Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume I/Church History of Eusebius/Notes and table/Note 6

On Bk. III. chap. 32, &#167; 6 (note 14$a$).

The Greek reads &#960;&#8364;&#963;&#951;&#962; &#7952;&#954;&#954;&#955;&#951;&#963;&#8055;&#945;&#962; (without the article), and so, two lines below, &#7952;&#957; &#960;&#8364;&#963;&#8131; &#7952;&#954;&#954;&#955;&#951;&#963;&#8055;&amp; 139&#903;. All the translators (with the exception of Pratten in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VIII., who reads, &#8220;the churches&#8221;) render &#8220;the whole church,&#8221; as if reading &#960;&#8118;&#962; with the article. We have not, it is true, enough of Hegesippus&#8217; writings to be able to ascertain positively his use of &#960;&#8118;&#962;, and it is possible that he carelessly employed it indifferently with or without the article to signify the definite &#8220;all&#8221; or &#8220;the whole.&#8221; In the absence of positive testimony, however, that he failed to draw the proper distinction between its use with and its use without the article, and in view of the fact that Eusebius himself (as well as other early Fathers so far as I am able to recall) is very consistent in making the distinction, I have not felt at liberty in my translation to depart from a strict grammatical interpretation of the phrases in question. Moreover, upon second thought, it seems quite as possible that Hegesippus meant to say &#8220;every&#8221; not &#8220;all&#8221;; for he can hardly have supposed these relatives of the Lord to have presided literally over the whole Church, while he might very well say that they presided each over the church in the city in which he lived, which is all that the words necessarily imply. The phrase just below, &#8220;in every church,&#8221; is perhaps as natural as &#8220;in the whole church.&#8221;