著者

豊田 浩志

出版者

日本西洋古典学会

雑誌

西洋古典学研究 (ISSN:04479114)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, pp.92-101, 1991

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Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, is called the 'Father of Ecclesiastical History,' and rightly so His most important work, Historia Ecclesiastica (= HE) is an extremely rich collection of historical documents, quotations, and extracts from a multitude of early Cnurch writings HE can thus be called a monumental achievement of early Christian literature There are many doubts, however, as to the authenticity of Eusebius' sources A serious drawback to his reliability as a historian is the loose and uncritical way he handles his materials But this criticism has too commonly resulted in an excessive depreciation of his great contribution and has tended to obscure its true merits Even with due allowance made for such faults, the objective merit and value of his HE should be duly acknowledged and appreciated In his HE, Eusebius usually allows his quotations to speak for themselves He does his best to collect testimonies from writers who lived at the time of the events which he describes In such cases, we might safely suspect that the quotations or extracts are based on some pre-existing text and that their historical authenticity is remarkable Cases in which he relies only on oral tradition are more problematic, but so far, such cases have tended to be greatly underestimated by many scholars and have been regarded as in- authentic Having carefully reexamined Eusebius' HE, I suggest the following two points First, in HE, he creates a personal style the quotations are often preceded by introductions or paraphrases I would like to emphasize especially the importance of cases where he writes an anonymously introduced narrativefollowed by a quotation or brief summary, such paraphrase almost always being derived from a quotation from his main source If so, it is not necessary for us to question the historical authenticity of the anonymous narrative Second, this paper analyzes two typical formulae which Eusebius uses to introduce oral traditions in HE <katechei logos> (it is recorded) and <logos echei> (tradition says), and reconsiders the authenticity of Eusebius' sources Detailed examination of the 10 volumes of the HE shows that Eusebius uses these introductory formulae 24 times, all of which are found in the first 8 volumes Moreover, 17 of these 24 cases are accompanied by another verb Indeed, no doubt exists that 16 of the 17 supposedly reflect the existence of some documental authority In 5 of the remaining 7 cases, a similar conclusion can be drawn Thus, Eusebius' use of such typical introductory formulae suggests that, for the most part, his statements are based directly on written sources even if they seem to be presented in the form of oral tradition It can safely be said that he very seldom worked without some authentic source