.4| From Artaxerxes down to our own time every event has been recorded, but these accounts have not been judged worthy of the same trust as the earlier writings, because the exact succession of the prophets did not continue.

10.5| It is plain from what has actually happened how we treat our own writings. Although so long an age has now passed, no one has dared to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to change anything in them; for it is natural to all Jews, from their very first birth, to regard these writings as the decrees of God, to hold fast to them, and, if need be, to die for them gladly.

10.6| Let these remarks of the author be set down here, since they are useful. The man also labored over another work of no mean effort, On the Sovereignty of Reason, which some have entitled Maccabaean, because it contains the struggles of the Hebrews who showed courage for piety toward the divine in the writings called Maccabaean.

10.7| Near the close of the Antiquities, in its twentieth book, the same writer also indicates that he had intended to write, in four books, about God and his essence according to the ancestral beliefs of the Jews, and about the laws, explaining why, by their teaching, some things may be done and others are forbidden; and in his own works the same author mentions that he devoted effort to other subjects as well.

10.8| In addition to this it is reasonable to list also the words he has set down at the end of the Antiquities, as confirmation of the testimony we have drawn from him. There he criticizes Justus of Tiberias, who had likewise attempted to record the events of the same period, as one who had not written the truth, and after bringing many other charges against the man, he adds in these very words:

10.9| But I, unlike you, had no such fear about my own work; rather, I handed the books over to the emperors themselves, while the events were scarcely over and still before men's eyes. For I knew in myself that I had preserved the tradition of the truth, and in expecting to win testimony for it I was not mistaken.

10.10| I presented the history to many others as well, some of whom had also been present at the war, for instance King Agrippa and several of his relatives.

10.11| For the emperor Titus wished so strongly that men should receive their knowledge of these events from these books alone that he signed the books with his own hand and ordered them to be published; and King Agrippa composed sixty-two letters, bearing witness to the tradition of the truth. Josephus sets out two of these. But let that be enough about this man.

11.1| Let us move on to what follows. After James had been martyred, and Jerusalem was captured immediately afterward, the report holds that those among the apostles and the Lord's disciples who were still surviving came together from every quarter, along with those who were the Lord's relatives according to the flesh (for many of these too were still alive at that time), and all of them together took counsel about whom they should judge worthy to succeed James. By a single decision they all approved Symeon, the son of Clopas, whom the text of the gospel also mentions, to be worthy of the throne of the community there; he was, they say, a cousin of the Savior, for Hegesippus relates that Clopas was the brother of Joseph.

12.1| And after this, the report says, Vespasian, following the capture of Jerusalem, ordered a search for all who were of the family of David, so that no one of the royal tribe should be left among the Jews, and that from this cause a very great persecution was again stirred up against the Jews.

13.1| After Vespasian had reigned for ten years, his son the emperor Titus took over from him. In the second year of Titus's reign Linus, bishop of the church of the Romans, who had held the ministry for twelve years, handed it over to Anencletus. His brother Domitian succeeded Titus, who had reigned for two years and as many months.

14.1| In Domitian's fourth year, Annianus, the first to lead the community at Alexandria, died after completing twenty-two years, and Abilius succeeded him as the second.

15.1| In the twelfth year of that same reign, Clement took over from Anencletus, who had held the episcopate of the Roman church for twelve years. The apostle teaches that Clement was his fellow worker, writing to the Philippians, where he says: "with Clement too and the rest of my co-workers, whose names stand in the book of life."

16.1| One letter of this Clement is generally agreed to survive, long and remarkable, which he drew up speaking for the church of the Romans for the church of the Corinthians, when a faction had arisen at Corinth at that time. We know that this letter was read publicly in very many churches, both long ago and in our own day. And that the Corinthian faction was stirred up in the time of the man I have mentioned, Hegesippus is a trustworthy witness.

17.1| Domitian displayed great cruelty toward many people. He put to death, without any reasoned trial, a considerable number of the well-born and distinguished men of Rome, and punished countless other eminent men with exile beyond the frontier and the confiscation of their property, though they had done nothing wrong. In the end he made himself the successor to Nero's hatred of God and warfare against God. He became the second to rouse a persecution against us, even though his father Vespasian had devised nothing improper against us.

18.1| In this reign, the tradition holds, John, the apostle and evangelist, who was still alive, was sentenced to live on the island of Patmos because of his testimony to the divine Word.

18.2| Irenaeus, indeed, writing about the number assigned to the name of the Antichrist in the book called the Revelation of John, says the following about John, in these very words, in book five of his work Against the Heresies:

18.3| "But had it been necessary for his name to be announced publicly in the present time, it would have been said by the very man who had beheld the revelation. It was not long ago, after all, that it was seen, but virtually within our own generation, toward the end of Domitian's reign."

18.4| So brightly, then, in the times I have mentioned, did the teaching of our faith shine forth that even writers from outside our community did not shrink from recording the persecution and the martyrdoms in it in their histories. They even marked the time precisely: in the fifteenth year of Domitian they recorded, among a great many others, that Flavia Domitilla, a sister's daughter of Flavius Clement, who was then one of the consuls at Rome, was handed over as a punishment to the island of Pontia on account of her testimony to Christ.

19.1| When this same Domitian ordered that those descended from David be put to death, an old tradition holds that some of the heretics denounced the descendants of Judas (who was said to be the brother of the Savior according to the flesh) of being of David's line and of being related to Christ himself. Hegesippus makes this clear, saying in so many words something like the following:

20.1| "There were still living some of the Lord's family, grandsons of Judas, who was said to be his brother according to the flesh. These men were denounced as being of David's line. The evocatus brought them before Domitian Caesar. For he feared the coming of Christ, as Herod had also done.

