Sophia Scriptura

Church History 6.19.4

Eusebius of Caesarea · Church History · ca. 300–325 · Caesarea · Read in context

Summary: Porphyry: Christians rescue the Jewish Scriptures by turning their plain sense into allegorical mysteries.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:262

ἄκουε δʼ οὖν ἅ φησι κατὰ λέξιν “τῆς δὴ “μοχθηρίας τῶν Ἰουδαϊκῶν γραφῶν οὐκ ἀπόστασιν, “λύσιν δέ τινες εὑρεῖν προθυμηθέντες, ἐπʼ ἐξηγή- ‘σεις ἐτράποντο ἀσυγκλώστους καὶ ἀναρμόστους τοῖς “γεγραμμένοις, οὐκ ἀπολογίαν μᾶλλον ὑπὲρ τῶν “ὀθνείων, παραδοχὴν δὲ καὶ ἔπαινον τοῖς οἰκείοις ‘φερούσας. αἰνίγματα γὰρ τὰ φανερῶς παρὰ Μωυσεῖ ῾λεγόμενα εἶναι κομπάσαντες, καὶ ἐπιθειάσαντες ὡς θεσπίσματα πλήρη κρυφίων μυστηρίων, διά τε τοῦ “τύφου τὸ κριτικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς καταγοητεύσαντες, ἐπάγουσιν ἐξηγήσεις.”

English · Claude translation

Hear, then, what he says word for word: “Some, eager to find not a way of abandoning the wretchedness of the Jewish Scriptures but a solution of it, turned to interpretations incoherent and inconsistent with what is written, which offer not so much a defence of the foreign as acceptance and praise of their own. For boasting that the things said plainly by Moses are riddles, and treating them as divine oracles full of hidden mysteries, and bewitching the critical faculty of the soul by their conceit, they bring in interpretations.”

About this passage

Source
Dindorf 4:262 · 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)
Extrabiblical texts
  • Porphyry, Porphyry, Chr. (Porphyry, Against the Christians (fragments)) · quotation, high confidence
Topics
Scripture and canon

Notes

Translation notes

  • Quotation from Porphyry, Against the Christians, Book 3 (to 6.19.8).

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.19.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/6/19/4/).

Plain text
Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.19.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/6/19/4/).

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