1 This paper is based upon the 2008 Souter Lecture in the University of Aberdeen, Scotland; I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Dumville, David N. for extending the invitation. I would also wish to express thanks to Traditio's anonymous reader whose comments and suggestions have done much to enhance this paper.Google Scholar

2 See Petersen, W. L., Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship (Leiden, 1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 This choice of just one region is based on my desire to follow the Apparatus along a definite line of tradition such that each moment in the tradition can be seen to be based on the previous moment that transmitted the material to it. While better examples might be found by selecting items from across the Latin West, such a manner of proceeding would not allow us to observe with precision how succeeding generations of scholars approached their inheritance in new ways.Google Scholar

4 Nestle, E., Nestle, E., Aland, B., Aland, K., et al., eds., Novum Testamentum Graece , 27th ed., 8th rev. (Stuttgart, 1994); the text of Eusebius's Letter to Carpianus and the Canons can be found on 41∗–46∗; the editors' comments on their inclusion of the Apparatus is to be found on 36∗.Google Scholar

5 These numbers, as the Alands point out, represent the chapter divisions (kephalaia) most widely used in the manuscripts (Nestle-Aland, , Novum Testamentum Graece , 35∗), yet because they also run in a simple numerical sequence through each gospel and often coincide with the position of Eusebian sections, they are often confused with them.Google Scholar

6 The text used by Eusebius did not contain any of the endings of Mark that are found in some codices: his text ended at 16:8 (see Metzger, B. M., A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament [London, 1975], 123). However, in some Greek manuscripts additional section numbers were added to cover the parallels within the most common longer ending (16:9–20), but these can be ignored as they are not original and were never integrated into the canons — which indicates, incidentally, that they were added by people who did not understand the purpose of the sectioning. These additions never occurred in Latin.Google Scholar

7 See, for example, John, §§48 and 96, or §142.Google Scholar

8 I am at present engaged on a monograph examining Eusebius's rationale and method. Part of this is a complete concordance of his system, and this will display all these more detailed aspects of his work; meanwhile note the complex set of parallels to Matthew, §220. In this paper, in order to avoid confusion between our commonly used chapters, the canon numbers, and the numbers of sections, whenever a section number is cited it is preceded by§.Google Scholar

9 The Alands point out that the section numbering “remains useful even today. It is used in so many manuscripts as a very practical means of organizing the continuous text. In collating manuscripts it is an effective tool for locating a passage. In this sense it can be useful in the present edition” (Nestle-Aland, , Novum Testamentum Graece , 36∗). While this is the case, it is a utility per accidens: it was not any part of its design.Google Scholar

10 Nestle-Aland, , Novum Testamentum Graece , 42∗–46∗.Google Scholar

11 See Oliver, H. H., “The Epistle of Eusebius to Carpianus: Textual Tradition and Translation,” Novum Testamentum 3 (1959): 138–45. During these silent centuries the text became ever more elaborate with apparatus: division and internal referencing systems were multiplied, cross-referencing for theological purposes became an art, critical apparatus began to appear, and other helps (e.g., maps) were continually being added to the biblical text — and these additions are quite separate from the often problematic issue of notes; moreover, this was the high point for the production of harmonies, yet the Apparatus was ignored.Google Scholar

12 The introduction of the apparatus followed upon the work that Nestle, Eberhard did on the structure of Eusebius's work: “Die Eusebianische Evangelien-Synopse,” Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift 19 (1908): 40–51, 93–114, and 219–32 (this is still the most extensive published study of the Apparatus).Google Scholar

13 For example, the apparatus is not included in the other standard edition, The Greek New Testament , ed. Aland, K., Black, M., Martini, C. M., Metzger, B. M., Wikgren, A., Aland, B., and Karavidopoulos, J., 4th rev. ed. (Stuttgart, 1993).Google Scholar

14 Wordsworth, J. and White, H. J., eds., Nouum Testamentum Latine: Euangelia (Oxford, 1889–98).Google Scholar

15 de Bruyne, D., Préfaces de la Bible Latine (Namur, 1920).Google Scholar

16 Fischer, B., Gribomont, J., Sparks, H. D. F., Theile, W., Weber, R., and Gryson, R., eds., Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem , 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1994).Google Scholar

17 This will become clear in the database volume of Eusebius and Reading the Gospel (forthcoming in Studia Traditionis Theologiae).Google Scholar

18 Die spätantiken Kanontafeln: Kunstgeschichtliche Studien über die eusebianische Evangelien-Konkordanz in den vier ersten Jahrhunderten ihrer Geschichte , 2 vols. (Göteburg, 1938).Google Scholar

19 Note the attention given to the apparatus in Brown, M. P., The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London, 2003).Google Scholar

20 For example: Nordenfalk, C., “The Eusebian Canon-Tables: Some Textual Problems,” Journal of Theological Studies , n.s., 35 (1984): 96–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 See Gorman, M. M., “The Deceptive apparatus fontium in a Recent Edition (CChr.SL 82),” Journal of Ancient Christianity 8 (2004): 8–22, at 21.Google Scholar

22 While the purpose of the many modern gospel parallels may be to show how the gospels developed, there is a direct continuity in both the form and the content with the Apparatus. This is true both of parallel texts of the four gospels (e.g., Aland, K., Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum , 15th ed. [Stuttgart, 1996], or, in English, Sparks, H. D. F., A Synopsis of the Gospels [London, 1964]) and of parallel texts of the Synoptics (e.g., Huck, A. and Greeven, H., Synopse der drei ersten Evangelien, 13th ed. [Tübingen, 1981], or, in English, Throckmorton, B. H., ed., Gospel Parallels: A Synopsis of the First Three Gospels, 4th ed. [Nashville, 1979]).Google Scholar

23 For example, Penna, A., “Il De consensu euangelistarum ed i Canoni Eusebiani,” Biblica 36 (1955): 1–19, one of the very few articles that explores the influence of the Apparatus on the development of exegesis.Google Scholar

24 When I am asked the standard academics' question: “what are you working on at the moment?” and reply “the Eusebian Apparatus,” this is then often translated, in a moment of apparent recognition, to: “yes, that's the Eusebian canons?” Google Scholar

25 For example: Lake, K., “The ‘Ammonian’ Harmony of the Text of B,” Journal of Theological Studies 7 (1906): 292–95.Google Scholar

26 See the title of Nordenfalk's, 1938 study, for example.Google Scholar

27 By parallel with such works as Aland, , Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum; Sparks, , A Synopsis of the Gospels ; Huch, and Greevan, , Synopse; or Throckmorton, , Gospel Parallels. Google Scholar

28 The modern notion of a gospel harmony seems to originate with the Reformation's hermeneutic in the work of Osiander, Andreas (1496/8–1552), Harmoniae evangelicae libri IV graece et latine (Basel, 1537); see Wünsch, D., Evangelienharmonien im Reformationszeitalter: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Darstellung (Berlin, 1983), 21–179; and on the topic in general, see Wünsch, D., “Evangelienharmonien,” Theologische Realenzyklopädie 10 (1982): 626–36.Google Scholar

29 The most coherent survey is Hengel, M., The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (London, 2000).Google Scholar

30 See Skeat, T. C., “Irenaeus and the Four Gospel Canon,” Novum Testamentum 34 (1992): 194–99; idem, “The Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels,” New Testament Studies 43 (1997): 1–34; and Stanton, G. N., “The Fourfold Gospel,” New Testament Studies 43 (1997): 317–46.Google Scholar

31 See Achtemeier, P. J., “Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109 (1990): 3–27.Google Scholar

32 On what “gospel” meant in its earliest use by Christians, , see Stanton, G. N., Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge, 2004), 9–123.Google Scholar

33 See Justin, , First Apology , 67.Google Scholar

34 See Cullmann, O., “Infancy Gospels,” in New Testament Apocrypha , ed. Hennecke, E. and Schneemelcher, W., 2 vols. (London, 1963), 1:363–400.Google Scholar

35 Historia ecclesiastica 4, 16 and 26; 5, 13 and 28.Google Scholar

36 See Petersen, W. L., Tatian's Diatessaron (n. 2 above).Google Scholar

37 See Skeat, T. C., “Irenaeus and the Four Gospel Canon.” Google Scholar

38 6, 19, 1–10.Google Scholar

39 1, 15, 23.Google Scholar

40 On the attack on the scriptures by Porphyry, , the essential guide is Berchman, R. M., Porphyry Against the Christians (Leiden, 2005), 56–71.Google Scholar

41 See Cameron, A., “The Date of kata Christianôn,” Classical Quarterly 17 (1967): 382–84, who argues for a date sometime after 271; but others have argued for a date as late as 300 (see Barnes, T. D., “Porphyry, Against the Christians,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 24 [1973]: 424–42); clearly, given that the composition of the Apparatus was not a swiftly accomplished task, if Porphyry's criticisms were a factor in stimulating Eusebius, then the earlier date is preferable.Google Scholar

42 Having inclined away from the dating proposed by Barnes in the previous note, I am inclined towards the date he proposed for the Apparatus in Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA, 1981), 122 (and 344) as a youthful work of Eusebius from the late third century; this dating has been followed more recently by Carriker, A., The Library of Eusebius of Caesarea (Leiden, 2003), 16 and 37.Google Scholar

43 See Meredith, A., “Porphyry and Julian Against the Christians,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2, 23, 2 (1980): 1119–49.Google Scholar

44 Refuting Porphyry's attacks on Christianity was a major theme within Eusebius's writings; see Kofsky, A., Eusebius of Caesarea against Paganism (Leiden, 2000), esp. 227–33. The texts in Eusebius that address attacks from Porphyry are listed by Berchman, , Porphyry, 135–42. On the specific challenge based on the incoherence of the scriptures — and we have to reconstruct the nature of this attack from references to Porphyry, and quotations from him, in Christian apologists — see Berchman, , Porphyry, 56–71; and also Anastos, M. V., “Porphyry's Attack on the Bible,” in The Classical Tradition: Literary and Historical Studies in Honor of Harry Caplan , ed. Wallach, L. (Ithaca, NY, 1966), 421–50.Google Scholar

45 See Anastos, , “Porphyry's Attack on the Bible,” 427.Google Scholar

46 Ibid., 445.Google Scholar

47 For an introduction to, and overview of, this less studied aspect of Eusebius's work, see Sellew, P., “Eusebius and the Gospels,” in Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism , ed. Attridge, H. A. and Hata, G. (Leiden, 1992): 110–38.Google Scholar

48 Significantly all three works would be translated into Latin by Jerome, two of them were praised and used by Augustine, and eventually all were used in insular scholarship.Google Scholar

49 Nestle-Aland, , Novum Testamentum Graece (n. 14 above), 41∗–42∗.Google Scholar

50 There has been much speculation on the identity of this Ammonius, but the question will not be pursued here; however, because of this reference there is a tendency to refer to the sectioning of the gospels as Ammonian Sections and to assume that these have been taken over by Eusebius suffice to say that while it is clear that others had worked on the problem prior to Eusebius, it is also clear from the letter that Eusebius adopted a very different method and so the sectioning must be considered, in its present form, his own.Google Scholar

51 There is no better example of this than John §20, where it is assumed that it is identical with John §48 and §96, and these are equivalent to Matthew §274, Mark §156, and Luke §260. Read in this way, the whole problem of the length of Jesus's ministry disappears.Google Scholar

52 See, for example, Luke §37 where the Lukan narrative can be filled out by Matthew §70, Mark §20, and John §38; then once one has moved to Luke §38, one is less disposed to see the discrepancies in its related sections: Matthew §71 and Mark §21.Google Scholar

53 Hence the inadvisability of referring to it as a harmony.Google Scholar

54 See Skeat, T. C., “The Codex Sinaiticus, The Codex Vaticanus, and Constantine,” Journal of Theological Studies , n.s., 50 (1999): 583–625, at 604–9.Google Scholar

55 See O'Loughlin, T., “Tyconius' Use of the Canonical Gospels,” Revue Bénédictine 106 (1996): 229–33.Google Scholar

56 For an introduction to Jerome's approach to the Apparatus, and some of the older bibliography, see Kelly, J. N. D., Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London, 1975), 87–88.Google Scholar

57 Wordsworth, and White, , Nouum Testamentum Latine: Euangelia (n. 14 above), 1–4.Google Scholar

58 The use of the word “concordance” for a parallel text, as distinct from its meaning as an index uerborum, seems to rely on this phrase in Jerome.Google Scholar

59 A good example is John §86, which is Canon 10 (only John) and runs from John 7:45 to 8:19, thus enveloping that most famous pericope, the pericope de adultera, which runs from 8:2 to 8:11. Anyone reading John at this point could imagine that the sections were actually larger than stories that make up each gospel, and that all the Apparatus does is to indicate that these stories have no parallel elsewhere (which is, of course, all that any section belonging to Canon 10 tells the reader).Google Scholar

60 Anyone who has read Eusebius's letter to Carpianus might wonder what further introduction is needed to the use of the Apparatus. Eusebius in a few sentences takes the reader into an actual moment of reading and shows how the reader can quickly find out if the passage he is studying has a parallel anywhere else in the gospel, and if it has, how the reader can find it, or them, quickly and directly. Unfortunately, while this letter was translated into Latin (it is printed in Wordsworth, and White, , Nouum Testamentum Latine: Euangelia , 6–7), it appeared only spasmodically in manuscripts from a much later date. See McGurk, P., Latin Gospel Books from a.d. 400 to a.d. 800 (Paris, 1961), 7–8.Google Scholar

61 Again, this is a statement that future research may well reverse: most studies of Jerome's work do not even consider whether or not he used the Apparatus, and my own limited explorations have proved negative. It is not sufficient to find a writer such as Jerome invoking passages from other gospels that do fit with the Apparatus — for this may simply be the case that he knew the scriptures very well; one must find the more complex patterns being brought together (e.g., John §40, §111, §120, §129, §131, and §144 all being brought together to illuminate Matthew §98) to know that a particular concatenation of texts is more than coincidence.Google Scholar

62 See de Jonge, H. J., “Sixteenth-century Gospel Harmonies: Chemnitz and Mercator,” in Théorie et pratique de l'exégèse: Actes du 3^me colloque international sur l'histoire de l'exégèse biblique au XVI^me siècle , ed. Backus, I. and Higham, F. (Geneva, 1990), 155–66.Google Scholar

63 The whole of the first book of the De consensu euangelistarum is an apologetic for the need to defend the scriptures (not just the gospels) from detractors basing their attacks on internal inconsistencies.Google Scholar

64 De consensu euangelistarum 1, 7, 10; there is a complete listing of those passages in the De consensu euangelistarum that are related to the criticisms of Porphyry in Berchman, Porphyry (n. 40 above), 173–84.Google Scholar

65 See O'Loughlin, T., “St. Augustine's View of the Place of the Holy Spirit in the Formation of the Gospels,” in The Holy Spirit in the Fathers , ed. Vincent Twoney, D. and Rutherford, Janet E., The Holy Spirit in the Fathers of the Church (Dublin, 2010), 86–95.Google Scholar

66 This is on my list of things to do.Google Scholar

67 Thus, A. Penna in “Il De consensu euangelistarum ed i Canoni Eusebiani” (n. 23 above) overstates the case in rejecting its use by Augustine.Google Scholar

68 The circumstantial evidence is against Augustine's knowing of the Apparatus: (1) he never mentions it, while (2) he does acknowledge three works by Eusebius: the Historia, the Chronici canones, and the commentary on the Psalms.Google Scholar

69 De consensu euangelistarum 1, 6, 9.Google Scholar

70 The most comprehensive treatment of this problem is still that found in Schaff, P., History of the Church: History of Apostolic Christianity, a.d. 1–100 , 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1883), 2:585–89; and cf. Hengel, , The Four Gospels (n. 29 above), 215 and 236.Google Scholar

