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Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea
When early Christians began to study the Bible, and to write their own history and that of the Jews whom they claimed to supersede, they used scholarly methods invented by the librarians and literary critics of Hellenistic Alexandria. But Origen and Eusebius, two scholars of late Roman Caesarea, did far more. Both produced new kinds of books, in which parallel columns made possible critical comparisons previously unenvisioned, whether between biblical texts or between national histories. Eusebius went even farther, creating new research tools, new forms of history and polemic, and a new kind of library to support both research and book production. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book combines broad-gauged synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books and the ways of organizing scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea, on the coast of Roman Palestine. The book explores the dialectical relationship between intellectual history and the history of the book, even as it expands our understanding of early Christian scholarship. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book attends to the social, religious, intellectual, and institutional contexts within which Origen and Eusebius worked, as well as the details of their scholarly practices--practices that, the authors argue, continued to define major sectors of Christian learning for almost two millennia and are, in many ways, still with us today.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2006
10 people are currently reading
162 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Grafton
105 books63 followersAnthony Thomas Grafton is an American historian of early modern Europe and the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, where he is also the Director the Program in European Cultural Studies. He is also a corresponding fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Balzan Prize. From January 2011 to January 2012, he served as the President of the American Historical Association. From 2006 to 2020, Grafton was co-executive editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 6, 2018
In this interesting little book, Anthony Grafton and Megan Williams write about a particular piece of Christian history: the Roman city of Caesarea (in modern day Palestine) around the third and fourth century A.D. More particularly, the book traces the lives of three key figures - Origen, Pamphilus and Eusebius - who transformed the way books, and especially the Bible, were produced and read. The book itself is an academic work, so prepare to come across textual analysis and historical synthesis.
A short summary: Origen was a Christian convert, living in the third century A.D. He used a patron, Ambrose, to collect huge amounts of books. Origen had one main aim: to get the upper hand, as a Christian, in disputes with Jews. To accomplish this, he started to compare, word for word, the original Hebrew Bible (especially the Pentateuch) with the Greek Bible (the Septuagint) and all the different versions he could find. To make this immense scholarly work happen, Origen had to find an innovative way to present the material. Thus, he created tables, in which he compared each section of the different Bible books with all the available versions he could find - this is what is called the Hexapla (six or seven columns).
Remember, this was a time before their was any printing press, let alone a computer; so, Origen had to use scribes to produce this Hexapla. The huge innovation rests in the comparability of the book: from now on, any Christian could read all the different versions of a particular Bible verse, and use this knowledge in arguments against Jews and pagans.
Origen worked from Caesarea, and it is here that he stored all his books, in effect creating a huge library. After Origen died at the hands of the Romans - in one of the last mass persecutions of Christians - another Caesarean, Pamphilus, continued the work of Origen. Pamphilus kept the library in order and kept collecting and producing books. One of his pupils, Eusebius, would make this unique Caesarean way of writing and reading books a powerful tool, to be used for centuries afterwards.
Eusebius used the comparative method that Origen invented, to write a huge book on chronology and history - the Chronicle. In this massive tome, Eusebius compared the histories of all the known cultures and peoples - including the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, etc. - and tried to come up with a genealogy of the world. Of course, this 'world genealogy' was ultimately based on the patriarchs of the Bible stories, since Eusebius was a Christian.
(And here the problem starts: when Babylonians claim their history spans 40.000 years, and Egyptians measure their history in tens of thousands of years, it becomes problematic to fit in the famous story of Adam and Eve, which - based on the genealogies in the Bible - could only have happened at around 5000 years ago. We all know what gave way: truth, especially Barbaric truth, had to make way for ease of mind - so the Egyptian years were lunar years, meaning every 30 days a new year starts. And because it is plausible that the Babylonians had adapted these customs from Egypt, let's just apply the same hypothesis to the Babylonians as well. Problem solved! Thus ends my cynical review of these Christian apologetic strategies...)
Eusebius not only created new techniques of storing and presenting information in books (for example using different colors for different topics; using tables to present information in order to increase comparability; etc.), he also used his relationship with Constantine the Great to raise patronage to a whole new level. When Constantine converted and became the first Christian Roman Emperor, Eusebius saw his chance and he started an exchange of letters, in which he promised Constantine a whole delivery of Bibles Origen-style. Remember: this was an immense job, requiring an army of scribes and carts to transport these tomes from Caesarea to Constantinople.
The three figures described above - Origen, Pamphilus, Eusebius - lay the foundation for later Christianity, in the sense that they bundled all the stories, made each verse comparable to different versions of the same verse, used indices to make searching for particular topics or verses easier, etc. These three key figures also changed the way that we view books.
