For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[Confused Ape]

As Carrington pointed out, in Eusebius' "history" he notes only 147 martyrs.

Is that Cliff Carrington? I've been hunting around for further information because all he says in Nero's Fire And Christian Persecution? is -

Eusebius was supposed to have written a Martyrology naming all one hundred and forty-six of them he knew about, but, nothing about Nero’s fire and martyrs of it.

I then tried wikipedia for Eusebius - Minor Historical Works

Before he compiled his church history, Eusebius edited a collection of martyrdoms of the earlier period and a biography of Pamphilus. The martyrology has not survived as a whole, but it has been preserved almost completely in parts. It contained:
an epistle of the congregation of Smyrna concerning the martyrdom of Polycarp;
the martyrdom of Pionius;
the martyrdoms of Carpus, Papylus, and Agathonike;
the martyrdoms in the congregations of Vienne and Lyon;
the martyrdom of Apollonius.
Of the life of Pamphilus, only a fragment survives. A work on the martyrs of Palestine in the time of Diocletian was composed after 311; numerous fragments are scattered in legendaries, which still need to be collected.

Going by the wiki, the list he edited is not the same as his Palestine list but I haven't tracked down anything else out about the edited list.

I found an article by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould - The Martyrologies

The first to draw up a tolerably full Martyrology was Eusebius the historian, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, and he did this at the request of the Emperor Constantine. In this Martyrology he noted all the martyrs of whom he had received an authentic account on the days of their suffering, with the names of the judges who sentenced them, the places where they suffered, and the nature of their sufferings. Eusebius wrote about A.D. 320, but there were collections of the sort already extant, as we may learn from the words of S. Cyprian already quoted, who in his instructions to his clergy ordered them to compile what was practically a Martyrology of the Carthaginian Church.

This sounds like it could be the Martyrs of Palestine. As Eusebius became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314 he would probably have had access to records. On the other hand, as everything else he's written is supposed to be a fake, maybe he just invented all the names and records.

Hardly the vast blood-letting that later xtians contrived.

I've found Eusebius's Church History and a quick look through the books reveals that Martyrs Of Palestine is just the appendix to Book VIII.

Back to Cliff Carrington. (I was mistaken about him being dead because I misinterpreted something in his section on Gnosis. )

Eusebius, when the Church was triumphant in the 4th century, after the ‘persecutions’ could only find 146 martyrs in the history.

Eusebius was supposed to have written a Martyrology naming all one hundred and forty-six of them he knew about, but, nothing about Nero’s fire and martyrs of it.

Eusebius did write a Martyrology which is included as an appendix in his history but it has nothing to do with Nero and the fire of Rome. If Baring-Gould is right about Martyrologies being drawn up for places other than Palestine it suggests that there were supposed to have been more than just one hundred and forty-six martyrs between the start of Christianity and Eusebius's day. (I haven't gone through the Palestinian list to count the names of the martyrs so I don't know if there are 146 of them.)

Maybe there were no martyrs at all if Christian writers made everything up in their own histories and forged all the references to Christians being killed in everyone else's histories.

PS: If you think the Tacitus passage is gory, stay away from the Martyrs Of Palestine. hock: There's more dead bodies than were given names, though.

Afterwards, in the same city, many rulers of the country churches readily endured terrible sufferings,

Therefore, of all this number, the only ones who were honored with the crown of the holy martyrs were Alphæus and Zacchæus.