Church History 2.3.2 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: Great churches arose everywhere as people, freed from idolatry, confessed the one Creator God.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:49–50

καὶ δῆτα ἀνὰ πάσας τὰς πόλεις τε καὶ κώμας, πληθυούσης ἅλωνος δίκην, μυρίανδροι καὶ παμπληθεῖς ἀθρόως ἐκκλησίαι συνειστηκεσαν, οἴ τε ἐκ προγόνων διαδοχῆς καὶ τῆς ἀνέ- καθεν πλάνης παλαιᾷ νόσῳ δεισιδαιμονίας εἰδώλων τὰς ψυχὰς πεπεδημένοι, πρὸς τῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ δυνάμεως διὰ τῆς τῶν φοιτητῶν αὐτοῦ διδασκαλίας τε ὁμοῦ καὶ παραδοξοποιίας ὥσπερ δεινῶν δεσποτῶν ἀπηλλαγμένοι, εἱργμῶν τε χαλεπωτάτων λύσιν εὑράμενοι, πάσης μὲν δαιμονικῆς κατέπτυον πολυθεΐας, ἕνα δὲ μόνον εἶναι θεὸν ὡμολόγουν τὸν τῶν συμπάντων δημιουργὸν, τοῦτόν τε αὐτὸν θεσμοῖς ἀληθοῦς εὐσεβείας διʼ ἐνθέου καὶ σώφρονος θρησκείας τῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν τῷ τῶν ἀνθρώπων βίῳ κατασπαρείσης ἐγέραιρον.

English · Claude translation

And indeed throughout all the cities and villages, like a teeming threshing-floor, churches of thousands, of vast numbers, were suddenly formed. Those whose souls had been fettered by the ancient disease of idolatrous superstition, by ancestral succession and the error of old, were set free by the power of Christ through the teaching and the wonderful works of his disciples, as from cruel masters, and found release from the harshest bonds; they spat on all demonic polytheism and confessed that there is only one God, the maker of all things, and honoured him with the rites of true piety through the inspired and sober worship which our Saviour had sown in human life.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:49–50 · Wilhelm Dindorf, ed., Eusebii Caesariensis Opera, vol. 4: Historiae ecclesiasticae libri I–X (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871) · Greek text: W. Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Dindorf, Eusebii Opera 4. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Teubner, 1871); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 1 (1890) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.3.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/2/3/2/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.3.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/2/3/2/).