Of course, the above summary doesn't cover the whole book. The authors present the dilemma's of the historian writing about these topics. I'm not a historian, let alone an academic, so I'm totally unaware of all the intricacies about different interpretations of so and so. My view as a lay person is that the authors present the most reliable synthesis of all the historical sources, and that they clearly point to the different stances in academic debates about interpretations. You can't really ask more than this - history, especially when built on such scanty sources (many are lost forever), will always be interpretative and hence, open to disputes.
The main point that I take from reading Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (2008) is that Origen's comparison of all the available versions of the Bible books, verse by verse, clearly shows the fallibility of these stories. There are key differences between certain versions that ultimately lead to opposing or mutually exclusive ways of viewing Judaism and Christianity. The fact that Origen used the Hexapla to argue with any Jew, pagan or rival Christian illustrates this point beautifully: he could always counter any argument his opponent would make by pointing to a different interpretation, etc.
I never knew the exact background of these theological differences, and this book really illuminates this important theme in religion in a very accessible way. One wonders how someone like Origen, or Eusebius for that matter, would not simply have drawn the conclusion that, since there are so many different versions of the same story, the most likely interpretation is that all these different versions are untrue. In my view, the sheer mutual exclusiveness of the Biblical stories leads straight to atheism - but maybe this is a bit too radical for people who have invested heavily in their religious careers and lives....
Another, and certainly not less impressive, point that I will remember after closing this book, is the sheer amount of work that people had to put in writing books. The process of book collecting, book producing and book diffusion was a very complex one. To write one Hexapla would take hundreds, if not thousands of man hours, let alone producing these tomes to diffuse them throughout the world... The book also illustrates the importance of innovations in book presentation. From a contemporary point of view, it sounds really basal to talk about the innovation of the use of tables to present information or the use of an index to make a book searchable. But Grafton and Williams clearly illustrate that these things, that we take for granted, weren't that basal in the time of Origen and Eusebius. This insight makes one appreciate the works of all the great intellectuals in history.
A short summary: Origen was a Christian convert, living in the third century A.D. He used a patron, Ambrose, to collect huge amounts of books. Origen had one main aim: to get the upper hand, as a Christian, in disputes with Jews. To accomplish this, he started to compare, word for word, the original Hebrew Bible (especially the Pentateuch) with the Greek Bible (the Septuagint) and all the different versions he could find. To make this immense scholarly work happen, Origen had to find an innovative way to present the material. Thus, he created tables, in which he compared each section of the different Bible books with all the available versions he could find - this is what is called the Hexapla (six or seven columns).
Remember, this was a time before their was any printing press, let alone a computer; so, Origen had to use scribes to produce this Hexapla. The huge innovation rests in the comparability of the book: from now on, any Christian could read all the different versions of a particular Bible verse, and use this knowledge in arguments against Jews and pagans.
Origen worked from Caesarea, and it is here that he stored all his books, in effect creating a huge library. After Origen died at the hands of the Romans - in one of the last mass persecutions of Christians - another Caesarean, Pamphilus, continued the work of Origen. Pamphilus kept the library in order and kept collecting and producing books. One of his pupils, Eusebius, would make this unique Caesarean way of writing and reading books a powerful tool, to be used for centuries afterwards.
Eusebius used the comparative method that Origen invented, to write a huge book on chronology and history - the Chronicle. In this massive tome, Eusebius compared the histories of all the known cultures and peoples - including the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, etc. - and tried to come up with a genealogy of the world. Of course, this 'world genealogy' was ultimately based on the patriarchs of the Bible stories, since Eusebius was a Christian.
(And here the problem starts: when Babylonians claim their history spans 40.000 years, and Egyptians measure their history in tens of thousands of years, it becomes problematic to fit in the famous story of Adam and Eve, which - based on the genealogies in the Bible - could only have happened at around 5000 years ago. We all know what gave way: truth, especially Barbaric truth, had to make way for ease of mind - so the Egyptian years were lunar years, meaning every 30 days a new year starts. And because it is plausible that the Babylonians had adapted these customs from Egypt, let's just apply the same hypothesis to the Babylonians as well. Problem solved! Thus ends my cynical review of these Christian apologetic strategies...)
Eusebius not only created new techniques of storing and presenting information in books (for example using different colors for different topics; using tables to present information in order to increase comparability; etc.), he also used his relationship with Constantine the Great to raise patronage to a whole new level. When Constantine converted and became the first Christian Roman Emperor, Eusebius saw his chance and he started an exchange of letters, in which he promised Constantine a whole delivery of Bibles Origen-style. Remember: this was an immense job, requiring an army of scribes and carts to transport these tomes from Caesarea to Constantinople.
