Matthew R Crawford (2015) Ammonius of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea and the Origins of Gospels Scholarship New Testament Studies. 61, pp. 1-29 Cambridge University Press.
Abstract
In the early third and fourth centuries respectively, Ammonius of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea engaged in cutting-edge research on the relationships among the four canonical gospels. Indeed, these two figures stand at the head of the entire tradition of comparative literary analysis of the gospels. This article provides a more precise account of their contributions, as well as the relationship between the two figures.
It argues that Ammonius, who was likely the teacher of Origen, composed the first gospel synopsis by placing similar passages in parallel columns. He gave this work the title Diatessaron-Gospel, referring thereby to the four columns in which his text was laid out. This pioneering piece of scholarship drew upon a long tradition of Alexandrian textual scholarship and likely served as the inspiration for Origen’s more famous Hexapla.
A little over a century later, Eusebius of Caesarea picked up where Ammonius left off and attempted to accomplish the same goal, albeit using a different and improved method. Using the textual parallels presented in the Diatessaron-Gospel* as his ‘raw data’, Eusebius converted these textual units into numbers which he then collated in ten tables, or ‘canons’, standing at the beginning of a gospel book. The resulting cross-reference system, consisting of the Canon Tables as well as sectional enumeration throughout each gospel, allowed the user to find parallels between the gospels, but in such a way that the literary integrity of each of the four was preserved. Moreover, Eusebius also exploited the potential of his invention by including theologically suggestive cross-references, thereby subtly guiding the reader of the fourfold gospel to what might be called a canonical reading of the four.
- * "no copy survives and, as a result, our only knowledge of it is the short description provided by Eusebius"
1. The Diatessaron-Gospel of Ammonius of Alexandria
1.1 Who was Ammonius?
in his Letter to Carpianus, "..the Caesarean historian lays out the origin and function of his system of Canon Tables. Here Eusebius gives no further details about his predecessor beyond the fact that he was from Alexandria (Ἀμμώνιος ὁ Ἀλεξανδρεύς)." [Eusebius, Carp. (NA28 89*).
"in his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius ...mentions an Alexandrian Ammonius who composed, among other works, a treatise titled On the Harmony of Moses and Jesus (Περὶ τῆς Μωυσέως καὶ Ἰησοῦ συμφωνίας). This Ammonius, the historian tells us, was ‘highly esteemed among many’ (παρὰ τοῖς πλείστοις εὐδοκιμοῦντος), and his works were still in circulation among the ‘scholarly’ (παρὰ τοῖς φιλοκάλοις) in the early fourth century.4
"Jerome ... gave a brief notice of Ammonius in his De viris illustribus"
- 4 HE 6.19.10 (G. Bardy, Eusèbe de Césarée: Histoire ecclésiastique, livres v–vii (SC 41; Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1955))
It has been suggested that a passage in Eusebius’ own Demonstratio evangelica draws upon this lost work of Ammonius on Jesus and Moses:-
Cf. J. E. Bruns, ‘The “Agreement of Moses and Jesus” in the “Demonstratio Evangelica” of Eusebius’, Vigiliae Christianae 31 (1977) 117-25.
The dominant trend in scholarship has been to interpret Porphyry’s statement to mean that Origen was a student of the Platonist Ammonius Saccas, who also taught Plotinus, and that Eusebius simply confused the Christian Ammonius with the pagan philosopher.
If this line of thinking is correct, then there is little more we can say about our Ammonius in the way of a more precise date. Theodor Zahn, representing this position, asserted that Eusebius spoke of Ammonius as someone who had neither died recently nor been in the distant past, and so placed his literary activity in the years 240–80 CE, making him a younger contemporary of Origen, who died in the mid 250s. If, however, Eusebius was correct that the Ammonius who Porphyry says was Origen’s philosophical teacher composed these two works, then there are at least two other possibilities. It may be, as Elizabeth Digeser has recently argued, that Ammonius Saccas himself dabbled in Christian topics and so was responsible for the Diatessaron-Gospel, though no other ancient sources make any mention of such literary activities. In her reading, the harmonising intent of Ammonius’ two Christian works aligns well with later reports that attribute to Ammonius Saccas the achievement of harmonising Plato and Aristotle.
Alternatively, as Mark Edwards has pointed out, there is also multiple attestation for a further Ammonius besides Ammonius Saccas the Platonist, and this additional figure was regarded as a Peripatetic. The Peripatetic Ammonius, who was also praised by Longinus for his great philosophical learning, must have flourished in the last decades of the second century, and so would have been an older contemporary of Origen and could have served as his teacher.
