Introduction to This Volume

How this book is arranged

This is the eighteenth volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume holds Eusebius of Caesarea, The Preparation of the Gospel, from the period about AD 313 – 324.

Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.

The translations

The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations.

In this volume

Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine from about AD 314 until his death about AD 339. He is called the father of church history, and he was a scholar, an apologist and a biographer of the emperor Constantine.

The Preparation of the Gospel is in fifteen books. Eusebius quotes at length from earlier Greek writers, and many of the passages he preserves are known from no other source.

Dates and authorship

Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.