AJR is pleased to host the #SBLAAR2022 review panel of Jeremiah Coogan's Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2022). This book review panel took place at the annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature in Denver, Colorado, on November 19, 2022. It was hosted by the new Program Unit, “Ancient Education: Social, Intellectual, Material Contexts.” The panelists included Paul Dilley (University of Iowa), Marion Pragt (KU Leuven), Monika Amsler (University of Bern), and Jennifer Wright Knust (Duke University). One of the organizers of the panel, Robert Edwards (University of Göttingen), introduced the book and the purpose of the panel.
Eusebius the Evangelist: Introduction
While this book is thus about the ordering of knowledge in late antiquity, it is, more specifically, a study of something called the “Eusebian Apparatus,” a complex set of cross-references of the four Gospels, developed by Eusebius, the bishop of Palestinian Caesarea in the early fourth century.
Five Initial Thoughts on Eusebius the Evangelist
by Paul Dilley
I’d like to begin by congratulating Professor Coogan for writing a remarkable book. Eusebius the Evangelist has much to recommend it as a work of basic research. It builds on current scholarship related to the Eusebian Canons, including much recent work of quality, while bringing a fresh perspective based on a sophisticated approach to the material text. The book also offers us a heightened sense of the historical antecedents for Eusebius’s project, on the one hand, and its later reception, on the other.
Syriac scribes sometimes compared the practice of copying a manuscript to painting, highlighting the intensity of the creation process and the use of paint in many different colors. With Eusebius the Evangelist, Professor Jeremiah Coogan offers a vivid and illuminating portrayal of the Eusebian apparatus and its manifold afterlives.
Eusebius, the Evangelist, and the Rabbinic Mapping of Knowledge
It is another example for the irony of life: After having decided in my undergrad studies that learning how to use the apparatus in the Nestlé-Aland edition of the Greek New Testament was utterly boring, its sheer presence distracting, and unnecessarily complicating what previously appeared to be a simple text, I suddenly found myself admiring the person who invented it while reading Coogan’s book.
Similar Things: Reflections On Eusebius The Evangelist
As Jeremiah Coogan shows in his wonderful new book, Eusebius did not simply invent a clever way of pulling the fourfold Gospels into a harmonious whole, he also transformed them into something else entirely and was therefore an evangelist. Eusebius created a new way to put the Gospels to use; his apparatus “affords” particular readings and therefore shapes meaning in ways that have impacted Gospel transmission since the moment of the apparatus’s introduction.
Poetic Geography: Reading Eusebius’ Fourfold Gospel
I am grateful to each of my interlocutors in this forum for their generous engagement with Eusebius the Evangelist.