Sextus Julius Africanus

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"Julius Africanus" redirects here. For the 1st-century orator, see Julius Africanus (orator).
Sextus Julius Africanus
Bornc. 160
possibly Jerusalem
Diedc. 240 (aged c. 80)
NationalityGreek
Occupation(s)Historian, Christian traveler

Sextus Julius Africanus (c. 160 – c. 240;

Ancient Greek: Σέξτος Ἰούλιος ὁ Ἀφρικανός or ὁ Λίβυς) was a Christian traveler and historian of the late-second and early-third centuries. He is important chiefly because of his influence on fellow historian Eusebius, on all the later writers of Church history among the Church Fathers
, and on the whole Greek school of chroniclers.

Biography

The

Emmaus. His chronicle indicates his familiarity with the topography of historic Judea.[3]

Little of Africanus's life is known and all dates are uncertain. One tradition places him under the Emperor

Gordianus III (238–244), others mention him under Severus Alexander (222–235). He appears to have known Abgar VIII
(176–213).

Africanus may have served under

Nicopolis
.

Africanus traveled to Greece and Rome and went to Alexandria to study, attracted by the fame of its catechetical school, possibly about the year 215.[4] He knew Greek (in which language he wrote), Latin, and Hebrew. He was at one time a soldier and had been a pagan; he wrote all his works as a Christian.

Whether Africanus was a layman or a cleric remains controversial. Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont argued from Africanus's addressing the priest Origen as "dear brother" that Julius must have been a priest himself[5] but Gelzer points out that such an argument is inconclusive.[6]

Writings

Africanus wrote Chronographiai, a history of the world in five volumes. The work covers the period from Creation to the year AD 221. He calculated the period between

Mediterranean, which all placed Creation within one decade of 5500 BC.[10]

The history, which had an apologetic aim, is no longer extant. But copious extracts from it are to be found in the Chronicon of

Cedrenus and the Chronicon Paschale. Eusebius gives some extracts from his letter to one Aristides,[11] reconciling the apparent discrepancy between Matthew and Luke in the genealogy of Christ by a reference to the Jewish law of Levirate marriage, which compelled a man to marry the widow of his deceased brother, if the latter died without issue. His terse and pertinent letter to Origen impugning the authority of the part of the Book of Daniel that tells the story of Susanna, and Origen's lengthy answer, are both extant.[12]

The ascription to Africanus of an encyclopaedic work entitled

New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge
, the Kestoi "appears to have been intended as a sort of encyclopedia of the material sciences with the cognate mathematical and technical branches, but to have contained a large proportion of merely curious, trifling, or miraculous matters, on which account the authorship of Julius has been questioned. Among the parts published are sections on agriculture, liturgiology, tactics, and medicine (including veterinary practise)."

Verification of Moses

This work does not survive except in fragments, chiefly those preserved by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus. In turn Africanus preserves fragments of the work of Polemon of Athens' Greek History.

  • FRAGMENT 13: From Georgius Syncellus, Chron., Third Book. In Euseb., Præpar., X. 40:
    • 6. And from Moses, then, to the first Olympiad there are 1020 years, as to the first year of the 55th Olympiad from the same are 1237, in which enumeration the reckoning of the Greeks coincides with us.
[...] Polemo, for instance, in the first book of his Greek History, says: In the time of
Apis, king of Argos, son of Phoroneus, a division of the army of the Egyptians left Egypt, and settled in the Palestine called Syrian, not far from Arabia: these are evidently those who were with Moses.[14][15]

Notes

  1. ^ Gelzer 1898, pp. 4f.
  2. ^ "Martin Wallraff (ed.), Iulius Africanus: Chronographiae. The Extant Fragments, reviewed by Hagith Sivan (Bryn Mawr Classical Review)". Bryn Mawr Classical Review.
  3. ^ Gelzer 1898, p. 10.
  4. ^ Gelzer 1898, p. 11.
  5. ^ Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique, III, Paris, 1693, 254
  6. ^ Gelzer 1898, p. 9.
  7. ^ Vernance Grumel; Paul Lemerle (1958). La chronologie. Traité d'études byzantines. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. "...the number of 5500 years as the period up to the advent of the Word of salvation, that was announced to the world in the time of the sway of the Cæsars" (Africanus, Chronology 1).
  8. ^ Hijmans, S.E., Sol: The Sun in the Art and Religions of Rome, 2009, p. 584. "[Several authors] claim that as early as 221 Julius Africanus calculated the date as December 25 in his fragmentarily preserved Chronicle, but provide no reference. Wallraff, who directed the project that recently produced the first critical edition of all preserved fragments of the corpus of Julius Africanus (Wallraff 2007), has kindly informed me that he does not know of any such calculation by Africanus".
  9. ^ Kelly, Joseph F., The Origins of Christmas, Liturgical Press, 2004. p.60
  10. OCLC 1050360793.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link
    )
  11. ^ Chisholm 1911 cites: Hist. Ecc. i. 7; vi. 31
  12. ^ Chisholm 1911.
  13. ^ Chisholm 1911 cites: Grenfell and Hunt, iii. 36 ff.
  14. ^ Colavito, Jason. "The Chronography: Sextus Julius Africanus after 221 CE trans. in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library 1869". JasonColavito.com. Jason Colavito. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  15. Apis, king of Argos the Son of Phoroneus, Part of the Egyptian Army went out of Egypt, and dwelt in Syria called Palestine, not far from Arabia. As Africanus preserved the Place of Polemon, so Eusebius
    in his Chronology preserved that of Africanus.

References
Attribution

Further reading

External links
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