As stated already, it is beyond the scope of this article to settle this debate, if it is even possible to do so with final certainty. Moreover, on any of the above solutions the main conclusions of this article should hold true, since any of the proposed Ammonii would have been a contemporary of Origen, and, as I shall argue below, Origen’s Hexapla provides us with the closest parallel for Ammonius’ Diatessaron-Gospel, illuminating the format and the scholarly context of this work. For my purposes the question then simply becomes one of priority.
If Eusebius confused two distinct individuals, then the Christian Ammonius was perhaps later than Origen and the Diatessaron-Gospel may have been modelled on the earlier Hexapla. If, on the other hand, Eusebius was correct that Origen’s instructor in philosophy also composed Christian works, then it is more likely that Ammonius’ gospels scholarship provided an impetus for Origen’s text-critical work. I am sympathetic with Edwards’ point that Eusebius had access to a great deal more sources, especially about Origen’s life and career, than we do, and that we should trust his report unless there are good reasons not to do so. For this reason I incline to the view that Origen’s teacher composed the Diatessaron-Gospel, whether this was the Peripatetic or the Platonist Ammonius, and will proceed on this basis.
1.2 Eusebius’ Description in the Letter to Carpianus
It is significant that when Eusebius came to describe his system of Canon Tables, he did so by situating his project in the tradition going back to Ammonius ...
- τὸ διὰ τεσσάρων ἡμῖν καταλέλοιπεν εὐαγγέλιον, τῷ κατὰ Ματθαῖον τὰς ὁμοφώνους τῶν λοιπῶν εὐαγγελιστῶν περικοπὰς παραθείς
He has left behind for us the Diatessaron-Gospel, having placed alongside the [Gospel] according to Matthew the sections from the other evangelists that agree [with those of Matthew].
2. The Canon Tables of Eusebius of Caesarea
2.1. The Occasion of Eusebius’ Creation
... In brief, Eusebius’ contribution to the study of gospel relationships was a system comprising three elements, each a necessary component. First, at the head of the four gospels, as a kind of preface, stood his Letter to Carpianus,which gave an account ofthe origins of the system, and succinct directions for its use. Second, the text of each gospel was divided into a series of sections, some less than a sentence in length, others extending for whole chapters or more. These sections were numbered individually within each gospel, and their length was determined by the presence or absence of related material from the other gospels. This distinction is important. These sections do not correspond to sense units, in the manner of the κεφάλαια or chapter headings, but are instead of greatly varying lengths, from individual phrases to what would be more than a single chapter in today’s reckoning. Finally, these sections were collated at the beginning of the codex in ten tables, or canons, showing the passages that have parallels among four, three and two gospels, and finally those passages that are distinct to each gospel. What Eusebius created, in short, was the earliest known system of cross-references. We can identify three factors that prompted the creation and propagation of this innovative system. The first is Eusebius’ interest in exploiting the potential of the codex for novel ways of presenting complex material. This is a theme of his work that has been explored most recently by Grafton and Williams, who aptly describe the Caesarean bishop as ‘a Christian impresario of the codex’....
The second factor behind the creation and propagation of Eusebius’ gospel canons is his relationship with Constantine. Carl Nordenfalk long ago associated the Canon Tables with Constantine’s request, at some point in the 330s, for ‘fifty volumes…copies, that is, of the divine Scriptures’(σωμάτια...τῶνθείωνδηλαδὴ γραφῶν) for churches in the imperial capital. This request, of course, is unclear regarding what kind of books the emperor desired, whether gospel codices or whole Bible pandects, but in either case there can be no doubt that at least some of the manuscripts contained the four gospels. It is unlikely that Eusebius would have drawn up the Canon Tables for the first time for these copies, since their creation would have been a complex undertaking that would have hampered the speed with which the bishop could comply with the imperial request ...
2.2 The Relation of Eusebius’s Canons to Ammonius’ Diatessaron-Gospel
The third factor which provided the impetus for the creation of the Canon Tables was the prior work of Ammonius, as Eusebius himself says in his Letter to Carpianus. Though he praises Ammonius’ industriousness and acknowledges his own debt to him, he points out that due to the method employed by the Alexandrian,
- ὡς ἐξ ἀνάγκης συμβῆναι τὸντ ῆς ἀκολουθίας εἱρμὸντ ῶν τριῶν διαφθαρῆναι ὅσον ἐπὶ τῷὕ φει τῆς ἀναγνώσεως.
the unavoidable result was that the continuous thread of the other three was destroyed, preventing the reading of the context.
