Eusebius is the author of a good number of writings, some of them of very considerable length, which traditionally are classified as ‘apologetic’. It is easy to see why the treatises thus classified—for example, Against Hierocles and Against Porphyry,could be called ‘apologetic’. They answer questions, objections, and accusations raised against Christianity. It is not so easy to see why certain other treatises by Eusebius, not classified as ‘apologetic’ by patrologies like Bardenhewer’s or Quasten’s, should not be similarly regarded as ‘apologetic’, given such a wide notion of apology. Thus Eusebius wrote Questions Arising in the Gospels and their Solutions, also entitled On Discrepancy between the Gospels (Jerome, On Famous Men, 81;idem, Commentary on Matthew, I, 16), only extant in fragments. On Discrepancy came in two parts, the first, dedicated to Stephanus, dealing with the accounts of Jesus’ youth. It is clear, from what seems to be a reference to this text in Eusebius’Demonstration of the Gospel, 7. 3. 18, that it dealt at some length with the discrepancy in Jesus’ genealogy. The second part dealt with difficulties and discrepancies in the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. Now Origen criticizes Celsus (Against Celsus,2. 32) for not being aware of the fact that there is a discrepancy concerning Jesus’ genealogy between the Gospels, though it has been a source of criticism of Christians and a subject of discussion among Christians themselves. In fact, we know from Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History, I. 7) that Julius Africanus had dealt with the question in a letter to Aristides; indeed, Eusebius quotes part of Africanus’ letter, and other fragments of it have been preserved elsewhere. Origen took up the problem in his Homilies on Luke, 28. And it was a point which Porphyry, relying, as we can see from Origen, on Jewish or pagan critics, if not also Christian authors like Julius Africanus and Origen, raised again in his Against the Christians. As to the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection, it is not surprising that both pagans and Jews would closely scrutinize and try to criticize them. Hence, it would seem that Eusebius’ work Discrepancy, being devoted to problems which gave rise to attacks on the trustworthiness of the Gospels, raised by Jews and pagans, might, or even should, be regarded as apologetic. Eusebius, as he himself tells us (Preparation for the Gospel, 7. 8. 29; Demonstration, I. 9. 20), also wrote a treatise on The Polygamy and Fertility of the Patriarchs. It is quoted by Basil (On the Holy Spirit, 29. 72) under the title Difficulties concerning the Polygamy of the Ancients. One has to wonder whether this is not a treatise defending the respectability of the patriarchs against Gnostic and pagan criticism, in which case this writing, too, should be regarded as apologetic. But once we go as far as this, it is obvious that it becomes rather difficult to draw a sharp line. It is clear, for instance, that Eusebius’ Chronicle has a rather strong apologetic element. It, after all, is meant to show, among other things, that Jewish, and hence Christian, wisdom antedates Greek wisdom, a crucial point in the debate between Christians and pagans. So, if we adopt a generously vague notion of ‘apology’, we might end up seeing even the Chronicle classified as an apologetic writing. Obviously, though, a notion which is so diffuse is also of very little help.
On the other hand, it is not clear how much is gained by making such a notion very precise, especially if there is no sign that such a precision reflects the way the ancient authors and their readers thought about these writings. What we can do, though, is to look at the ancient writers themselves, to see how they used the notion of an ‘apologia’. It will turn out that we really get not one notion, but a whole family of notions. The ancestor of these, no doubt, is the notion of a response to a legal charge on account of somebody’s being a Christian. But grouped around this notion we find a series of derivative and extended notions. One such extended notion is the notion of a response to a criticism of one’s being a Christian, which does not necessarily involve the charge of criminality, but in some way involves a serious reproach; a response to a criticism which questions, if not the legality, then the morality or respectability of being a Christian. There will then be even further extended uses, in which a writing could be called ‘apologetic’ if it addresses an issue or a difficulty which could be, or in fact has been, used to make a case against the Christians, but which is not—or at least not primarily— addressed for this reason.