20.2| And he asked them whether they were descended from David, and they admitted it. Then he inquired how much property they owned, or how much money they controlled. They said that the two of them together had only nine thousand denarii, half of it belonging to each of them. And they declared that they did not hold this in silver but in the assessed value of only thirty-nine plethra of land, from which they both paid the taxes and sustained themselves by working it with their own hands.

20.3| Then, they said, they also showed him their hands, offering as proof of their own labor the hardness of their bodies and the calluses that constant work had stamped upon their own hands.

20.4| When they were asked about Christ and his kingdom, what kind it was, and where and when it would appear, they gave an account: it was not of this world nor earthly, but heavenly and angelic, and would come at the close of the age, when he would come in glory to judge both living and dead, and to repay each according to his deeds.

20.5| Upon this, Domitian condemned them for nothing, but despised them as men of no importance, released them, and by a decree put an end to the persecution against the church.

20.6| Once released, they became leaders of the churches, as being both martyrs and members of the Lord's family; and when peace came, they remained alive until the time of Trajan."

20.7| So Hegesippus. But Tertullian too has made a similar mention of Domitian: "Domitian also once tried to do the same to him, being a piece of Nero's cruelty. But, I think, since he had some sense, he stopped very quickly, even recalling those he had banished."

20.8| After Nerva took over the empire from Domitian, who had ruled fifteen years, the Roman senate decreed that Domitian's honors be annulled, and that those who had been wrongfully expelled should go back to their own places and also recover their property. So report those who have handed down the history of those times in writing.

20.9| It was then, according to the account of the ancients among us, that the apostle John also came back from his exile on the island and took up residence at Ephesus.

21.1| Nerva reigned a little more than a year and was succeeded by Trajan. In his first year Cerdo succeeded Abilius, who had led the community at Alexandria for thirteen years; Cerdo was the third to preside there after the first, Annianus. At this time Clement was still leading the Romans, himself the third to hold the office there, counting from Paul and Peter. The first was Linus, and following him came Anencletus.

22.1| At Antioch, too, Evodius had been appointed first, and Ignatius, already mentioned, was known as the second. In the same period Symeon, likewise the second after the brother of our Savior, served in the ministry of the church at Jerusalem.

23.1| In these times, while still surviving in Asia, the very man whom Jesus loved, John, at once apostle and evangelist, was directing the churches there, having come back after Domitian's death from his exile on the island.

23.2| That he lived on into these times it is enough to confirm by the testimony of two witnesses. They would be trustworthy, being champions of the church's orthodoxy, if Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria are such men.

23.3| Of these, the first writes as follows, word for word, in Book Two of his work Against the Heresies: "And all the elders who in Asia met John, the Lord's disciple, bear witness that John handed it on to them. For he remained with them until the times of Trajan."

23.4| In the same work's third book he makes the same point, saying: "Moreover the church at Ephesus, which Paul founded and in which John stayed among them up to the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the apostles' tradition."

23.5| Clement, at the same time as marking the date, adds a story most necessary for those who like to hear what is fine and profitable, in the treatise he entitled Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved? Take it and read his account, which runs something like this:

23.6| "Listen to a tale that is no tale but a true account, handed down and kept in memory, about the apostle John. When the tyrant had died and he had left the island of Patmos for Ephesus, he used to go off, when invited, to the neighboring districts of the Gentiles as well, in some places to appoint bishops, in others to bring whole churches into order, in others to select by lot one man from those indicated by the Spirit.

23.7| Arriving, then, at one of the nearby cities (some even give its name), and having comforted the brothers in other matters, finally he looked at the bishop who had been appointed and, seeing a young man of fine physique, pleasing appearance and ardent spirit, said: 'This man I entrust to you with all earnestness, with the church and Christ as witnesses.' When the bishop accepted him and promised everything, John spoke the same words again and repeated his solemn charge.

23.8| Then John set out for Ephesus, while the elder took the young man he had been given into his own house, and fed him, kept him close, cherished him, and in the end baptized him. After that he relaxed his greater care and watchfulness, since he had set over him the seal of the Lord as a perfect safeguard.

23.9| But when the young man took his liberty before the proper time, some idle and dissolute companions of his own age, practiced in wickedness, corrupted him. First they led him on with costly banquets; then they took him along when they went out at night to rob cloaks from travelers; then they thought him fit to join in something greater still.

23.10| He grew accustomed to it little by little. Because of the greatness of his nature, he swerved from the straight road like a headstrong, vigorous horse, took the bit in his teeth, and rushed all the more violently toward the precipices.

23.11| Having utterly despaired of salvation in God, he no longer planned anything small. Having done something great, since he was lost once and for all, he claimed the right to suffer the same as the others. Taking these very men and forming a robber band, he became a ready chief of brigands, the most violent, bloodthirsty and cruel of them all.

23.12| Time passed, and when some need arose they summoned John. After he had settled the other matters for which he had come, he said: 'Come now, bishop, give back to us the deposit which Christ and I entrusted to you, with the church over which you preside as witness.'

23.13| At first he was stunned, supposing that he was being falsely accused over money he had never received; he could neither believe the charge, since he had nothing, nor disbelieve John. But when John said, "I am demanding the young man and the soul of his brother," the old man groaned deeply, shed a few tears, and said, "He is dead." "How did he die, and of what death?" "To God he is dead," he said. "For he turned out wicked and utterly depraved and, in short, a robber; and now, in place of the church, he holds the mountain with a band of men like himself."

