Toledot HaQahal Ri’shonim — Book 1 — Chapter 1 — The Plan of the Work
HaSefarim™ · Passage ID 6a9de1d7b7947b43093c0aa0 · Passage external ID sefer_186_toledot_haqahal_rishonim_bk_01_ch_01_u_001 · Work ID 6a9de1ca56a381d7246cd59e · Canonical Sefer title Toledot HaQahal Ri’shonim · Chapter ID 6a9de1cb0ce8f30941887e61 · Chapter Book 1 — Chapter 1 — The Plan of the Work · Passage label Book 1 — Chapter 1 — The Plan of the Work · Passage number 1 · Publication status published · Access visibility PUBLIC_FULL
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Eusebius opens by defining a history broader than a list of rulers. He intends to trace the successions of those who led the principal assemblies from the days of Yahushua to his own generation; to record teachers and writers who transmitted the Word; to identify movements he regards as destructive innovations; to recount persecutions, witnesses unto death, and the reversals by which the assemblies survived; and to describe the calamities that overtook the Yehudi nation after the time of Yahushua. He admits that no predecessor has given him a continuous path to follow. Instead, he must gather scattered notices from older writers, letters, public records, chronicles, lists of overseers, and surviving books, drawing them into one historical sequence. He compares the task to collecting flowers from a meadow: his work will preserve what might otherwise disappear. He therefore begins not with the Roman state but with the origin and mission of Yahushua the Anointed, because the history of the assemblies depends upon the identity of the one from whom they take their name.