Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
successors of Origen in the school of Alexandria the most celebrated, from about A.D. 232, was Dionysius Alexandrinus [of Alexandria]. He was raised to the rank of bishop in A.D. 247, and died in A.D. 265. In speculative power he was inferior to his teacher Origen. His special gift was that of κυβέρνησις. He was honoured by his own contemporaries with the title of The Great. During the Decian persecution he manifested wisdom and good sense as well as courage and steadfastness. The ecclesiastical conflicts of his age afforded abundant opportunities for testing his noble and gentle character, as well as his faithful attachment to the church and zeal for the purity of its doctrine, and on all hands his self-denying amiability wrought in the interests of peace. Of his much-praised writings, exegetical, ascetical, polemical (Περὶ ἐπαγγελιῶν § 33, 9), apologetical (Περὶ φύσεως against the Atomism of Democritus and Epicurus), and dogmatical (§ 33, 7), only fragments are preserved, mostly from his Epistles in quotations by Eusebius. We have, however, one short tract complete addressed to Novatian at Rome (§ 31, 12), containing an earnest entreaty that he should abandon his schismatic rigorism.
2 Gregory Thaumaturgus was one of Origen’s pupils at Cæsarea. Origen was the means of converting the truth-seeking heathen youth to Christianity, and Gregory clung to his teacher with the warmest affection. He subsequently became bishop of his native city of Neo-Cæsarea, and was able on his death-bed in A.D. 270 to comfort himself with the reflection that he left to his successor no more unbelievers in the city than his predecessor had left him of believers (their number was seventeen). He was called the second Moses and the power of working miracles was ascribed to him. We have from his pen a panegyric on Origen, an Epistle on Church Discipline, a Μετάφρασις εἰς Ἐκκλησιάστην, a Confession of Faith important for the history of the Ante-Nicene period (§ 50, 1): Ἔκθεσις πίστεως. Two other tracts in a Syrian translation are ascribed to him: To Philagrius on Consubstantiality, and To Theopompus on the Passibility of God. Dräseke, however, identifies the first-named with Oratio 45 of Gregory Nazianzus [Nazianzen] and assigns to him the authorship.77
3 The learned presbyter Pamphilus of Cæsarea, the friend of Eusebius (§ 47, 2) and founder of a theological seminary and the celebrated library of Cæsarea, who died as a martyr under Maximinus, belongs to this group. His Old Testament Commentaries have been lost. In prison he finished his work in five books which he undertook jointly with Eusebius, the Apology for Origen, to which Eusebius independently added a sixth book. Only the first book is preserved in Rufinus’ Latin translation.
§ 31.7. Greek-speaking Church Teachers in other Quarters.
1 Hegesippus wrote his five books Ὑπομνήματα, about A.D. 180, during the age of the Roman bishop Eleutherus. From his knowledge of the Hebrew language, literature and traditions Eusebius concludes that he was a Jew by birth. He himself says distinctly that in A.D. 155 during the time of bishop Anicetus he was staying in Rome, and that on his way thither he visited Corinth. The opinion formerly current that his Hypomnemata consisted of a collection of historical traditions from the time of the Apostles down to the age of the writer, and so might be called a sort of Church History, arose from the historical character of the contents of eight quotations made from this treatise by Eusebius in his own Church History. It is, however, not borne out by the fact that what Hegesippus tells in his detailed narrative of the end of James the Just (§ 16, 3) occurs, not in the first or second but in the fifth and last book of his treatise. Moreover, among writers against the heretics or Gnostics, Eusebius enumerates in the first place one Hegesippus, having it would seem his Hypomnemata in view. From this circumstance, in conjunction with everything else quoted from and told about him by Eusebius, we may with great probability conclude that the purpose of his writing was to confute the heresies of his age. In doing so he traces them partly to Gentile sources, but partly and mainly to pre-Christian Jewish heresies, seven of which are enumerated. He treats in the first three books of the so-called Gnostics and their relations to heathenism and false Judaism. Then in the fourth book he discusses the heretical Apocrypha and, as contrasted with them, the orthodox ecclesiastical writings, mentioning among them expressly the Epistle of Clemens [Clement] Romanus [of Rome] to the Corinthians. Finally, in the fifth book, he proves from the Apostolic succession of the leaders of the church, the unity and truth of ecclesiastically transmitted doctrine. The historical value of his writing, owing to the confusion and want of critical power shown in the instances referred to, cannot be placed very high. The school of Baur, more particularly Schwegler (see § 20), attached greater importance to him as a supposed representative of the anti-Pauline Judaism of his time. The value of his testimony in this direction, however, is reduced by his acknowledgment of the Epistle of Clement that accords so high a place to the Apostle Paul. His relations to Rome and Corinth, with his judgment on the general unity of faith in the church of his age, prove that he would be by no means disposed to repudiate the Apostle Paul in favour of any Ebionitic tendency.
