Eusebius the Evangelist by Jeremiah Coogan;

Author:Jeremiah Coogan;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press USA
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Poetic Geography

In depicting Eusebius as an evangelist, the Abba Gärima III Gospels invite us to consider how the Eusebian apparatus generates new possibilities for reading. Eusebius’ fourfold Gospel is underdetermined. Eusebius does not constrain the reader to a single sequence of reading or determine the relationship with history that a set of parallels might entail. The apparatus leaves manifold possibilities open.91 Yet recent scholarship may have overemphasized the openness of Eusebius’ project. The apparatus is directional in a vital way. By articulating parallels irreducible to a single historical sequence, Eusebius decenters history and synchrony from Gospel reading. By going beyond straightforward parallels, Eusebius opens rich new possibilities for Gospel reading.

Eusebius goes further than his predecessors in creating thematic connections between Gospel material. He aligns passages that differ in wording, geography, and chronology, thereby mapping novel literary and theological connections throughout the fourfold Gospel. Viewed alongside other late ancient configurations of Gospel material, the Eusebian apparatus is uniquely flexible in another way, too. By employing the novel technologies of the table and the table of contents, Eusebius preserves existing sequences of individual Gospel texts and juxtaposes multiple passages in complex sets of parallels. Earlier projects of Gospel rewriting—like those of Luke, Tatian, and Ammonius—organized Gospel material in a single sequence. Through tabular juxtaposition, Eusebius escapes the constraints of linearity, creating and amplifying resonances across the fourfold Gospel.

Eusebius rewrites the Gospels in order to afford new sequences and networks for reading—a new text (ὕφος). This literary and theological artistry goes beyond a mechanical process of cataloguing similar material. Eusebius combines the versatility of an innovative technological approach with a writerly sensibility that takes full advantage of these possibilities. His rewritten Gospels are a new kind of text, guiding the reader to discover τὰ παραπλήσια of the fourfold Gospel. Eusebius creates a “second, poetic geography on top of the geography of the literal.” Within this “poetic geography,” the “traces” of itineraries “insinuate other routes” of Gospel reading.92 In the fifth chapter of this book, I trace how subsequent readers followed these routes of Gospel reading.

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