The three figures described above - Origen, Pamphilus, Eusebius - lay the foundation for later Christianity, in the sense that they bundled all the stories, made each verse comparable to different versions of the same verse, used indices to make searching for particular topics or verses easier, etc. These three key figures also changed the way that we view books.
Of course, the above summary doesn't cover the whole book. The authors present the dilemma's of the historian writing about these topics. I'm not a historian, let alone an academic, so I'm totally unaware of all the intricacies about different interpretations of so and so. My view as a lay person is that the authors present the most reliable synthesis of all the historical sources, and that they clearly point to the different stances in academic debates about interpretations. You can't really ask more than this - history, especially when built on such scanty sources (many are lost forever), will always be interpretative and hence, open to disputes.
The main point that I take from reading Christianity and the Transformation of the Book (2008) is that Origen's comparison of all the available versions of the Bible books, verse by verse, clearly shows the fallibility of these stories. There are key differences between certain versions that ultimately lead to opposing or mutually exclusive ways of viewing Judaism and Christianity. The fact that Origen used the Hexapla to argue with any Jew, pagan or rival Christian illustrates this point beautifully: he could always counter any argument his opponent would make by pointing to a different interpretation, etc.
I never knew the exact background of these theological differences, and this book really illuminates this important theme in religion in a very accessible way. One wonders how someone like Origen, or Eusebius for that matter, would not simply have drawn the conclusion that, since there are so many different versions of the same story, the most likely interpretation is that all these different versions are untrue. In my view, the sheer mutual exclusiveness of the Biblical stories leads straight to atheism - but maybe this is a bit too radical for people who have invested heavily in their religious careers and lives....
Another, and certainly not less impressive, point that I will remember after closing this book, is the sheer amount of work that people had to put in writing books. The process of book collecting, book producing and book diffusion was a very complex one. To write one Hexapla would take hundreds, if not thousands of man hours, let alone producing these tomes to diffuse them throughout the world... The book also illustrates the importance of innovations in book presentation. From a contemporary point of view, it sounds really basal to talk about the innovation of the use of tables to present information or the use of an index to make a book searchable. But Grafton and Williams clearly illustrate that these things, that we take for granted, weren't that basal in the time of Origen and Eusebius. This insight makes one appreciate the works of all the great intellectuals in history.
July 15, 2025
Neither Andrew Carriker's amazing undertaking about Eusebius's library nor this book quite get at what I hoped to learn about early archives of the Christian church, a work I suspect isn't even really possible, but both works have proven very useful. While Carriker's is more technical in nature and likely to appeal to few outside of scholars, Grafton and Williams have managed to tell a story that is a bit more broadly interesting. As the title denotes, this is really a history of early book making. As with Carriker's book, the library at Caesarea plays a large role.
Grafton and Williams look specifically at two works, one by Origen and one by Eusebius. But they also delve a bit into the history of the Caesarean library, of Caesarea, and of the book more generally. The library at Caesarea seems to have been in many ways the product of Origen, who brought many of his books with him and then wrote extensively. His work, in turn, was preserved by Pamphilus, who then passed that material on to Eusebius. Each of these men were the beneficiaries of patrons who supported them, since such work and undertakings were not things a common man could afford. Eusebius had the advantage, later in life, of having not just a private patron but a public one, since the Emperor Constantine's adoption of the Christian faith meant that he had an interest in seeing the library profit.
Such libraries weren't just archives, however. They were book-making institutes, with a whole staff of scribes, some with specialist knowledge of languages. Both Origen and Eusebius moved away from scrolls toward codexes, the basis of our modern book. The codex allowed them to do things that previously would have been difficult to accomplish. With his Hexepla, Origen set out to create a Bible with six different versions set side by side for easy comparison, including Hebrew and various Greek translations. This was a new type of work. That work, in turn, became, at least in format, a model for Eusebius, who would set out to present a timeline of world history in his Chronology, by setting out events from different peoples in columns. Such work would have been near impossible on a scroll, but a codex was more suited to such a task. In turn, of course, these works became the basis for how many of our works even to our day do similar things in terms of presenting information in tables or columns. In other words, they revolutionized book making for millennia to come.
Grafton and Williams look specifically at two works, one by Origen and one by Eusebius. But they also delve a bit into the history of the Caesarean library, of Caesarea, and of the book more generally. The library at Caesarea seems to have been in many ways the product of Origen, who brought many of his books with him and then wrote extensively. His work, in turn, was preserved by Pamphilus, who then passed that material on to Eusebius. Each of these men were the beneficiaries of patrons who supported them, since such work and undertakings were not things a common man could afford. Eusebius had the advantage, later in life, of having not just a private patron but a public one, since the Emperor Constantine's adoption of the Christian faith meant that he had an interest in seeing the library profit.
