Alex Poulos of the Catholic University of America has kindly translated for us the text of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Commentary on Luke. Here it is:
- Eusebius-Commentary_on_Luke-2017 (PDF)
- Eusebius-Commentary_on_Luke-2017 (Word .docx)
I have also added it to Archive.org here. As ever, I place these in the public domain. Use them in any way you like.
The “work” itself is a wee bit bogus. It was created by Angelo Mai by combining all the bits of Nicetas of Serrae’s Catena on Luke where the author is given as “Eusebius”. It is most unlikely that all of these are Eusebius of Caesarea. It is possible that none of them are. All the same, the work is listed in the CPG as 4369, and so it is worth making available!
Eleventh century and before is still reasonably old. And since I can’t read all this cool stuff that’s in Greek, it is always nice to read translations from the “other lung” of the Church.
Glad you liked it!
There’s a recent article by A. Whealey on the authorship of these commentary fragments. He starts with a helpful history of scholarship: Cardinal Mai (1847) and Eduard Schwartz (1957), noticing that the Greek remnants of Eusebius’ Theophania contain passages not in the Syriac, surmise there was a second, expanded edition of the work, and argue our Lucan fragments are drawn from that expanded text; Wallace-Hadrill (1974; link) conjectured our fragments are excerpts from the tenth book of one of Eusebius’ lost early works, the Generalis elementaria introductio, since books 6–9 of the work (which circulated separately as the Eclogae Propheticae) are likewise exegetical; Timothy Barnes (1981) combined these suggestions, arguing that both the second, expanded edition of the Theophania and our Lucan fragments were originally part of the tenth book of the Generalis elementaria introductio.
Whealey (2013) rejects each of these solutions in turn. He argues the longer fragments are probably excerpts of Eusebius of Emesa’s homilies on the Gospels, and were assigned to Eusebius of Caesarea because the two share a name. The shorter fragments, he says, are of mixed origin. A few (on Luke 1:5, 1:32, 8:43, and 9:47) resemble passages in Eusebius, but these on closer scrutiny are shown actually to be from reworkings of Eusebius by some later writer. In the case of the fragment on Luke 1:5, that later writer can be identified as Procopius of Gaza. Many of the fragments really do sound Eusebian, but none of them parallel a known Eusebian work.
Also, a sidenote: Aaron P. Johnson contributed a chapter to the open access edited volume, Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations consisting of a translation of and commentary on the Transfiguration fragments (Luke 9:28, 9:35). [link]
Great work Roger!
Ted: thank you for this very useful information, FYI I believe “A. Whealey” is a woman.
Whoops! Thanks, Tom.
Very useful extra info – thank you!
Roger, l found the other day on the web page academia.edu. a translation of Evagrius of Pontus scholia on Proverbs by Justin Gohl.He just completed this translation in October 2017. A very good scholia on Proverbs. There are not really any completed commentary on Proverbs in English from the early greek fathers. A good insight on the thought of Origen. Thanks, Darren