Eusebius of Caesarea: Praeparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel). Tr. E.H. Gifford (1903) -- Preface to the online edition

E.H.Gifford published his massive edition and translation in 5 volumes in 1903.  Vol. 1 and vol. 2 contained the Greek.  Vol. 3 was split into two physical volumes -- part 1 and part 2.  This contained the English translation that appears here.  Vol. 4 was the last, and contained the notes, mainly philological.  The English translation was also reprinted separately.  This remains the only English translation.

His edition has been superceded by that of Karl Mras, Eusebius Werke 8, in the 'Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller' series 43 Berlin (1954-6).  This text is reprinted by the French editors J. Sirinelli and Edouard des Places in the Sources Chrétiennes series.  Sirinelli &c. also included a French translation.

At the head of each book stands a summary, formatted in this edition as a table of contents.  These are found in most of the manuscripts, and are generally considered to be authorial by editors such as K. Mras or J. Sirinelli.  In the medieval manuscripts, the text is divided into chapters and excerpts from the summary placed at the head of each 'chapter' as a chapter title.  It is very hard to find definite information, but the division into chapters is probably later than Eusebius, as is the creation of the chapter titles.  The works of St. Augustine, for instance, were divided into chapters in the 6th century, and an early 5th century manuscript of his De Civitate Dei, from Africa, and quite likely from his own scriptorium, has none.  (Augustine did however compose summaries of the contents, which circulated separately.)  As may be seen from book 1, even in Gifford's version, the chapter divisions do not in fact match the numbered sentences in the summaries, again indicating that the division in chapters is later than the author of the summaries.

The Praeparatio is perhaps best known from a narrow-minded attempt by Edward Gibbon in his Vindication to use it to 'prove' that Eusebius advocated deceit.  The smear needs little discussion here. While Gibbon would like us to believe that Eusebius is really saying in book 12, chapter 31 that the bible is a lie so deceit is fine, some will feel that instead that it is simply part of his theme that the bible contains narrative fiction in order to get conceptually difficult truths into the uneducated.  The reader is invited to read all of book 12 and decide for themselves.  

There is one problem with the translation, which is as annoying as unnecessary.  For some reason, Gifford did not always translate the summaries literally, but felt free to add to them, combine, abbreviate or alter them, in order to use them as table of contents himself.  Possibly this is because the Greek numbers in the summaries do not align with the chapter divisions.  He did not however place them in the text as per the manuscripts, as is done in Mras and Sirinelli.  

To illustrate the sort of changes Gifford made, I have rendered as literally as I can from Sirinelli's French translation the Greek summary of book 1 (which is divided into 10 chapters) as follows:

It would be useful if someone with more Greek than myself would translate these again, to replace the defective versions in Gifford, particularly since both Mras and Sirinelli suggest that they may be by Eusebius himself.

Gifford also used Gibbon's mistranslation of pseudos as 'falsehood' in the entry and text of book 12, chapter 31.  The word is rendered 'fiction' in R.G. Bury's Loeb edition (1967, book 2, 663D-E, p.125) of Plato's Laws, which seems to fit the sense better, unless we are to suppose Eusebius to mean that the Hebrew scriptures contain intentional falsehoods!  Modern readers will be aware of the difference between a lie and a piece of educational fiction, but the confusion is not uncommon among uneducated people, even today.

The manuscripts are discussed in detail by Mras.  These are the extant manuscripts.

There are thus two classes of manuscript: A, supplemented by H; and on the other hand BOVND, with B transitional.

There are also substantial citations in Theodoret, Græcarum affectionum curatio (Remedy for the diseases of the Greeks).  These vary between the two families.  George Trapezuntios made a Latin translation.  The earliest known edition is from Venice in 1470 via Nicolaus Jenson.  This seems to be based on I or j.   D and E were the basis of the Robert Stephanus edition of 1544.  

The process of converting the printed text to HTML was somewhat awkward.  Gifford used the format favoured by the Oxford Movement translations of the 1840's, with much use of the margin, and introduced some innovations himself.  

The page numbers of vols. 3 and 4 are very small, and Gifford himself ignores them.  Instead he placed the page numbers of the Greek in the margin, together with the division of the page into four sections, labelled a, b, c and d, also in the margin.  The footnotes appear at the bottom of the page, and use the Greek page number, section, and line number of the printed text.  Thus 123 c 11 would be the 11th line after the marginal 'c' following the 'p.123' in the margin.

For an online edition, these reference points would be almost impossible to transcribe.  They have been omitted.  Instead convention footnote numbers have been created, and linked to the notes which have been necessarily moved to the end.  Usually Gifford's ref. is preserved, however.

The majority of the work consists of large near-verbatim chunks copied from pagan philosophers.  Often these are now lost, which gives the work its value.  Gifford set these in a slightly smaller font-size, so that Eusebius' comments stood out.  The citations also are in single quotes.  I have been unable to find a format which works online as well, so the citations are in the same size font.  

Gifford also placed at the head of each page, in the margin the name of the current philosopher in capitals, and often when a new one was introduced.  This has been represented by using [PLATO] etc at the start of a new chunk of text, as seemed appropriate.

The edition is around 1000 pages, and has been very hard to scan.  Peter Kirby and I have been discussing the idea for a couple of years, without result.  My own attempt to scan book 12 ground to a halt, as the format chosen was too difficult for the time available.  The project got off the ground a few months ago when Peter scanned the introduction, and then book 1 with selected embedded footnotes, then 3, 5, and 6.  In response I started to work on scanning other books, starting with 2 and 4, evolving a format as we went, and reformatted or added footnotes to his books. Unfortunately we had neglected to keep in touch as closely as we might, and both of us did book 5.  

In most books, every footnote has been included.  In some of those books done first, some biblical references have been omitted, and this is indicated by the legend 'selected footnotes.'  The order of scanning was 1-6, then 15 down to 7.  I entered Greek text using the SPIonic font with polytonic accents *; Peter in unicode without accents.  

Roger PEARSE
Ipswich
19th July 2003

* Note: all the SpIonic has been converted to unicode with accents. RP. 14th November 2005.

Bibliography

K. MRAS, Eusebius Werke: Achter Band. Die Praeparatio Evangelica. Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 21. Berlin (1954).  Very detailed lists of MSS, including lists of books containing facsimiles of the pages.
J. SIRINELLI and É. des PLACES, Eusèbe du Césarée: La Préparation Évangélique. Sources Chrétiennes 206. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, (1974).

This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, Ipswich, UK, 2003.  All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.

Greek text is rendered using unicode.