In this Christian synthesis of world history, aside from the artificiality of its chronology and synchronisms, two characteristics are note worthy, namely, the absurd relative importance attached to Hebrew history and the serious bias against pagan civilization which made an objective historical narrative absolutely impossible. Of the former tendency Pro fessor Robinson has said, °this theological unity of history was won at a tremendous sacrifice of all secular perspective and accuracy. The Amorites were invested with an importance denied the Carthaginians. Enoch and Lot loomed large in an age which scarcely knew Pericles.* It is a curious but incontestable fact that the Jewish nation owes its prominence in world history to these distortions of the early Christian histo rians. Always on the defensive in the Patris tic period, the churchmen were compelled to answer the charge of having been the cause of the calamities which came to the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries. The calamities could not be denied, and so the only procedure possible was to prove a greater prevalence of misery before the Christian era. This was par ticularly the task assigned by Augustine to Oro sius and performed with great thoroughness in the latter's above mentioned work. Deliberately shutting his eyes to all the cultural contribu tions of antiquity, he gathered a veritable °his toria calamitatump by combing pagan history to present an unrelieved picture °of all the most signal horrors of war, pestilence and famine, of the fearful devastation of earthquakes and innundations, the destruction wrought by fiery eruptions, by lightning and hail, and the awful misery due to crime.* °All the achievements of Egypt, Greece and Rome," says a leading his torian, °tended to sink out of sight in the mind of Augustine's disciple, Orosius, only the woe; of a devil-worshipping heathendom lingered.' When one remembers that this work was almost the sole source of information during the Mid dle Ages regarding the history of pagan an tiquity, it is little wonder that Blondus could remark in the 15th century, that since Orosius there had been no history. Yet, in spite of the external and conscious bias of the °Fathers* against pagan culture, they could not escape the unconscious sources of influence springing out of their environment of paganism. Thus, by a curious irony of fate, it came about that the classical culture they assumed to abhor actually influenced their cosmic and historical philosophy as much, if not more, than the cul tural traditions of Judaism. The used the classical languages and were always under the spell of classical rhetoric; many Of them were educated as pagans; their syncretic theology was deeply colored with pagan ele ments; and their political ideals and practices were so thoroughly modelled after those of the Roman Empire that Professor Burr has very aptly described the origins of the Christian ecclesiastical polity as "die rise of the new Rome." This much is evident from such sources of information as have been preserved. If the great mass of early Christian historical writing which has been lost were available for i study it night well be that an even greater amount of infiltration of pagan culture could be detected.
2. The Christian Philosophy of History.— Almost as wide as the break with the classical historiography with respect to the status of pagan culture was the difference in the great emphasis placed on pragmatism and teleology in the Patristic historical literature. To the early Christian historians the "process of his tory" had a real significance and meaning, it was a part of a greater cosmic process in which God and man were the chief participants. "The Christians were perhaps the first to suspect a real grandeur in history," says Professor Rob inson, "for to them it became a divine epic, stretching far back to the creation of man and forward to the final separation of good and evil in a last magnificent and decisive crisis." This Christian philosophy of history, which has been so felicitously termed by Santayana the "Christian Epic," was gradually evolved by the "Fathers" and received its final and decisive systematic expression in Augustine's
sian and Hellenic than from Hebrew sources, considered the historic process as a part — the consequential portion — of a great cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil. In its earthly and historical significance this conflict was a struggle between the City of God— the community of the elect believers in the Hebrew and Christian God — and the City of Satan — the collective name of the previous and contemporary adherents to paganism. Its final outcome was to issue in the glorious triumph of the former and the utter destruction and discomfiture of the latter. With such a philo sophical background it is not difficult to under stand that Christian historiography was prag matic to a degree not dreamed of by either Polybius or Dionysius; it was "philosophy teaching by example" with a real vengeance. With such issues at stake the most insignificant event could not fail to have its vital import. This "epic," which received its philosophical exposition from Augustine, was illustrated from history by Orosius and was
an elegant literary form in the
of Sulpicius Severus (363-423).
3. Historical Method in the Patristic Period.— The Christian historians also departed widely from the canons of historical method laid down by Thucydides and Polybius. In addition to their tremendous bias against pagan ism, which made objectivity out of the ques tion, it was necessary to devise a special method for handling "inspired" documents. To assume towards the Hebrew creation tales the critical attitude that Hecataeus maintained toward the Greek mythology would have been impious and sinful. Therefore, if the obvious content of the inspired statement was preposterous and unbe lievable, some hidden or inner meaning must be found, and, in response to this necessity, alle gory and symbolism replaced candor and critical analysis as the foundations of historical method. "Not even Holy Writ," says Professor Burr, "was prized for the poor literal facts of history, but for those deeper meanings, allegorical, moral, anagogical, mystical, to be discerned beneath them." The allegorical method of in terpreting the Old Testament had been intro duced by the Alexandrian Jew, Philo Judaeus, and appeared in early Christian writings in the Book of Revelations, in "The Epistle of Barna bas" and in "The Shepherd of Hermas." Its main early impulse among the Fathers came from Origen (186-255). According to Origen, says Conybeare, "Whenever we meet with such useless, nay impossible, incidents and precepts as these, we must discard a literal interpretation and consider of what moral interpretation they are capable, with what higher and mysterious meaning they are fraught, what deeper truths they were intended symbolically and in alle gory to shadow forth. The divine wisdom has of set purpose contrived these little traps and stumbling blocks in order to cry halt to our slavish historical understanding of the text, by inserting in its midst sundry things that are impossible and unsuitable. The Holy Spirit so' waylays us in order that we may be driven passages which taken in their prima facie cannot be true or useful, to search for the ulte-, rior truth, and seek in the Scriptures which we believe to be inspired by God a meaning wor thy of him." This allegorizing tendency, which vaulted over criticism, was almost universally accepted by the "Fathers" and received its clas sical expression in the or tary on the Book of Job,' of Gregory the Great (540-604), and the tAllegoriae quaedam sacrae Scripturae' of Isadore of Seville (d. 636), which gave in chronological order the allegorical significance of all the persons mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. These became stand ard medieval manuals on allegory.