2 Caius of Rome, a contemporary of bishop Zephyrinus about A.D. 210, was one of the most conspicuous opponents of Montanism. Eusebius who characterizes him as ἀνὴρ ἐκκλησιαστικός and λογιώτατος, quotes four times from his now lost controversial tract in dialogue form against Proclus the Roman Montanist leader.
§ 31.8.
1 Sextus Julius Africanus, according to Suidas a native of Libya, took part, as he says himself in his Κεστοῖς, in the campaign of Septimius Severus against Osrhoëne in A.D. 195, became intimate with the Christian king Maanu VIII. of Edessa, whom in his Chronographies he calls ἱερὸς ἀνὴρ, and was often companion in hunting to his son and successor Maanu IX. About A.D. 220 we find him, according to Eusebius and others, in Rome at the head of an embassy from Nicopolis or Emmaus in Palestine petitioning for the restoration of that city. In consequence of Origen addressing him about A.D. 227 as ἀγαπητὸς ἀδελφός it has been rashly concluded that he was then a presbyter or at least of clerical rank. The five books, Χρονογραφίαι, were his first and most important work. This work which was known partly in the original, partly in the citations from it in the Eusebian Chronicle (§ 47, 2), together with its Latin continuation by Jerome proved a main source of information in general history during the Byzantine period and the Latin Middle Age. Beginning with the creation of the world and fixing the whole course of the world’s development at 6,000 years, he set the middle point of this period to the age of Peleg (Gen. x. 25), and in accordance with the chronology of the LXX. and reckoning by Olympiads, proceeded to synchronize biblical and profane history. He assigned the birth of Christ to the middle of the sixth of the thousand year periods, at the close of which he probably expected the beginning of the millennium. From the fragments preserved by later Byzantine chroniclers, Gelzer has attempted to reproduce as far as possible the original work, carefully indicating its sources and authorities. Of the other works of Africanus we have in a complete form only an Epistle to Origen, “a real gem of brilliant criticism spiced with a gentle touch of fine irony” (Gelzer), which combats the authenticity and credibility of the Pseudo-Daniel’s history of Susannah. We have also a fragment quoted in Eusebius from an Epistle to a certain Aristides, which attempts a reconciliation of the genealogies in Matt. and Luke by distinguishing παῖδες νόμῳ and παῖδες φύσει with reference to Deut. xxv. 5. According to Eusebius “the chronologist Julius Africanus,” according to Suidas “Origen’s friend Africanus with the prænomen Sextus,” is also the author of the so called Κεστοί (embroidery), a great comprehensive work of which only fragments have been preserved, in which all manner of wonderful things from the life of nature and men, about agriculture, cattle breeding, warfare, etc., were recorded, so that it had the secondary title Παράδοξα. The excessive details of pagan superstition here reported, much of which, such as that relating to the secret worship of Venus, was distinctly immoral, and its dependence on the secret writings of the Egyptians seem now as hard to reconcile with the standpoint of a believing Christian, as with the sharpness of intellect shown in his criticism of the letter of Susannah. It has therefore been assumed that alongside of the Christian chronologist Julius Africanus there was a pagan Julius Africanus who wrote the Κεστοί—or, seeing the identity of the two is strongly evidenced both on internal and external grounds, the composition of