The literary corpus of Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339) boasts a diversified learning that has few patristic equivalents. Most readers will be familiar with the Ecclesiastical history and perhaps the panegyrical literature on Constantine. The eleven papers presented here (and first delivered at a 2008 symposium in Brussels) deal mainly not with those much-studied works but with what the editors call ‘the other Eusebius’, meaning his prolific exegetical and apologetic production. The past dozen years have seen an explosion of monographs and articles on Eusebius, several of them written by the very able international team of (mostly younger) contributors to the present volume. (Another and larger such reconnaissance has been underway for the past three years in sessions on Eusebius at the Society of Biblical Literature's annual meetings, organised by Aaron Johnson, who contributed to the volume under review an illuminating paper on Eusebius' pedagogy in his little-studied General elementary introduction.) In particular the papers by Sébastien Morlet, Sabrina Inowlocki and Claudio Zamagni build on their substantial monographs, the first two on (respectively) Eusebius' twin apologies The proof of the Gospel and The preparation for the Gospel, the last on the extant remains of Eusebius' Questions and responses on the Gospels. Morlet's paper continues his campaign to free Eusebius’ interpreters from their unwarranted fixation on Porphyry. Of the only two papers that focus immediately on the Constantinian settlement, one deals with liturgy and the other with architecture: Mark DelCogliano's analysis of Eusebius' fragmentary treatise On the feast of Pascha (which adds a first-ever English translation) deals with the other occasion for the calling of the Council of Nicaea, the controversy over the date of Easter. Jeremy Schott's study of Eusebius' panegyric on the rebuilt cathedral of Tyre (EH 10.4) offers an ‘exegesis’ of his account of the church as if the church itself were a kind of text. A central theme in the collection is Eusebius' importance as an agent in his own right (Oded Irshai on Eusebius as a Palestinian bishop; Johnson on him as a teacher; and Elizabeth Penland on him as the director of a philosophical school) and as a true author and not a mere compiler (convincingly argued by both Morlet and Inowlocki). The whole collection is nicely bookended with a review of the archaeology of Caesarea by Joseph Patrich (enriched by fourteen photos and maps), and William Alder's account of the place of Alexander Polyhistor in The preparation for the Gospel. Not all readers will appreciate the theoretical baggage that weighs down some of the papers. The audience will be scholars of late antiquity (including classics) and of early Christianity. Libraries with research collections will want to own it; the price means that few others will be able to.
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