Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume I/Church History of Eusebius/Book III/Chapter 1

The Parts of the World in which the Apostles preached Christ.

1. was the condition of the Jews. Meanwhile the holy apostles and disciples of our Saviour were dispersed throughout the world. Parthia, according to tradition, was allotted to Thomas as his field of labor, Scythia to Andrew, and Asia to John, The universal testimony of antiquity assigns John&#8217;s later life to Ephesus: e.g. Iren&#230;us, Adv. H&#230;r. III. 1. 1 and 3. 4, etc.; Clement of Alex., Quis Dives Salvetur, c. 42 (quoted by Eusebius, chap. 23, below); Polycrates in his Epistle to Victor (quoted by Eusebius in chap. 31, below, and in Bk. V. chap. 24); and many others. The testimony of Iren&#230;us is especially weighty, for the series: Iren&#230;us, the pupil of Polycarp, the pupil of John, forms a complete chain such as we have in no other case. Such testimony, when its force is broken by no adverse tradition, ought to be sufficient to establish John&#8217;s residence in Ephesus beyond the shadow of a doubt, but it has been denied by many of the critics who reject the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel (e.g. Keim, Holtzmann, the author of Supernat. Religion, and others), though the denial is much less positive now than it was a few years ago. The chief arguments urged against the residence of John in Ephesus are two, both a silentio: first, Clement in his first Epistle to the Corinthians speaks of the apostles in such a way as to seem to imply that they were all dead; secondly, in the Ignatian Epistles, Paul is mentioned, but not John, which is certainly very remarkable, as one is addressed to Ephesus itself. In reply it may be said that such an interpretation of Clement&#8217;s words is not necessary, and that the omission of John in the epistles of Ignatius becomes perfectly natural if the Epistles are thrown into the time of Hadrian or into the latter part of Trajan&#8217;s reign, as they ought to be (cf. chap. 36, note 4). In the face of the strong testimony for John&#8217;s Ephesian residence these two objections must be overruled. The traditional view is defended by all conservative critics as well as by the majority even of those who deny the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel (cf. especially Hilgenfeld in his Einleitung, and Weizs&#228;cker in his Apostaliches Zeitalter). The silence of Paul&#8217;s epistles and of the Acts proves that John cannot have gone to Ephesus until after Paul had permanently left there, and this we should naturally expect to be the case. Upon the time of John&#8217;s banishment to Patmos, see Bk. III. chap. 18, note 1. Tradition reports that he lived until the reign of Trajan (98&#8211;117). Cf. Iren&#230;us, II. 22. 5 and III. 3. 4. who, after he had lived some time there, died at Ephesus.

2. Peter appears to have preached in Pontus, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia, and Asia to the Jews of the dispersion. And at last, having come to Rome, he was crucified head-downwards; for he had requested that he might suffer in this way. What do we need to say concerning Paul, who preached the Gospel of Christ from Jerusalem to Illyricum, and afterwards suffered martyrdom in Rome under Nero? These facts are related by Origen in the third volume of his Commentary on Genesis.