23.14| The apostle tore his garment and, with a great cry of grief, struck his head and said, "A fine guardian I left for the soul of my brother! But let a horse stand ready for me now, and let someone become my guide for the journey." He rode off just as he was from the church right then.

23.15| When he came to the place, he was caught by the robbers' outpost. He neither fled nor begged off, but shouted, "This is why I have come: take me to your leader."

23.16| For the time being the leader had stayed in place, fully armed, but once he recognized John coming toward him, he was ashamed and turned to flee. John pursued him with all his strength, forgetting his own age, and cried out:

23.17| "Why do you run from me, child, from your own father, unarmed, an old man? Have pity on me, child; do not be afraid. You still have hope of life. I will render account to Christ on your behalf. Should it be necessary, I will gladly undergo your death, as the Lord did his for us; I will give my own life in exchange for yours. Stop, believe: Christ has sent me."

23.18| When he heard this, he first stood still, looking down; then he threw down his weapons; then, trembling, he wept bitterly. As the old man came up, he embraced him, defending himself as best he could with his lamentations and being baptized a second time with his tears, hiding only his right hand.

23.19| John pledged and swore that forgiveness had been obtained for him from the Savior; he begged, he fell on his knees, and he kissed that very right hand, as though cleansed by repentance. Then he led him back to the church. He pleaded for him with abundant prayers, struggled alongside him with continual fasts, and charmed his mind with a varied chain of words. He did not leave, so they say, until he had established him in the church, thereby giving a mighty pattern of genuine repentance and a great token of rebirth, a trophy of a resurrection seen with the eyes. Let this account from Clement be placed here by me, for the sake both of the history and of the benefit of those who will read it.

24.1| Come now, let us also mark out the undisputed writings of this apostle.

24.2| First, then, let his gospel, which is recognized by the churches under heaven, be acknowledged without dispute. That the ancients with good reason ranked it fourth, after the other three, will become clear in this way.

24.3| The inspired and truly godlike men, that is, the apostles of Christ, were supremely purified in their lives and adorned in their souls with every virtue, yet were unskilled in speech. They took courage in the divine and miraculous power granted to them by the Savior, and neither knew how nor attempted to present their teacher's lessons with persuasion and the craft of words. Using only the proof given by the divine Spirit who worked with them and on the wonder-working power of Christ accomplished through them, they announced to the whole inhabited world the knowledge of the kingdom of heaven, giving little thought to the labor of writing books.

24.4| They did this because they were serving a greater ministry, one beyond human capacity. Paul, for example, the most powerful of all in the preparation of speeches and most capable in ideas, left in writing no more than the briefest of letters, though he had countless unspeakable things to say, since he had touched the visions up to the third heaven, had been caught up into the godlike paradise itself, and had been counted worthy to hear the unutterable words there.

24.5| The rest of our Savior's disciples were not without experience of these things either: twelve apostles and seventy disciples, with myriads of others in addition. Nevertheless, of all the Lord's discourses, only Matthew and John have left us records, and tradition holds that they were compelled to take up writing.

24.6| For Matthew, having first preached to Hebrews, and being about to go to others also, delivered his gospel in writing in his ancestral tongue, and so made up through writing for the lack of his presence to those from whom he was being sent away;

24.7| Mark and Luke had by now published the gospels that bear their names, and John, they say, who all along had relied on unwritten preaching, at last turned to writing as well, for the following reason. When the three gospels already written had reached everyone, and had come into his own hands too, he accepted them, they say, and bore witness to their truth; but what remained missing from the record, it seems, was only the account of what Christ had done at the very first, at the beginning of his preaching.

24.8| And the account is certainly true. One can see, at any rate, that the three evangelists recorded only what the Savior did in the single year after John the Baptist was shut up in prison, and that they marked this very point at the start of their narratives.

24.9| After the forty-day fast, then, and the temptation that followed it, Matthew indicates the period his own account covers when he says: "When he heard that John had been handed over, he withdrew from Judea into Galilee."

24.10| Mark likewise says: "After John had been handed over, Jesus came into Galilee." Luke also, before beginning the deeds of Jesus, makes much the same observation, stating that Herod, adding to the evil things he had done, "shut John up in prison."

24.11| For these reasons, they say, the apostle John was urged to set down in his gospel the period that the earlier evangelists had left unmentioned, and what the Savior did in it (that is, the things before the Baptist was imprisoned), and to mark this very point: once by saying, "This beginning of his wonders Jesus made," and again by mentioning the Baptist in the course of Jesus's deeds as still baptizing at that time at Aenon near Salim, and by making it plain when he says, "For John had not yet been thrown into prison."

24.12| So John, in writing his gospel, records what Christ did while the Baptist had not yet been thrown into prison, whereas the other three evangelists relate what came after the Baptist was shut up in jail.

24.13| Anyone who attends to this will no longer think that the gospels disagree with one another, since John's Gospel contains the first of Christ's deeds and the others contain the history of what happened to him at the end of that period. It was natural, then, for John to pass over in silence the genealogy of our Savior's flesh, since Matthew and Luke had already written it out, and to begin with his theology, as something the divine Spirit had reserved for him as for one greater.

24.14| Let this be enough from us about how John's Gospel was written. The reason for the writing of Mark's has been explained earlier.

