Person

Julius Africanus

Sextus Julius Africanus, c. AD 160-240, was a Christian scholar of the early third century and the first Christian writer to attempt a full world chronology. He is the author of the five-book Chronographiai, which set biblical and secular history on one timeline, and of two letters that still matter to apologetics: the Epistle to Aristides, the earliest surviving attempt to reconcile the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, and the Letter to Origen, which argued that the story of Susanna in the Greek Daniel was not original to the book. Most of his work survives only in fragments quoted by later writers, above all Eusebius and the Byzantine chronicler George Syncellus. The standard English collection is in Philip Schaff's Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 6.

Biographical sketch

What is known comes mostly from Africanus himself and from Eusebius:

His dates are uncertain. The conventional range is c. 160 to c. 240. The editor of the Ante-Nicene Fathers volume preferred a later birth, c. 200, reasoning from Africanus's report that he studied at Alexandria under Heraclas, so the range should be held loosely.
He went to Alexandria because of the reputation of Heraclas, the colleague and later successor of Origen at the catechetical school.
Eusebius's Chronicle, under the year 226, records that Nicopolis in Palestine, formerly called Emmaus, was rebuilt, with "Africanus, the author of the Chronology" acting as ambassador for the city and having charge of it. A later Syriac writer, Dionysius Bar-Salibi, calls him bishop of Emmaus, which is not otherwise confirmed.
Eusebius also credits him with the Kestoi (Embroideries), a miscellany of natural, medical and military lore (Ecclesiastical History 6.31). Because its contents seemed unlike a Christian author, some older critics proposed two writers named Africanus; most modern scholars treat them as one man.

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Major works

Chronographiai (five books). Photius describes it as concise but omitting nothing important. It ran from the creation account of Genesis to the advent of Christ and then summarised events down to the author's own time. Africanus counted 5,500 years from creation to the coming of the Word, and synchronised Hebrew history with Greek, Egyptian and Persian records. Eusebius built on it for his own Chronicle, and through Eusebius it shaped Christian chronology for centuries. Fragments survive mainly in Syncellus.
Epistle to Aristides, on the genealogies of Christ. Eusebius preserves the core of it at Ecclesiastical History 1.7; further portions were recovered by Cardinal Angelo Mai. See below.
Letter to Origen on Susanna. Origen's reply survives with it.
Kestoi, the miscellany named above, surviving in fragments.

The Epistle to Aristides and the two genealogies

Africanus wrote because some Christians explained the differences between Matthew 1 and Luke 3 by saying the lists mixed royal and priestly names to show that Christ was both king and priest. He rejected that as a pious fiction. Both lists, he pointed out, are of David's line and the royal tribe of Judah, and no such theory should prevail in the Church "against the exact truth, so as that a lie should be contrived for the praise and glory of Christ." He offered what he called the true history instead.

His explanation is the levirate solution:

Israel reckoned descent in two ways, by nature and by law. A son raised up to the name of a brother who died childless was the natural son of one man and the legal son of another.
Matthan, of Solomon's line, and Melchi, of Nathan's line, married the same woman in turn, whom tradition named Estha. Matthan fathered Jacob, and Melchi fathered Heli, so Jacob and Heli were half-brothers by the same mother.
Heli died childless. Jacob married his widow and fathered Joseph, "his own son by nature, but the son of Heli by law."
So Matthew's "Jacob begat Joseph" gives the natural line, and Luke gives the legal line. Africanus noticed that Luke drops the word "begat" altogether and qualifies the first link with "as was supposed," and he took both as signs that Luke was recording descent by law.

Africanus said he had the account from the desposynoi, the relatives of the Saviour "after the flesh", families from the villages of Nazara and Cochaba who kept private genealogical records. He reported that Herod the Great had burned the public registers of Israelite families to hide his own low birth, and that only such private records survived.

Two features of the letter are important for anyone who cites it:

Africanus is candid about its limits. He ends: "And let this suffice us for the matter, although it is not supported by testimony, because we have nothing more satisfactory or true to allege upon it. The Gospel, however, in any case states the truth" (Epistle to Aristides 5, ANF 6).
His names do not match Luke's text exactly. He makes Melchi the father of Heli, but Luke 3:24 places Matthat and Levi between Heli and Melchi. The Ante-Nicene Fathers editors suggest his copy of Luke may have lacked the two names, or his memory failed him.

The letter is the earliest surviving Christian treatment of the problem. The other main solution, that Luke records Mary's line, is not clearly attested until much later. The codex sets the two side by side at Two Genealogies Contradiction Objection Defeater and discusses the Marian reading at Mary's Lineage.

The Letter to Origen on Susanna

Africanus wrote to Origen after hearing him cite the story of Susanna, which the Greek versions of Daniel include but the Hebrew text does not. Africanus argued that the story could not be part of the original book. His best-known argument is linguistic: Daniel's cross-examination of the elders turns on wordplay between the names of two trees and the punishments he pronounces, and the puns work only in Greek, which suggests the story was composed in Greek rather than translated from Hebrew. He also objected to the story's style and to details he found improbable. Origen replied at length in defence of the story's place in the Church's Scriptures. The exchange is one of the earliest examples of Christian textual and literary criticism of the Old Testament, and it bears on later debates about the Canon.

Other contributions

The "sons of God" of Genesis 6. A fragment of the Chronographiai reads the "sons of God" as descendants of Seth and the "daughters of men" as Cainites, and mentions the angelic reading only as an alternative. This Sethite view was later taken up by Augustine. See Nephilim and the Sons of God.
Thallus and the darkness at the crucifixion. A fragment preserved by Syncellus reports that the historian Thallus explained the darkness as an eclipse, and Africanus replies that a solar eclipse cannot occur at the full moon of Passover. The report is the only witness to what Thallus wrote, so its value is debated. See The Passion of Christ and Evidence Behind the Bible's Most Incredible Stories.

Reception and significance

Africanus matters to apologetics for three reasons. He is the first Christian to face the two-genealogies objection in writing and answer it with a reasoned theory, and he openly says his theory is unproven. He shows that early Christians did not treat the Gospels as beyond scrutiny: he rejected a convenient harmonisation as false, and he challenged Origen on the text of Daniel. And his chronography, carried forward by Eusebius, became the frame of Christian world history.

Scholarship

Published academic works this page draws on, each matched to a publisher, index or library catalog record.

Richard Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (1990). Open Library