Résumé
Résumé de Quadratus: Apology
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love early church history, accounts of how Christians first spoke to the Roman world, and the traces left by lost books.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Quadratus wrote a defence of the Christian faith and presented it to a Roman emperor, almost certainly Hadrian, in the 120s. The whole work is lost. What remains is one short passage, copied into the Church History of Eusebius, a bishop and historian who wrote in Greek about two centuries later.
That small piece still matters. Many scholars regard it as the earliest Christian apology, a text written to answer outsiders rather than to teach believers. In a few sentences it makes a bold claim about the works of Jesus and about people who had seen them. Here you will learn where the fragment comes from, who Quadratus may have been, what he asked of the emperor, and how readers weigh his words. First, the way the text has come down to us.
Dans ce résumé
- 1Only one fragment has survivedFree
- 2Who Quadratus was remains uncertain
- 3A plea to the emperor Hadrian
- 4Living witnesses of the Saviour's works
Point clé 1 sur 4
Only one fragment has survived
The Apology of Quadratus does not exist as a book today. No complete manuscript has been found, and no ancient translation of the whole is known. Everything depends on a brief quotation in the Church History of Eusebius, in the fourth book, written in Greek in the early fourth century.
Eusebius introduces the work with a few lines of his own. He says Quadratus addressed it to the emperor Hadrian, and he adds that the book was still in the hands of many believers in his own day. That detail suggests the full text could be read for generations after it was written.
Then Eusebius quotes a short passage and moves on. Why did he choose it? Probably because it spoke of eyewitnesses to Jesus, which suited a historian tracing the church back to its origins. The rest of the argument, including whatever Quadratus said about Christian life and worship, is lost. Any account of the book must therefore be modest and rest on this one passage.
That’s 1 of 4 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Quadratus: Apology
What is the Apology of Quadratus?
It is a lost defence of Christianity addressed to the emperor Hadrian. Only one short passage survives, quoted by the historian Eusebius. Many scholars regard it as the earliest Christian apology.
Who was Quadratus?
He was an early Christian writer of the second century. Eusebius connects him with Hadrian's reign. Ancient writers sometimes identified him with a bishop of Athens, but modern scholars disagree about whether the two were one man.
When was the Apology of Quadratus written?
Most scholars date it to the reign of Hadrian, often to about 124 to 129, when the emperor was in Greece. The exact date is uncertain, because only Eusebius reports the occasion.
Why does only a fragment of Quadratus survive?
The full text is lost, and we do not know exactly how or why it disappeared. Eusebius quoted one passage in his Church History in the fourth century, and that quotation is the only part known today.
What does the surviving fragment say?
It says the works of the Saviour were real and always present. It points to people who were healed or raised from the dead and says some of them lived on until Quadratus's own time.