24.15| As for Luke, he too, at the beginning of his work, set out the reason that led him to compose it. He makes clear that many others had rather rashly undertaken to compose an account of matters of which he himself had been fully assured; and so, to free us of necessity from the doubtful notions surrounding the others, he handed down in his own gospel a reliable account of the things whose truth he had thoroughly grasped, having profited from his companionship and time spent with Paul and from his conversations with the rest of the apostles.

24.16| So much for our own remarks on these matters. At a more fitting time we shall try to show, by citing the ancients, what others too have said about them.

24.17| Of John's writings, besides the gospel, the first of the epistles also has been acknowledged as undisputed both by people today and by those of the early days.

24.18| The other two are disputed; and as for the Revelation, opinion about it is still pulled in either direction by most people even now. It too, however, will receive its verdict in due course from the testimony of the ancients.

25.1| At this point it is fitting to recapitulate the already-mentioned writings of the New Testament. First, then, must be placed the holy foursome of the gospels, followed by the book containing the Acts of the Apostles.

25.2| After this the epistles of Paul are to be listed, and next to them the epistle in circulation as the first of John, and likewise that of Peter, must be recognized as authentic. After these is to be placed, if it seems proper, the Revelation of John, concerning which we shall set out the views held at the appropriate time.

25.3| These, then, are among the acknowledged books. Among the disputed books, which are nevertheless familiar to most, are in circulation the epistle called that of James, and Jude's, and the second epistle of Peter, and those named the second and third of John, whether they are the evangelist's or belong to some other man of that name.

25.4| Among the spurious books let there be placed the writing called the Acts of Paul, the work known as the Shepherd, and the Apocalypse of Peter; besides these, the letter that circulates under the name of Barnabas and what is called the Teachings of the Apostles; and further, the Apocalypse of John, as I said, if that seems right. Some, as I said, reject it, while others count it among the acknowledged books.

25.5| Some have also included in this list the Gospel according to the Hebrews, in which those Hebrews who have accepted Christ take special delight.

25.6| All these would belong to the disputed books. Even so, we have found it necessary to draw up a list of these as well, distinguishing the writings that by the tradition of the church are true, genuine and acknowledged from the others, which differ from them in not being part of the covenant but disputed, though nonetheless known to most churchmen. We have done this so that we may know both these books themselves and those that the heretics bring forward in the apostles' names, whether as holding gospels of Peter, Thomas and Matthias, or of some others besides these, or as acts of Andrew, John and the other apostles. Not one of these has any churchman in the line of succession ever thought fit to mention anywhere in his writings,

25.7| and besides, the character of their style differs widely from the apostolic manner, while their thought and the intention of what is related in them, being utterly out of tune with true orthodoxy, show plainly that they are the fabrications of heretical men. Therefore they should not even be reckoned among the spurious books, but should be rejected as altogether absurd and impious.

26.1| Let us now go on to the history that follows. Menander, who succeeded Simon the magician, proved in his conduct to be a second weapon of diabolical activity, no worse than the first. He too was a Samaritan. Having advanced to the summit of sorcery no less than his teacher, he lavished still greater marvels and wonder-tales on his hearers, saying of himself that he was in fact the savior, sent from somewhere above, out of invisible aeons, for the salvation of human beings,

26.2| and teaching that no one could overcome even the angels who made the world unless he had first been led through the magical skill handed down by him, and through the baptism he imparted. Those found worthy of it, he said, would share in everlasting immortality in this very life; they would no longer die, but would remain here and be forever free of old age and deathless. These things can readily be learned from the writings of Irenaeus as well.

26.3| Justin too, in the same place where he mentions Simon, adds an account of this man as well, saying: "We know that a certain Menander, also a Samaritan, from the village of Capparattaea, who became a disciple of Simon and was likewise goaded on by the demons, arrived at Antioch and deceived many by magical art. He persuaded his followers that they would not die, and even now there are some who profess this on his authority."

26.4| It was, it seems, the work of diabolical activity to use such sorcerers, who put on the name of Christians, in an eager effort to slander the great mystery of godliness as magic, and through them to ridicule the church's teachings on the soul's immortality and the resurrection of the dead. But those who inscribed these men as their saviors fell away from the true hope.

27.1| Others the wicked demon, unable to shake them from their devotion to God's Christ, found open to his grip on another side and made his own. The first Christians fittingly named these people Ebionites, since they held poor and lowly opinions about Christ.

27.2| They regarded him as plain and ordinary, a mere man justified by progress in character, and born of the union of a man with Mary. They held that they must by all means keep the observances of the law, on the ground that they would not be saved through faith in Christ alone and a life in keeping with it.

27.3| Others besides these, who bore the same name, escaped the outlandish absurdity of those just described, for they did not deny that the Lord had been born from a virgin and the Holy Spirit. Yet they too would not confess that he existed beforehand as God, Word and Wisdom, and so they veered into the impiety of the former group, above all because they were just as eager as those others to cling to the bodily worship prescribed by the law.

27.4| These men thought that the letters of the apostle ought to be rejected altogether, calling him an apostate from the law; they used only the gospel called according to the Hebrews and made little account of the rest.

27.5| Like the others, they kept the sabbath and the rest of the Jewish way of life, yet on the Lord's days they also performed rites much like ours in remembrance of the Savior's resurrection.

27.6| Because of this undertaking they received this title, since the name Ebionites hints at the poverty of their thinking; for among the Hebrews the poor man is called by this name.

