HistoricalChristian.Faith

Eusebius of Caesarea on the Old Testament Canon

Dates: c. 320 (the Praeparatio Evangelica and Demonstratio Evangelica, c. 313–323; his Ecclesiastical History, which preserves Melito's and Origen's Old-Testament lists, reached its final edition c. 324; Eusebius was present at Nicaea in 325; c. 260 – c. 339) · Wikipedia
Summary: Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea and the father of church history, is the single figure who most embodies the era's canon-tension. He is the very channel through which the two great Hebrew-sized Old-Testament lists reach us — he transcribes Melito of Sardis's catalogue and Origen's "twenty-two, as the Hebrews have handed them down" in his Ecclesiastical History, the documentary backbone of the narrower-canon case. Yet in his own apologetic works he uses the disputed books as Scripture: he caps a quotation of the Wisdom of Solomon with "Thus the Scripture speaks," adduces the Greek Susanna as proof "from Scripture," and calls Baruch "inspired words." He draws up no Old-Testament canon-list of his own, so renders no personal verdict — but the contemporary who hands the church its sharpest Hebrew-canon evidence is, in his own practice, on the "using" side of the divide, the canonical-versus-read-in-the-churches distinction of his master Origen embodied in one man.

Claims & evidence

The transmitter of the Hebrew-sized lists

Eusebius is the sole source for the two earliest and most influential Christian witnesses to a Hebrew-sized Old Testament. In the Ecclesiastical History he quotes Melito of Sardis's catalogue verbatim (iv.26.13–14) — the earliest Christian Old-Testament list, in which Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Baruch, and the Maccabees are all absent — and Origen's enumeration of the books "as the Hebrews have handed them down… twenty-two, the number of the Hebrew letters" (vi.25.1–2).¹ Without Eusebius neither list would survive, and the Reformation's appeal to "the Fathers who counted the Hebrew canon" leans on his transcription. He records the lists approvingly, with no list of his own set against them — which is exactly what makes his own citation practice, below, so striking.

The Wisdom of Solomon, labelled "the Scripture"

In the Praeparatio Evangelica, arguing that the Hebrew sages had glimpsed the doctrine of a divine Wisdom or second cause, Eusebius strings together passages of "Solomon" and then a long extract of the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon (7:22–8:1), closing on Wisdom 8:1:

For she is a breath of the power of God, and a clear effluence of the glory of the Almighty… For she is an effulgence from everlasting light, and an unspotted mirror of the operation of God, and an image of His goodness… And she reacheth from end to end with full strength, and ordereth all things graciously.

Thus the Scripture speaks: but Philo the Hebrew, explaining the meaning of the doctrine more clearly, represents it in the manner following…

— Praeparatio Evangelica xi.14, trans. E. H. Gifford.² The connective "Thus the Scripture speaks" (ἡ μὲν γραφή) applies the bare label the Scripture to the deuterocanonical Wisdom — and the very next sentence ranks the inspired word above Philo's merely clearer human exposition. This is Eusebius writing in his own voice, not transcribing another, and it gives a disputed book the same standing-word he reserves for the protocanon.

Susanna adduced "from Scripture" for God's foreknowledge

Earlier in the same work, in the long discussion of fate, free will, and foreknowledge, the Greek addition to Daniel — the story of Susanna — is brought forward as scriptural proof that God knows all things before they happen:

But if it is necessary to prove this from Scripture also, the prophecies are full of examples of this kind, and so also is the description by Susanna of God as knowing all things before they come to pass, where she speaks as follows: "O God, the Eternal, the discerner of secrets, that knowest all things before they be, Thou understandest that these have borne false witness against me."

— Praeparatio Evangelica vi.11 (Susanna 42–43).³ One honest qualification belongs on this one: the passage falls within a long extract from Origen (the chapter is headed "From Origen") that Eusebius incorporates wholesale into the Praeparatio and plainly endorses — so here he is transmitting, with approval, his master's use of Susanna as Scripture rather than composing the argument himself. It is of a piece with his transmission role generally; but the Wisdom and Baruch citations carry more weight as his own.

Baruch as "inspired words" prophesying the incarnation

In the Demonstratio Evangelica, gathering Old-Testament prophecies that God would one day appear and dwell among men, Eusebius devotes a chapter to the deuterocanonical Baruch (3:29–37), whose climax is the verse "Afterward did he show himself upon earth, and conversed with men" (Baruch 3:38). The chapter heading and his comment on it read:

From Baruch. It is prophesied that the God of the Prophets, having laid down the Complete Way of Knowledge by the Mosaic Law to the Jews, will some day afterwards be seen on earth, and mingle among men. [Passage quoted, Baruch iii. 29–37.] I need add nothing to these inspired words, which so clearly support my argument.

— Demonstratio Evangelica vi.19, trans. W. J. Ferrar (the translation abbreviates the quoted Baruch passage with the bracketed note).⁴ He calls Baruch's words inspired and reads the book as a genuine prophecy of the incarnation — exactly as Hippolytus had read the same Baruch 3 a century earlier. The "using" formula could hardly be plainer: an inspired prophecy whose fulfillment he need only point to.

Notes

• The tension in one man. Eusebius is at once the church's great transmitter of the Hebrew-sized canon and a working user of the disputed books as Scripture. The two are not a contradiction but the very distinction Origen drew — between what the Hebrews enumerate as canonical and what the churches read as Scripture — and Eusebius inherits both halves from him. His placement on the timeline, beside Lactantius and on the eve of Nicaea, marks the moment when that double posture is most visible. The datapoint is weighed in the argument Did the early church reject the deuterocanon as Scripture?
• He published no Old-Testament canon-list. Unlike Athanasius or Cyril, Eusebius left no canon-catalogue of his own for the Old Testament — only the lists he transcribed from others — so he renders no formal "Yes" or "No." His witness is to practice: how a learned bishop on the threshold of Nicaea actually handled the disputed books in argument.
• His New-Testament sorting is a separate matter. Eusebius's famous threefold ranking of the New Testament books — accepted, disputed, rejected (Ecclesiastical History 3.25) — is treated on the companion Biblical Canon timeline; it is not re-argued here.

Sources