Image: Marble bust of Caius [Gaius] Caesar (AD 12-41), Roman Emperor (AD 37-41). Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum, Copenhagen.
A new installment has been posted to Eusebius of Caesarea’s The
Ecclesiastical History: book 2, chapter 4-6 (listen here).
Notes and Commentary:
Eusebius here traces early Christianity against the backdrop
of the reign of Caius [Gaius] Caesar, also known as Caligula.
He notes the emperor’s appointment of Herodian rulers in
Palestine.
He also discusses the influence of Philo, the great Jewish
philosopher of Alexandria.
He notes the mental instability of Caius and his announcement
of himself as a god, and how Philo represented the Jews in Rome before the
unstable emperor.
He claims to draw his accounts both from the writings of Josephus
and Philo.
Eusebius discusses Caius’s bitter hatred of the Jews and how
he set up his image in synagogues and even tried to make the Jewish temple in
Jerusalem a shrine to “Caius the new Zeus manifest.”
He also describes an incident of Pilate’s violence against the
Jews—clubbing to death those who opposed his use of religious funds to build an
aqueduct.
Eusebius sees the suffering of the Jews and the ultimate fall
of Jerusalem as a divine penalty “for their crimes against Christ.”
JTR
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