Such libraries weren't just archives, however. They were book-making institutes, with a whole staff of scribes, some with specialist knowledge of languages. Both Origen and Eusebius moved away from scrolls toward codexes, the basis of our modern book. The codex allowed them to do things that previously would have been difficult to accomplish. With his Hexepla, Origen set out to create a Bible with six different versions set side by side for easy comparison, including Hebrew and various Greek translations. This was a new type of work. That work, in turn, became, at least in format, a model for Eusebius, who would set out to present a timeline of world history in his Chronology, by setting out events from different peoples in columns. Such work would have been near impossible on a scroll, but a codex was more suited to such a task. In turn, of course, these works became the basis for how many of our works even to our day do similar things in terms of presenting information in tables or columns. In other words, they revolutionized book making for millennia to come.
October 28, 2019
This is an excellent book in an unerexplored field of study, namely, the historical context of early Christian books. Grafton and Williams basically look at the historical context in which Origen's Hexapla and Eusebius's work were produced and remind us that copying books in the ancient world was incredibly expensive and that anybody writing anything needed a good set of scribes all working on it. The image we have of the Bible's composition (with one prophet dictating to one scribe) might be wrong. I am not sure. At any rate, Origen and Eusebius had a lot of secretaries and having six columns of the different Hebrew and Greek texts of the OT was super innovative as a visual feature, and similarly Eusebius's careful research was also uniquely innovative in trying to construct a timeline. Not a lot of people did that previously, apparently.
This is a small book and though it's not a brilliant, it's short, simple, clear, and quality work on a neglected subject. It feels very much like a labor of love. Wonderful.
This is a small book and though it's not a brilliant, it's short, simple, clear, and quality work on a neglected subject. It feels very much like a labor of love. Wonderful.
October 4, 2022
I'm sure other information professionals will like this book more than I do. Reading about the development of new technologies that combined multiple versions of the Biblical texts into one codex where they could be referenced against each other immediately was great and exactly what I wanted to learn. I also discovered more new words than I have for months, which brings me to the reason for the low rating: early Christian history. I know, it's necessary for understanding the relationship between the two scholars and book production, but it was a slog. Will be passing on religious memoirs, etc. for awhile.
January 6, 2024
This book isn’t for everyone and I assume only those truly interested in the topic would pick it up. But just know it does not make for exciting reading and even the authors seem to know it. About halfway through and explaining what is to come, they write, “By treating Eusebius's book from this point of view, we can not only suggest some new perspectives on chronology, that dry subject…” (p. 136). Indeed, they wrote the truth! The book was very dry. But I did learn things and it was a useful read. Just know what you’re getting yourself into.
December 21, 2023
This book is an exercise in gratitude for those who have preserved and loved the Scriptures through time. Truly thankful for the work that Origen and Eusebius did to preserve the textual history of Scriptures, as well as give the early church fathers the tools they needed for their own theological work.
August 7, 2022
Difficult but fascinating. It was a supplementary reading for a lecture series I'm following.
January 7, 2014
My respect for what it took for anyone in antiquity to write down anything and preserve it has increased dramatically after reading this thorough treatment of book collection and production. Grafton and Williams piece together the heretofore piecemeal tradition of Christian writing and preservation of books in the 3rd and 4th centuries, illuminating the undeniably central role such scholars and churchmen as Origen, Pamphilus, and Eusebius had upon the larger project of history writing and its material production and preservation.
Most rewarding were the chapters on Origen's Hexapla and Eusebius's Chronicle. While the Hexapla remains mysterious in many ways because of the unfortunate fragmentary and sometimes conflicting evidence of its form, contents, and purpose in ancient witnesses, Grafton and Williams garner enough information from those witnesses along with clues from the context so that the murky collage of answers to central questions about the groundbreaking work comes more into focus. The resources and the sheer will to undertake such a project as the Hexapla and Eusebius's Chronicle and Onomasticon indicates that the driving force behind such monumental works is more than just scholarly interest but, as Grafton and Williams successfully argue, it has much to do with preserving and girding the fledgling endeavor that was Christianity.
Most rewarding were the chapters on Origen's Hexapla and Eusebius's Chronicle. While the Hexapla remains mysterious in many ways because of the unfortunate fragmentary and sometimes conflicting evidence of its form, contents, and purpose in ancient witnesses, Grafton and Williams garner enough information from those witnesses along with clues from the context so that the murky collage of answers to central questions about the groundbreaking work comes more into focus. The resources and the sheer will to undertake such a project as the Hexapla and Eusebius's Chronicle and Onomasticon indicates that the driving force behind such monumental works is more than just scholarly interest but, as Grafton and Williams successfully argue, it has much to do with preserving and girding the fledgling endeavor that was Christianity.
September 24, 2011
Intellectual history attentive to material forms.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews