Reading the Gospels with Eusebius

We never read alone. Like all readers, we live within our own historical and cultural contexts. We read as part of communities and are nudged (often without realizing it) by a range of readerly habits.

The tools that we use shape our reading, too. Resources like commentaries and the notes of study bibles guide our encounters with Scripture. Perhaps less obviously, Gospel synopses and cross-references also influence our reading. We may be so used to these tools that we forget their power. Yet they both reflect the insights and judgments of past readers and also shape our own readerly experiences. Responsible reading thus requires us to attend to how these tools work. What insights do they guide us toward? What practices of interpretation do they discourage us from?

We may never read alone, but we can choose with whom we read. We can practice theological imagination and hermeneutical creativity by reading over the shoulders of past Christians. This is an exercise in learning how to read and re-read as part of the Church. Readers from the Christian tradition over time invite us to reimagine the task of exegesis and to approach Scripture with fresh eyes.

Reading Scripture alongside readers of the past offers insights from people embedded in different historical and cultural contexts—and thereby helps us to recognize the contingency of contemporary practices of interpretation. Reading with the Church across time teaches us to encounter Christ in the Scriptures anew.

This article focuses on one influential early Christian project of theological reading in order to expand our hermeneutical horizons. In the fourth century, Eusebius of Caesarea designed the first system of Gospel cross-references. This system guides readers of the fourfold canonical Gospel.

How Eusebius’s system works

Let’s start with an overview of Eusebius’s system, often known as the “Eusebian apparatus.” It consists of three major components, embedded in a copy of the fourfold Gospel (that is, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

1. First, Eusebius introduced his Gospel cross-references with a brief letter that provides instructions on how to use the system.
2. Second, a set of numbers in the margin of the page organizes each Gospel into sections. There are two numbers for each section. The first number identifies the sections in each Gospel sequentially (1, 2, 3, etc.) much like the familiar modern chapter system. A second number, ranging from one to ten, categorizes each section based on which Gospels include similar material. Each of these ten numbers refers the reader to one of ten reference tables.
3. Third, these ten reference tables (known as “canons”) list related Gospel passages by their section number. Each table maps a different pattern of parallels. For example, canon I correlates material that overlaps in all four Gospels. Canon V correlates material that overlaps in just Matthew and Luke. And so on. These tables juxtapose parallel Gospel passages in parallel columns. In this way, they anticipate the logic of modern Gospel synopses.

The result of Eusebius’s interlocking system of marginal section numbers and reference tables is a textual “map” that guides readers in locating similar material throughout the fourfold Gospel.

The best way to understand Eusebius’s project is to use it, so let’s practice with an example.¹I discuss this example at greater length in my book. If you have a Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament nearby, I encourage you to open it up and use the apparatus. Alas, not all printed editions of the Greek New Testament include the Eusebian system. I hope that this will change! But even if not, you can still follow along.

Let’s identify the parallels between Jesus’s baptism in Mark 1:9–11 and the other canonical Gospels.  If we look in the inside margin next to Mark 1:9 in a Nestle-Aland edition, we find an Arabic numeral “5” over the Roman numeral “I”. This set of numbers indicates that the passage is the fifth section in Mark and that its parallels appear in the first canon, which juxtaposes material from all four Gospels.

To find these parallels, we can use the canons in the front matter of our Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. When we consult the first table (“canon I”), we discover that Mark §5 corresponds to Matthew §14, Luke §13, and John §15.

Using this information, we can turn to Matthew and use the section numbers to find the fourteenth section (Matt. 3:16–17). Or again, we can navigate to Luke’s thirteenth section (Luke 3:21–22). In both cases, we find material that parallels Mark’s account of Jesus’s baptism. When we turn to the fifteenth section in John, however, we discover that Eusebius offers a different kind of parallel. John’s Gospel does not directly narrate Jesus’s baptism. Instead, the Baptist testifies that he has seen “the spirit descending like a dove from heaven.” Yet Eusebius nonetheless juxtaposes John 1:32–34 with the three Synoptic narratives. In this way, Eusebius indicates both direct and indirect parallels. He guides the reader to discover similarity, from one Gospel to another and back again.

Eusebius is grappling with hermeneutically significant questions that present-day readers face as well. How are the Gospels similar and different? How do they structure their material? How can we read their differences together?

Eusebius is grappling with hermeneutically significant questions that present-day readers face as well.

Theologically significant examples

Having explored the mechanics of Eusebius’s system, let’s read over his shoulder in order to discover a few of his creative theological juxtapositions.

Eusebius’s conviction that the Gospels are divine witness leads him to recognize rich intertextual possibilities across the fourfold Gospel. He is not content to reconstruct the historical sequence of events “behind” the Gospels or to connect strict verbal or narrative parallels. Instead, he embraces a creative hermeneutical strategy that maps literary echoes and theological intersections. By following Eusebius’s reading of the Gospels, we can expand our own literary and theological imaginations.

The incarnation

Eusebius invites us to read incarnation in the fourfold Gospel, repeatedly juxtaposing John with the Synoptics in order to prompt a deeper understanding of the “enfleshment” of the divine Word.

We see this, first of all, in the generation of the Son, both human and divine. Eusebius aligns the beginning of John with the genealogies of Matthew and Luke. This means that John’s “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1–5, 9–10, 14) is placed in parallel with Matthew’s “Book of the generation of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1–16) and Luke’s account of Jesus’s genealogy, tracing all the way back to “Adam, the son of God” (Luke 3:23–38).

In his exegetical discussions, Eusebius had suggested that levirate marriage might explain the differences between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies (Hist. eccl. 1.7.1–17, citing Julius Africanus at length; Steph. 2–4; Dem. ev. 7.3.18). Yet Eusebius’s decision to include John’s opening alongside the genealogies reveals a dramatically different approach. As Eusebius explains elsewhere,

John naturally omitted the genealogy of our Savior according to the flesh because it had already been written by Matthew and Luke, and he began with the theology, since it had been reserved for him, as their superior, by the divine Spirit.

Hist. eccl. 3.24.13 (trans. Schott modified)

By inviting us to read Matthew, Luke, and John together, Eusebius offers an incarnational perspective that aligns the Son’s human and divine generation. By building this theological insight right into the Gospel page, Eusebius invites subsequent readers to reflect on its christological implications.

Related

• 
  Portraits of the four evangelists from GA 773 (10th c.)
  Why Are There Four Gospels in the Bible?

  Despite tales of conspiracy, there are good historical and theological reasons why the Church recognized four—and only four—Gospels.

  C. E. Hill

Eusebius invites theological reflection on the incarnation in other contexts as well. He juxtaposes Jesus’s “this is my body” saying from the Synoptic Last Supper narratives (Matt. 26:26//Mark 14:22//Luke 22:19) with John’s Bread of Life discourse. Eusebius connects the four Johannine sayings about Jesus as bread or food (John 6:35a, 48, 51, 55) with Jesus’s words about the bread in the Synoptics. In this way, rather than restricting himself to historical or narrative parallels, Eusebius follows a theological thread across the fourfold Gospel. This creative juxtaposition teaches the reader to identify the bread from the Last Supper with Jesus himself, the Bread of Life. In this way, Eusebius offers a Eucharistic theology that invites the reader to reflect on what it means for bread to be the body of Christ.

Eusebius creatively juxtaposes material from multiple Gospels in order to guide the reader toward reading the fourfold Gospel as a single, interconnected whole. The material is obviously different in both verbal content and narrative context. Eusebius is doing a different kind of work than most modern synopses or cross-references. Yet his imaginative re-reading invites the reader to rich theological reflection on what it means to say that “the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14).

Discipleship

Eusebius invites us to similar practices of creative reading for other passages and other themes as well. Let’s observe how he aligns narratively and historically distinct passages in order to offer a theology of discipleship across the fourfold Gospel.

Consider how Eusebius juxtaposes two astonishing catches of fish. He connects Luke’s miraculous catch early in Jesus’s ministry (Luke 5:4–7), with John’s similar narrative set after Jesus’s resurrection (John 21:1–6, 11). Eusebius of course recognizes the differences between these two narratives. Yet he nonetheless juxtaposes Luke’s miraculous catch of fish—and its associated call to “catching people” (Luke 5:10)—with Jesus’s renewed calling of the disciples after his resurrection in John. By prioritizing narrative parallels between the two accounts, Eusebius invites us to recognize theological continuity in Jesus’s calling of his disciples before and after the resurrection.

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Let’s consider another example. Eusebius connects Jesus’s words in Matthew 18:18 and John 20:23. The parallels are evident. In Matthew, Jesus speaks of “binding” and “loosing.” In John, Jesus speaks of “forgiving” and “retaining.” In both passages, Jesus gives his disciples authority for the work to which he has called them. Yet not only is the specific wording different but the narrative contexts are also distinct. Matthew recounts the saying as part of Jesus’s ministry in Galilee. John locates it in Jesus’s first upper-room appearance after his resurrection.

Despite differences in vocabulary and context, however, Eusebius connects parallels in structure and theme. By mapping these connections across Gospel narratives, Eusebius again invites us to recognize theological continuity in the vocation of Jesus’s disciples.

Just as in our two examples related to the theme of incarnation, Eusebius’s reading of discipleship is not reducible to questions about historical parallels. Rather, Eusebius invites us to a nuanced reading of the literary and theological texture of the fourfold Gospel.

Eusebius’s creative reading

Eusebius’s project is not an attempt to reconstruct a “historical Jesus” behind the Gospels the way modern scholars might, nor is it an effort to solve source-critical puzzles about which Gospel uses which others. Rather, Eusebius invites us to an imaginative theological hermeneutics that attends to narrative, thematic, and verbal patterns across the fourfold Gospel.

A defining characteristic of Eusebius’s fourfold Gospel hermeneutic is his frequent creative juxtapositions of John with the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). By attending to John’s intricate relationships with the Synoptics, Eusebius maps insightful (and sometimes surprising!) thematic and theological connections — and thereby offers much for contemporary exegetes and theologians. As in the examples that we have observed above, Eusebius consistently prioritizes thematic resonance over exact parallels.

Eusebius traces complex patterns of juxtaposition that exceed literal correspondence.

Yet Eusebius recognizes the significance of difference as well. Indeed, he offers a creative reading strategy that repeatedly juxtaposes Gospel material despite differences in verbal content and narrative context. The differences are a productive part of Eusebius’s capacious project of theological reading. As I’ve written elsewhere, Eusebius “traces complex patterns of juxtaposition that exceed literal correspondence.”

Eusebius’s repeated creative reading is not a counsel of despair. He doesn’t read in these creative ways to escape theological, historical, or narrative challenges. Not at all. Rather he sees in the Gospels a constant invitation to attend to the literary form and verbal texture of the evangelical narratives in order to enter more richly into God’s revelation in and of Jesus Christ.

This creative literary and theological approach was not the only option. Eusebius could have focused on investigating the extent to which the New Testament Gospels depend on one another. (Such source criticism is the project of most modern Gospel synopses.) Or, instead, Eusebius could have attempted a project of historical reconstruction, like ancient and modern Gospel harmonies or the many modern quests for a historical Jesus. But Eusebius did not choose either of these routes. Instead, he privileged a creative intertextual strategy for reading a fourfold Gospel as a literary and theological whole.

Eusebius’s approach to Gospel reading contrasts with latent assumptions in contemporary tools and practices. It invites us to reflect upon the contingency of our own habits of reading. As Eusebius would remind us, source criticism and historical reconstruction—perhaps the dominant critical approaches today—do not exhaust the possibilities of Gospel reading. Eusebius affirms the truthfulness of each Gospel narrative and is attuned to their complex textual overlaps and differences. But he insists that there is more for us to learn by reading these narratives as theological witness open to creative literary reading.

Conclusion

Eusebius discerns a dense web of literary and theological connections throughout the fourfold Gospel. He highlights the rich potential of echo, pattern, and figure. Juxtaposing the genealogies of Matthew and Luke with John’s opening offers a rich two-natures Christology. By aligning John’s Bread of Life discourse with the Synoptic institution narratives, Eusebius suggests a rich theology of divine encounter. In Luke and John, a marvelous catch of fish—and the call to discipleship with which it is intertwined—reverberate with one another from the beginning of Jesus’s ministry to his reunion with the disciples in Galilee. And so forth.

Eusebius participated in an expansive early Christian conversation about reading Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John together as a fourfold unity. Moreover, Eusebius’s apparatus exerted an enduring impact. For more than a millennium, in over a dozen languages and in thousands of manuscripts, Eusebius’s invention transformed readers’ encounters with the Gospels.

For more than a millennium, in over a dozen languages and in thousands of manuscripts, Eusebius’s invention transformed readers’ encounters with the Gospels.

Reading the Gospels with Eusebius—looking over his shoulder, we might say—offers renewed imaginative possibilities. Eusebius not only offers generative intertextual connections but also teaches us to ask different questions. His creative theological approach invites us also to read with the Church, offering fresh avenues for the theological interpretation of Scripture and inviting us to encounter Christ in the Gospels anew.

Notes

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  I discuss this example at greater length in my book.