Page "Eusebius" Paragraph 25

In the 5th century, the Christian historian Socrates Scholasticus described Eusebius as writing for “ rhetorical finish ” and for the “ praises of the Emperor ” rather than the “ accurate statement of facts .” The methods of Eusebius were criticised by Edward Gibbon in the 18th century.

In the 19th century Jacob Burckhardt viewed Eusebius as ' a liar ', the “ first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity .” Ramsay MacMullen in the 20th century regarded Eusebius's work as representative of early Christian historical accounts in which “ Hostile writings and discarded views were not recopied or passed on, or they were actively suppressed ..., matters discreditable to the faith were to be consigned to silence .” As a consequence this kind of methodology in MacMullens view has distorted modern attempts, ( e. g. Harnack, Nock, and Brady ), to describe how the Church grew in the early centuries.

Arnaldo Momigliano wrote that in Eusebius's mind " chronology was something between an exact science and an instrument of propaganda " Drake in the 21st century treats Eusebius as working within the framework of a " totalizing discourse " that viewed the world from a single point of view that excluded anything he thought inappropriate.