28.1| In the times just described, we have learned, Cerinthus became the founder of yet another heresy. Gaius, whose words I cited earlier, writes the following about him in the disputation attributed to him:

28.2| But Cerinthus, too, by means of revelations supposedly written by a great apostle, falsely introduces to us marvelous tales, claimed to have been shown to him by angels. According to him, after the resurrection Christ's kingdom will be on earth, and the flesh, living once more as citizens in Jerusalem, will be enslaved to desires and pleasures. And as an enemy of the scriptures of God, in order to lead people astray, he says that a period of a thousand years will take place in a wedding festival.

28.3| Dionysius also, who in our own time received the bishopric of the community at Alexandria, in his work On Promises, in the second book, after saying some things about the Revelation of John as drawn from the tradition handed down from of old, mentions the same man in these words:

28.4| "It was Cerinthus, who also founded the heresy called Cerinthian after him, who wished to attach a trustworthy name to his own fabrication."

28.5| "For this, he said, was the tenet of his teaching: that Christ's kingdom would be on earth, and that it would consist, as he dreamed, in the very things he himself craved, being fond of the body and thoroughly fleshly: namely the satisfactions of the belly and what lies below the belly, that is, food and drink and marriages, and the means by which he thought these would be supplied in a more decent fashion: festivals, sacrifices, and the slaughter of victims."

28.6| So says Dionysius. But Irenaeus, after setting out in the first book of his treatise Against the Heresies some of this man's more secret false doctrines, has in the third book also committed to writing an account not worthy of oblivion. He says, on the tradition of Polycarp, that the apostle John once went into a bathhouse to bathe, but when he learned that Cerinthus was inside, he leapt up from the place and ran out the door, not enduring even to go under the same roof with him. He urged his companions to act likewise, saying, "Let us flee, lest the bathhouse fall down, since Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is inside."

29.1| In these same times the so-called heresy of the Nicolaitans also arose, lasting for a very brief time; the Revelation of John mentions it. These people boasted of Nicolaus, one of the deacons associated with Stephen who were appointed by the apostles for the care of the needy. Clement of Alexandria reports the following about him, word for word, in the Stromateis, book three:

29.2| "They say that this man, who had a beautiful wife, was reproached by the apostles for jealousy after the ascension of the Savior; and that he brought his wife into their midst and permitted anyone who wished to marry her. For they say this action was consistent with that saying, that one must abuse the flesh. And indeed, following what was done and said simply and without examination, the adherents of his sect fornicate without restraint.

29.3| But I learn that Nicolaus had relations with no other woman than the one he married, and that of his children the daughters grew old as virgins, while his son remained undefiled. Since this was so, bringing the jealously guarded wife into the midst of the apostles was a casting off of passion, and his self-control over the pleasures men most eagerly pursue was what the saying about abusing the flesh taught. For he did not wish, I think, to be slave to two masters, pleasure and the Lord, according to the Savior's commandment.

29.4| They say, then, that Matthias also taught thus: to fight against the flesh and abuse it, giving it nothing for pleasure’s sake, but to make the soul grow through faith and knowledge." Let this be said, then, about those who in the times described undertook to cheat the truth of its prize, and who were extinguished entirely, more swiftly than speech.

30.1| Clement, however, whose words we have just read, next after what was cited above lists, on account of those who reject marriage, the apostles who are known to have been married, saying: "Or will they also reject the apostles? For Peter and Philip had children, and Philip also married off his daughters; and Paul, in one of his letters, does not shrink from addressing his own yokefellow, whom he did not take around with him, for the sake of the lightness of his ministry."

30.2| Since we have mentioned these matters, it is no burden to set beside them another story of the same author, one worth telling, which he recorded in the seventh Miscellany, relating it in this manner: "They say, at any rate, that the blessed Peter, on seeing his wife led away to her death, was glad at her summons and at her return home, and called out to her in the most encouraging and comforting way, addressing her by name: 'Remember the Lord, my dear.' Such, then, was the marriage of the blessed ones, and such the perfect disposition of those most dear to each other." Since this belongs to the subject now in hand, let it be placed here in its proper season.

31.1| The time and manner of the deaths of Paul and Peter, and further the place where their bodies were laid after they departed this life, have already been shown by us earlier.

31.2| As for John, the matter of his time has in some measure been stated already; but the place where his body lies is shown by a letter of Polycrates, who presided as bishop over the community at Ephesus. In writing to Victor, bishop of the Romans, he recalls John together with the apostle Philip and Philip's daughters, in these words:

31.3| "For great luminaries have fallen asleep in Asia, who will rise again on the last day of the Lord's coming, when he comes from heaven with glory and will seek out all the saints: Philip, an apostle of the twelve, who sleeps in Hierapolis, together with his two daughters who grew old as virgins; and his other daughter, who conducted her life in the Holy Spirit, rests at Ephesus. And further there is John, who leaned back on the breast of the Lord, who became a priest wearing the plate, and a witness and a teacher; he has fallen asleep at Ephesus."

31.4| So much for the deaths of these men. In the dialogue of Gaius, whom we mentioned a little earlier, Proclus, the man with whom he was holding his debate, agrees with what has been set out and speaks as follows about the end of Philip and of his daughters: "After this man there arose four prophetesses, daughters of Philip, in Hierapolis in Asia; there is their tomb, and their father's as well."

31.5| That is what he says. Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, makes mention of Philip's daughters, who were then staying at Caesarea in Judea with their father and had been deemed worthy of the gift of prophecy, saying in these very words: "We arrived at Caesarea, and going into the home of Philip, who was an evangelist and one of the seven, we stayed with him. This man had four virgin daughters, prophetesses."