71 While it does appear to be the case that there is a standard set of images in zoomorphic canon tables (Matthew–man; Mark–lion; Luke–calf; John–eagle) and in the images that are placed before individual gospels in codices, too much is often made of this consistency in dealing with the symbolizations found in exegesis.Google Scholar

72 See O'Loughlin, T., “Julian of Toledo's Antikeimenon and the Development of Latin Exegesis,” Proceedings of the Irish Biblical Association 16 (1993): 80–98.Google Scholar

73 See O'Loughlin, T., Adomnán and the Holy Places: The Perceptions of an Insular Monk on the Location of the Biblical Drama (London, 2007), 94–104.Google Scholar

74 The full ramifications of how the differences between Eusebius and Augustine for later exegetes are still a matter of examining individual problems, only when we have the full comparison of the two systems, mentioned in a previous note, will this strand of Latin exegetical work become clearly visible.Google Scholar

75 See Kuhn, T. S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1970); see especially 136–43 on the role of the textbook and the textbook writer in the aftermath of an intellectual revolution.Google Scholar

76 Bischoff, B., Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1990), 76–77.Google Scholar

77 Lowe, E. A., Codices Latini Antiquiores , 11 vols. (Oxford, 1934–66), 7:984 (which details all the fragments) dates it as fourth–fifth centuries, and in this is followed by McGurk, , Latin Gospel Books (n. 60 above), 122, and Bischoff, , Latin Palaeography; however, if the Vulgate gospels appeared in the early 380s (Pope Damasus died in 384) and contained the standard form of the Apparatus (see Nouum opus), then a date within fifteen years of that time for the new Apparatus not only to be taken up, but then radically transformed, seems far too short. It would be more reasonable that the new form of the Apparatus was produced by someone who had experience with using the original form, then developed upon it; then it became available to be copied into codices like this one. This would make a date in the fifth century more appropriate.Google Scholar

78 It was edited by Turner, C. H.: The Oldest Manuscript of the Vulgate Gospels (Oxford, 1931); Turner died on 10 October 1930 and entrusted the task of seeing his final work through the press to Alexander Souter (see the latter's Prefatory Note).Google Scholar

79 Turner, , Oldest Manuscript , 4.Google Scholar

80 This extended form is one of the distinguishing features of the Book of Durrow (Dublin, Trinity College Library 57); see O'Loughlin, T., “The Eusebian Apparatus in some Vulgate Gospel Books,” Peritia 13 (1999): 1–92.Google Scholar

81 London, British Library, Cotton Nero D.iv; see Brown, M. P., The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe (London, 2003), 179–82.Google Scholar

82 For example, in Canon 1: Matthew §11 (repeated 4 ×); §23 (repeated 3 ×); §87 (repeated 2 ×); §98 (repeated 6 ×); and there are many more examples in Canon 1 and in Canons 2–9.Google Scholar

83 This, of course, fits perfectly with others of their hermeneutical principles, such as that the best interpreter of one biblical text is another biblical text (advocated by Augustine in the De doctrina Christiana 2, 6, 8), and that the gospels are to be read historialiter (advocated by Eucherius in the Formulae spiritalis intellegentiae, preface).Google Scholar

84 The letter is found in Wordsworth, and White, , Nouum Testamentum Latine: Euangelia (n. 14 above), 5.Google Scholar

85 McGurk, ( Latin Gospel Books , 8) has pointed out that this letter appeared only spasmodically and later than the earliest Vulgate codices.Google Scholar

86 In a place where the extended form was known, this is an activity in which one would not need to engage.Google Scholar

87 See the example of Matthew §98 given above.Google Scholar

88 For an example of his contribution to the overall understanding of scripture, see O'Loughlin, T., “Inventing the Apocrypha: The Role of Early Latin Canon Lists,” Irish Theological Quarterly 74 (2009): 53–74.Google Scholar

