Reading the Gospels with the Eusebian Canon Tables

This chapter looks at the experience of reading a four-gospel codex equipped with the Canon Tables and argues that Eusebius’ paratext has a threefold effect: 1) it binds together four originally separate texts into a single corpus of literature, and by implication excludes all other texts from this category; 2) it encourages a kind of hypertextual reading, in which passages from one gospel are read alongside passages from one or more other gospels; and 3) within this hypertextual mode the Eusebian apparatus is decidedly underdetermined, expressing a Bakhtinian openness with respect to the resolution of tensions internal to the corpus. The chapter concludes with an analysis of six parallels created by Eusebius that demonstrate these three effects.

The Origins of Scholarship on the Fourfold Gospel

In his Letter to Carpianus Eusebius refers to an earlier author named Ammonius of Alexandria who, he says, left to posterity the Diatessaron-Gospel. This chapter first identifies the Ammonius in question and proposes that he was a philosopher well-known for his philological scholarship. It also elucidates the title and significance of his work through a comparison with Origen’s Hexapla. The second half of the chapter turns to Eusebius’ adaptation of Ammonius’ composition and argues that it provided him with the ‘starting points’ that he reworked to produce his marginal apparatus. Eusebius’ experimentations with information visualization and textual organization in his Chronicle and Pinax for the Psalms provided him with the insights he needed to accomplish this reworking. Finally, this chapter argues that the ten Canon Tables possessed cosmological resonances in the light of Eusebius’ comments elsewhere about the theology of numbers and creation.

Eusebius’ Canon Tables as a Paratext for Ordering Textual Knowledge

This chapter situates the Eusebian apparatus against the backdrop of the theory and history of paratexts and the theory and history of information visualization. It argues that Eusebius’ Canon Tables were a highly original paratext and a remarkably sophisticated instance of information visualization when compared to what preceded them. The closest formal analogue to the Canon Tables is shown to be the astronomical tables composed by Ptolemy in the second century. When seen in relation to the fourfold gospel, the Canon Tables are a paratext that orders the textual material of the gospels by organizing it into relational categories and providing the user with a navigational system when reading the corpus.

Introduction

The introduction provides a summary of the function of the Eusebian Canon Tables, covering its three constituent elements, with the set of instructions known as the Letter to Carpianus, the text division per gospel into numbered sections, and the set of tables encapsulating the sections and correspondences; then follows a survey of the linguistic traditions and manuscripts in which the Canon Tables appear, including Vulgate gospelbooks, copies of the Peshitta, Codex Argenteus, Armenian gospelbooks, the Georgian Adishi Gospels, and Abba Garima I and II. Finally, it outlines the structure of the book: chapter 1 lays the theoretical guidelines; chapter 2 examines the immediate origins of the system; chapter 3 argues that Eusebius’ paratextual system created intertextual links across the fourfold gospel and encouraged a hypertextual reading of this corpus. Chapter 4 examines Augustine’s use of the apparatus; chapter 5 presents an analysis of the revision of the system incorporated into the Syriac Peshitta gospels. Chapter 6 highlights little-studied literature produced by Irish scholars between the seventh and the ninth centuries; and chapter 7 focuses on texts from Armenia, from the eighth century and after.

Scholarly Practices

Despite the wide profusion of Canon Tables in Latin gospelbooks from the fourth century onwards, evidence of readers or exegetes making use of the apparatus in this period is almost non-existent. The one great exception is the early Irish exegetical tradition, which shows a remarkable scholarly interest in the Eusebian paratext, though much of the relevant primary literature remains little known, and some even unpublished. This chapter examines four representative texts. The poet Ailerán of Clonard explored the symbolic significance of the Canon Tables in poetry. Two anonymous school texts, known as Pauca de libris and The Irish Reference Bible, analysed the Eusebian parallels to classify kinds of similarity and difference that exist between parallel passages. Finally, the Carolingian scholar Sedulius Scottus commented extensively on the functioning and history of the Canon Tables.

‘The Diversity of Agreement among the Four Evangelists’

One of Augustine’s most influential treatises on the later western tradition was his De consensu evangelistarum, in which he analysed seemingly all the possible contradictions within the fourfold gospel canon. Some previous scholars have raised the possibility that Augustine might have depended upon Eusebius’ Canon Tables to accomplish this task, while others have argued that he did not. This chapter undertakes an exhaustive investigation of the treatise and concludes that Augustine was dependent upon the Canon Tables throughout, indeed, that he could not have performed such a thorough analysis apart from some such information device. The final section of this chapter argues that on the basis of the insights he gained from the Canon Tables Augustine formulated the first ever theory of gospel composition in the history of Christianity, relying on the rhetorical practice of memoria rerum.

Conclusion

The conclusion revisits the areas of paratextuality and information visualization introduced at the beginning of the book. It argues that the Eusebian apparatus participated in a wider ‘information technology revolution’ that occurred from the fourth century onwards and exemplifies the late antique view of knowledge as a perception of the structural order underlying an object of study. With respect to paratextuality, the conclusion proposes that the shift in attitudes towards paratexts in the sources covered in this book is tied to the emergence of the book as an object of significance and study in itself, rather than merely being the necessary equipment for an oral performance. Finally, the conclusion proposes that although notions of textual and cosmological harmony have shifted since late antiquity, the Eusebian apparatus remains effective as a means for mapping the polyphonous conversation that is the fourfold gospel.

Seeing the Salvation of God

In eighth-century Armenia a new genre of literature emerged consisting of commentary on the artwork that usually accompanies the Eusebian paratext. This chapter examines what these sources reveal about the way these images functioned paratextually in relation to the fourfold gospel. It first surveys the artistic developments that occurred across the diverse cultural traditions that transmitted the Eusebian apparatus. It next introduces Step‘anos of Siwnik’ and Nerses Šnorhali, the authors of the two treatises under consideration, and gives an overview of their interpretative approach. The latter part of the chapter turns to explain the functioning of the method and purpose of these commentaries by comparison with the theorization of memory in the classical rhetorical tradition. It argues that the commentaries model the use of the artwork as a mnemotechnical program intended as a preparatory exercise instructing the reader in the proper theological context within which the fourfold gospel is situated.

Canon Tables 2.0

The Eusebian Canon Tables seem to have been introduced into the Syriac world through their incorporation in the new translation known as the Peshitta in the late fourth or early fifth century, since many Peshitta tetraevangelia contain the apparatus. However, the Peshitta carries a revised version of the apparatus which was accomplished by subdividing many of the original Eusebian sections and creating many more parallels amongst the gospels. This chapter compares the Peshitta translation of the Letter to Carpianus with the Greek original. Then it examines the origins of the marginal tabular concordances that usually occur in Peshitta gospelbooks. Finally, it compares the new parallels created in the Peshitta version with the Eusebian originals in order to highlight the principles by which this revision was accomplished. The conclusion is that the Peshitta Canon Tables represent a complete overhaul of the original in order to more closely align text and paratext.