31.6| We have now set out what has come to our knowledge about the apostles and the apostolic age, about the sacred writings they left us, about those that are disputed yet have been publicly read in very many churches by many people, and about those that are altogether spurious and foreign to apostolic orthodoxy. Let us therefore go on to the history of what follows.

32.1| After Nero and Domitian, in the days of the emperor whose period we are now examining, the account we have received says that persecution against us was stirred up in a partial and local way, by popular uprisings in various cities. In it, we have learned, Symeon son of Clopas, whom we showed to have been appointed the second bishop of the church in Jerusalem, ended his life in martyrdom.

32.2| The witness to this is that same Hegesippus whose words we have already used on various occasions. Relating the history of some heretics, he adds, making clear, that at this time Symeon was accused by them; that he was tortured in many ways for very many days as a Christian, and amazed the judge himself and those around him to the highest degree; and that he met an end very like the Lord's passion.

32.3| But nothing is better than to hear the writer himself, who records these very things in these words: "Some of these heretics, of course, accused Simon son of Clopas, claiming that he was of David's line and a Christian; and so, being a hundred and twenty years old, he bore witness under Trajan Caesar, with Atticus as consul."

32.4| The same author says that his accusers too were taken into custody, because a search was then being made for those of the royal tribe of the Jews, and they, as it happened, were found to be of it. By reckoning, one could also say that Symeon was among the eyewitnesses and hearers of the Lord himself, taking as proof how long he lived and that the written Gospels mention Mary of Clopas; and Clopas, as the account has already shown, was his father.

32.5| The same author says that other descendants of one of the men reputed to be brothers of the Savior, whose name was Judas, lived on into the same reign, after the testimony they had already been recorded as giving for their faith in Christ under Domitian. He writes as follows:

32.6| "They come, therefore, and take the lead over every church as martyrs and as kinsmen of the Lord. And when deep peace had come over every church, they stayed on until Trajan Caesar, when the one sprung from the Lord's uncle, the Simon son of Clopas spoken of before, was slandered by the sects and likewise accused on the same ground before Atticus the consular governor. For many days he was tortured, and he bore witness by martyrdom, so that everyone, the governor included, marvelled greatly how a man who was a hundred and twenty years old could endure it; and he was ordered to be crucified."

32.7| In addition to this, the same man, narrating the affairs of those just mentioned, adds that until those times the church had stayed a pure, uncorrupted virgin, since those who tried to corrupt the sound rule of the saving message, if there were any, were still lurking somewhere in obscure darkness.

32.8| But when the sacred company of the apostles had met their various ends, and that generation of men who had been deemed worthy to listen with their own ears to the inspired wisdom had passed away, then, he says, the establishment of godless error took its beginning through the deceit of teachers of different doctrines. These men, since none of the apostles was any longer left, now attempted with bare head to set their falsely named knowledge against the preaching of the truth.

33.1| So far, in many places, did the persecution against us extend at that time that Pliny Secundus, a governor of great distinction, was stirred by the great number of martyrs and communicated with the emperor about the multitude of those being put to death on account of their faith. In the same report he stated that he had found them doing nothing impious or contrary to the laws, except that at dawn they rose and sang hymns to Christ as though to a god, while they themselves forbade adultery, murder and the related unlawful offenses, and did everything in accordance with the laws.

33.2| In reply to this, Trajan issued a decree to the following effect: that the tribe of Christians was not to be sought out, but if they were caught, they were to be punished. By this the threat of the persecution, which had been pressing very fiercely, was in some measure extinguished; yet those who wished to do us harm were left with no fewer pretexts, since at times the populace, and at times the rulers in the regions, contrived plots against us, so that even without open persecutions, local ones flared up in one province after another, and a good many of the faithful contended in various martyrdoms.

33.3| This account is taken from the Roman Apology of Tertullian, mentioned above, of which the translation runs as follows: "And yet we have found that even the hunting-out of us has been forbidden. For Pliny Secundus, while governing a province, had condemned some Christians and stripped them of their rank; troubled by their numbers, and not knowing what he ought to do next, he consulted the emperor Trajan, saying that apart from their refusal to worship idols he had found nothing impious in them. He also reported this, that the Christians would rise at dawn and sing hymns to Christ as though to a god, and that, to preserve their discipline, they were forbidden to murder, to commit adultery, to be greedy, to defraud, and the like. To this Trajan wrote back that the tribe of Christians was not to be sought out, but if they were caught, they were to be punished." And this was how matters stood.

34.1| Among the Roman bishops, in the third year of the aforesaid emperor's reign, Clement handed on his ministry to Evarestus and departed this life, having presided for nine years in all over the teaching of the divine Word.

35.1| But when Symeon too had been brought to his end in the manner described, a Jew named Justus succeeded to the throne of the bishopric of Jerusalem. He himself was one of countless numbers of the circumcision who had by then come to believe in Christ.

36.1| At this time there was distinguished in Asia Polycarp, a companion of the apostles, having had the bishopric of the church at Smyrna entrusted to him by those who had seen the Lord with their own eyes and served him.

36.2| In his time Papias became well known, himself also bishop of the community at Hierapolis, and Ignatius, still famous among very many people to this day, who had obtained the bishopric of Antioch as the second in succession from Peter.

36.3| The report is that, being sent up from Syria to the Romans' city, he became the prey of wild beasts on account of his witness to Christ.