89 Etymologiae 6, 15.Google Scholar

90 The most complete guide to the ways that the biblical texts were divided is de Bruyne, D., Sommaires, Divisions et Rubriques de la Bible Latine (Namur, 1914); it presents a selection of the ways that the gospels were sectioned on 240–311.Google Scholar

91 de Bruyne, D., Préfaces (n. 15 above), 158–70.Google Scholar

92 Viewing Ailerán in comparison to Isidore is not simply a matter of their being roughly contemporaries, but, because the title given to Ailerán's poem in the manuscripts is kanon euangeliorum, which echoes the Etymologiae, in all likelihood anyone who set out to learn the poem would have known the content of what Isidore had written about the Apparatus.Google Scholar

93 The text can be found in many places, but for the text with an English translation see Howlett, D., “Seven Studies in Seventh-century Texts,” Peritia 10 (1996): 1–70, at 11–20 (and see his “Further Manuscripts of Ailerán's Canon Euangeliorum,” Peritia 15 [2001]: 22–26; and his “Hiberno-Latin Poems of the Canons,” Peritia, forthcoming — I am grateful to Dr. Howlett for showing me a typescript of this article).Google Scholar

94 Ailerán is, as we shall see, not concerned with the whole Apparatus, nor with the canon tables, but with the reader's being able to value the canon numbers he finds in the margins as he reads.Google Scholar

95 There are four such poems (including Ailerán's) printed in de Bruyne, , Préfaces , 185–86 (the third has been examined by Howlett in his forthcoming article).Google Scholar

96 Apart from the number and distribution of the manuscripts of the poem (see Howlett's, articles cited above), it was also used in a probatio pennae, which indicated that it had been committed to memory as Ailerán intended: see O'Loughlin, T., “Ailerán's Kanon euangeliorum and the Nero Gospels (London, B.L., Cotton Nero D.iv.),” Anglo-Saxon , forthcoming.Google Scholar

97 See Dumville, D. N., “The Palaeography of ‘The Book of Deer’: The Original Manuscript and the Liturgical Addition,” in idem, Celtic Essays 2001–2007 , 2 vols. (Aberdeen, 2007), 1:183–212, at 205.Google Scholar

98 On the notion of “the grammar of legibility,” see Parkes, M. B., “The Contribution of Insular Scribes of the Seventh and Eighth Centuries to the ‘Grammar of Legibility,’” in Grafia e Interpunzione del Latino nel Medioevo , ed. Maierù, A. (Rome, 1987), 15–30.Google Scholar

99 Every study of the art of Kells mentions these tables; the first explicit treatment was Friend, A. M. Jr., “The Canon Tables of the Book of Kells,” in Medieval Studies in Memory of A. Kingsley Porter , ed. Koehler, W. R. W. (Cambridge, MA, 1939), 611–40 and plates I–XXIV; see also McGurk, P., “Two Notes on the Book of Kells and Its Relation to Other Insular Gospel Books,” Scriptorium 9 (1955): 105–7.Google Scholar

100 These two gospel books have been chosen as examples because both contain the extended form of the Apparatus and, hence, in these cases the tables are largely redundant: the precision of their tables is, therefore, one more indication of the care that went into their production.Google Scholar

101 See O'Loughlin, T., “Division Systems for the Gospels: The Case of the Stowe St. John (Dublin, R.I.A. D.ii.3),” Scriptorium 61 (2007): 150–64.Google Scholar

102 The coincidence is found in 98 out of a possible 107 cases, i.e., 91.6 percent.Google Scholar

103 For example, in the Book of Durrow when a section begins mid-sentence the first word of the section is decorated with red dots.Google Scholar

104 See Dumville, D. N., “The Palaeography of ‘The Book of Deer,’” 183; the group was first identified by McGurk, P., “The Irish Pocket Gospel Book,” Sacris Erudiri 8 (1956): 249–70.Google Scholar

105 See O'Loughlin, T., “The Biblical Text of the Book of Deer (C.U.L. Ii.6.32): Evidence for the Remains of a Division System from Its Manuscript Ancestry,” Scriptorium 63 (2009): 30–57.Google Scholar