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“Eusebius of Caesarea - On Tatian - original Greek Text with English translation”

From Historia Ecclesiastica, 4. 28 - 29. Eusebius on the author of Oratio ad Graecos and the Diatessaron.

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Click here to read at earlychurchtexts.com in the original Greek (with dictionary lookup links). The English translation below is from the NPNF series.

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Relevant books
available at Amazon

Eusebius studies and translations
with links to Amazon

Several also below

TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS

History of the Church

Andrew Louth ed.

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Cameron and Hall

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In Praise of Constantine: Historical Study and New Translation of Eusebius' Tricennial Orations (University of California publications, classical studies ; v. 15)

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W. J. Ferrar

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Eusebii Pamphili Evangelicae Praeparations, Tomus I (Greek Edition)
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Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea - the Ecclesiastical History and the Martyrs of Palestine. Two Volumes

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Eusebius ... On the Theophania Or Divine Manifestation of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Tr. with Notes: To Which Is Prefixed a Vindication of the ... of That Distinguished Writer, by S. Lee

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Notley and Safrai

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STUDIES

 

Eusebius, Christianity and Judaism

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Constantine and Eusebius

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Glenn Chesnut

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Robert Grant

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Eusebius of Caesarea Against Paganism

Aryeh Kofsky

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 Eusebius of Caesarea and the Arian Crisis

C. Luibheid

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Christ as Mediator: A Study of the Theologies of Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus of Ancyra, and Athanasius of Alexandria

Jon M. Robertson

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 Eusebius of Caesarea

Wallace-Hadrill

 

And as for Musanus, whom we have mentioned among the foregoing writers, a certain very elegant discourse is extant, which was written by him against some brethren that had gone over to the heresy of the so-called Encratites, which had recently sprung up, and which introduced a strange and pernicious error. It is said that Tatian was the author of this false doctrine.

He is the one whose words we quoted a little above in regard to that admirable man, Justin, and whom we stated to have been a disciple of the martyr. Irenæus declares this in the first book of his work Against Heresies, where he writes as follows concerning both him and his heresy: “Those who are called Encratites, and who sprung from Saturninus and Marcion, preached celibacy, setting aside the original arrangement of God and tacitly censuring him who made male and female for the propagation of the human race. They introduced also abstinence from the things called by them animate, thus showing ingratitude to the God who made all things. And they deny the salvation of the first man. But this has been only recently discovered by them, a certain Tatian being the first to introduce this blasphemy. He was a hearer of Justin, and expressed no such opinion while he was with him, but after the martyrdom of the latter he left the Church, and becoming exalted with the thought of being a teacher, and puffed up with the idea that he was superior to others, he established a peculiar type of doctrine of his own, inventing certain invisible æons like the followers of Valentinus, while, like Marcion and Saturninus, he pronounced marriage to be corruption and fornication. His argument against the salvation of Adam, however, he devised for himself.” Irenæus at that time wrote thus. But a little later a certain man named Severus put new strength into the aforesaid heresy, and thus brought it about that those who took their origin from it were called, after him, Severians. They, indeed, use the Law and Prophets and Gospels, but interpret in their own way the utterances of the Sacred Scriptures. And they abuse Paul the apostle and reject his epistles, and do not accept even the Acts of the Apostles. But their original founder, Tatian, formed a certain combination and collection of the Gospels, I know not how, to which he gave the title Diatessaron, and which is still in the hands of some. But they say that he ventured to paraphrase certain words of the apostle, in order to improve their style. He has left a great many writings. Of these the one most in use among many persons is his celebrated Address to the Greeks, which also appears to be the best and most useful of all his works. In it he deals with the most ancient times, and shows that Moses and the Hebrew prophets were older than all the celebrated men among the Greeks. So much in regard to these men.


 



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Oratio ad Graecos
Oration to the Greeks
The Diatessaron
Διὰ τεσσάρων
Διατεσσάρων
Tatian
Tatiani
Encratites
Tatian and Justin
Tatian the heretic
Christianity superior to Greek philosophy
Migne Greek Text
Patrologiae Graecae Cursus Completus
Patrologia Graeca

 

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