36.4| He made his journey back through Asia under the most careful guard of soldiers. In each city where he stayed he strengthened the local congregations with spoken discourses and exhortations, and above all he urged them to guard against the heresies that were only then beginning to spread, and to cling tightly to the tradition of the apostles. For safety's sake he thought it necessary to set this tradition down in writing as well, attesting to it as he did so.

36.5| Thus, having reached Smyrna, where Polycarp was, he writes a letter to the community at Ephesus, recalling Onesimus, its shepherd; a second to the one in Magnesia by the Maeander, in which he again makes mention of a bishop, Damas; and yet another to the church in Tralles, whose head at that time, he tells us, was Polybius.

36.6| In addition to these, he also wrote to the church of the Romans, and in it he makes a plea that they should not beg him off from martyrdom and so rob him of the hope he longed for. It is worth setting down a very few lines from this letter to show what has been said. He writes, then, in these words:

36.7| From Syria to Rome I am fighting wild beasts, on land and sea, night and day, chained to ten leopards, that is, a squad of soldiers, who grow worse even when they are well treated. Yet through their wrongdoing I am becoming more of a disciple; but I am not for that reason justified.

36.8| May I take joy in the beasts prepared for me, and I pray to find them quick; I will even entice them to devour me speedily, and not as with some, whom they feared and did not touch. And if they are unwilling and refuse, I will force them.

36.9| Forgive me; I know what is good for myself. It is only now that I am starting to be a disciple. Let nothing, seen or unseen, envy me, so that I may reach Jesus Christ. Fire and cross, and packs of beasts, scattering of bones, mangling of limbs, grinding of my whole body, the torments of the devil, let them come upon me, only let me reach Jesus Christ.

36.10| These things he laid down in writing from the city mentioned, for the churches listed. Then, having gone on beyond Smyrna, he addressed the people of Philadelphia again by letter from Troas, and the church of the Smyrnaeans, and in particular its leader Polycarp. Knowing him very well to be an apostolic man, he entrusted to him, as a true and good shepherd would, his flock at Antioch, and asked him to take earnest care of it.

36.11| Writing to the Smyrnaeans, the same man cites certain sayings, from what source I do not know, going through matters of this kind about Christ: "For my part, I know and believe that even after the resurrection he existed in the flesh. On coming to Peter and those about him, he told them: 'Grasp me, feel me, and see that I am no incorporeal demon.' At once they touched him and believed."

36.12| Irenaeus too knows of his martyrdom and mentions his letters, saying: "As one of our own said, after being condemned to the beasts because of his witness before God, 'I am God's grain, and through the teeth of wild beasts I am being ground, so that I may be found clean bread.'"

36.13| Polycarp also mentions these same matters in his surviving letter to the Philippians, stating in these very words: "I urge you all, then, to obey and to exercise all manner of endurance, which you saw with your own eyes, not alone in the blessed Ignatius, Rufus and Zosimus, but in others of your own number too, and in Paul himself and the other apostles, convinced as you are that none of these ran in vain, but in faith and in righteousness, and that they are in the place due to them beside the Lord, with whom they also suffered. For they did not love the present age, but the one who died for us and was raised by God for our sake."

36.14| And a little further on he adds: "You wrote to me, you and Ignatius, that if anyone is going off to Syria he should carry your letters there too. This I will do, if I find a convenient occasion, whether I go myself or send someone to act as envoy for you also."

36.15| "The letters of Ignatius that he sent to us, along with whatever others we had by us, we have sent to you, as you instructed. They are attached to this letter, and you will be able to gain great benefit from them. For they contain faith and endurance, and all the edification that pertains to our Lord." Such is the story of Ignatius. After him Heros succeeded to the bishopric of Antioch.

37.1| Among those who shone out in this period was Quadratus, who, the account goes, was distinguished alongside the daughters of Philip by a prophetic gift. Many others besides were known in these years, holding the first rank in the succession of the apostles. Since they were disciples of such great men, and worthy of God themselves, they built on the foundations of the churches that the apostles had laid down beforehand in every place, advancing the proclamation still further and sowing far and wide across the whole inhabited world the saving seeds of heaven's kingdom.

37.2| For very many of the disciples of that time, struck in soul by the divine Word with a more vehement love of philosophy, first fulfilled the Savior's command by distributing their possessions to the needy. Then, setting out on journeys abroad, they carried out the work of evangelists, eager to preach to those who had still never heard the word of the faith and to hand on to them the scripture of the divine gospels.

37.3| They would do no more than lay the foundations of the faith in some foreign place, appoint others as shepherds, and entrust to them the tending of those newly brought in; then they themselves went on again to other nations and lands, by the grace and help that come from God. For even then many astonishing works of power were still being wrought through them by the Spirit of God, so that on first hearing whole crowds at once, to the last man, eagerly received into their souls reverence for the Maker of all things.

37.4| Since it is impossible for us to number by name all who, in the first succession from the apostles, became shepherds or evangelists in churches throughout the world, we have fittingly recorded by name in writing only those whose tradition of the apostolic teaching still comes down to us even now through their writings.

38.1| Such, of course, is Ignatius, in the letters we have listed; such too is Clement, in his letter, acknowledged by all, which he composed on behalf of the church of the Romans to that of the Corinthians. In it he sets out many ideas taken from the letter to the Hebrews, and in some places uses some of its expressions word for word,

38.2| and so shows most clearly that the work is not recent. Hence it has reasonably seemed right to number it with the apostle's other letters. For since Paul had addressed the Hebrews in writing in their ancestral tongue, some say that the evangelist Luke translated the text, others that this very Clement did.

38.3| The latter would be the more likely, because the letter of Clement and the Epistle to the Hebrews preserve a similar character of style, and because the thoughts in the two writings are not far apart.

38.4| It should be known that a second letter of Clement is also said to exist. We do not, however, know it to be recognized in the same way as the first, since we are not aware that the ancients made use of it.

38.5| And just recently some people have brought forward still other wordy and lengthy writings as his, containing dialogues of Peter and Apion. Of these there is no mention whatever among the ancients, nor do they preserve the pure stamp of apostolic orthodoxy.

39.1| Now the acknowledged writing of Clement is plain, and the works of Ignatius and Polycarp have been discussed. Of Papias, five books are in circulation, which bear the title Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord. Irenaeus too mentions these as his only writings, speaking roughly as follows: "To these things Papias also, who had heard John and was a companion of Polycarp, a man of the early days, bears witness in the fourth of his books, in writing. For he composed five books."

39.2| So says Irenaeus. Yet Papias himself, in the preface to his treatise, makes it clear that he was by no means a hearer or eyewitness of the holy apostles, but teaches that he received the matters of the faith from those who had known them. He does so in these words:

39.3| "I shall not hesitate to set down for you, together with my interpretations, whatever I once learned well from the elders and remembered well, vouching for its truth. For I did not delight, as most people do, in those who say a great deal, but in those who teach the truth; nor in those who recall other people's commandments, but in those who recall the ones given to faith by the Lord and coming from the truth itself.

39.4| And whenever anyone came who had followed the elders, I would question him about what the elders had said: what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip, or Thomas or James, or John or Matthew, or any other disciple of the Lord; and the things that Aristion and the elder John, the Lord's disciples, are saying. For I did not suppose that what comes out of books would help me as much as what comes from a voice still living and still with us.

39.5| Here it is worth noting that he counts the name John twice. The first John he lists together with Peter, James, Matthew and the rest of the apostles, plainly meaning the evangelist. The other John he places, after a break in his sentence, among others outside the number of the apostles, putting Aristion ahead of him, and he clearly calls him an elder.

39.6| So these words also prove true the account of those who have said that two men in Asia bore the same name, and that there are two tombs in Ephesus, each of which is still called John's to this day. We must pay attention to this, for it is likely that it was the second John, unless someone prefers the first, who saw the Revelation that circulates under the name of John.

39.7| And Papias, whom we are now discussing, admits that he received the apostles' words from those who had followed them, but says that he himself heard Aristion and John the elder in person. At any rate he mentions them by name many times in his writings and sets down their traditions.

39.8| Let these remarks of ours not go for nothing. But it is worth adding to the sayings of Papias already cited some further passages of his, in which he records certain marvels and other things that reached him, as he says, by tradition.

39.9| That the apostle Philip lived at Hierapolis with his daughters has been shown above. But we must now note how Papias, who lived in their time, recalls that he received a wonderful story from Philip's daughters. He reports that in his day a dead man rose again, and also another marvel, concerning Justus surnamed Barsabbas: that after drinking a lethal poison he suffered no harm from it, through the Lord's grace.

39.10| This Justus, after the Saviour's ascension, the holy apostles put forward together with Matthias and prayed over, for the lot that would fill up their number in place of Judas the traitor, as the scripture of the Acts relates in these words: "And they presented two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who also had the surname Justus, and Matthias; and praying, they said."

39.11| The same writer has also set down other things that came to him, he says, through unwritten tradition: certain strange parables told by the Saviour, and teachings coming from him, and certain other matters of a rather more legendary kind.

39.12| Among these he asserts that after the resurrection from the dead a span of some thousand years will follow, during which the kingdom of Christ will be established bodily on this very earth. I think he took up these ideas by misreading the apostolic accounts, failing to see that what they said in figures was spoken in a mystical sense.

39.13| For he appears to have been a man of very small understanding, to judge from his own words. Yet he became responsible for the same opinion in a great many churchmen after him, who pointed to the man's antiquity: Irenaeus, for example, and anyone else who has come forward holding similar views.

39.14| In his own writing he also hands on other accounts of the Lord's words from Aristion, mentioned above, and traditions from John the elder. Referring those who are eager to learn to these, we must now add to his sayings already set out a tradition he records about Mark, who wrote the gospel, in these words:

39.15| "This too the elder used to say: Mark, who became Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, as much as he remembered, of the things either said or done by the Lord. He had not heard the Lord, nor had he followed him, but later, as I said, followed Peter, who used to shape his teaching to the needs of the moment, and not as if he were making an ordered arrangement of the Lord's sayings. So Mark made no mistake in writing some things down just as he recalled them. For he took care over one thing: to leave out nothing of what he had heard and to state nothing falsely in it."

39.16| This, then, is what Papias relates about Mark. About Matthew he says this: "Matthew, then, compiled the sayings in the Hebrew language, and each person translated them as best he could."

39.17| The same writer also makes use of testimonies taken from the first epistle of John, and in the same way from Peter's, and he sets out another account as well, concerning a woman who was accused before the Lord of many sins, which the Gospel according to the Hebrews contains. These things too must of necessity be noted by us, in addition to what has been set out.

Cite a passage by its number: every paragraph here has its own anchor (for example https://openscriptorium.com/read/eusebius/003-ecclesiastical-history-book-iii#p1), and the bracketed reference numbers link the same way.

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