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St Photius the Great, tr. Freese, 1920; selections

34. Codex 34: Julius Africanus, History

Read the History of Africanus,¹ who was also the author of the Cesti in fourteen books.² Although his style is concise, he omits nothing worthy of record. He begins with the Mosaic cosmogony and goes down to the coming of Christ. He also gives a cursory account of events from that time to the reign of Macrinus,³ at which date, as he tells us, the Chronicle was finished, that is, in the 5723rd year of the world. The work is in five volumes.

Africanus also wrote a letter to Origen against the authenticity of the history of Susannah, on the grounds (amongst others) that it is not included in the Jewish books, and that the play on words (ἀπὸ τοῦ πρίνον πρῖσαι... ἀπὸ τοῦ σχίνου σχίσαι)⁴ is at variance with the genuine Hebrew style. Origen answered and refuted these objections.

Africanus also wrote a letter to Aristides,⁵ in which he showed that in reality there was no such difference as was generally supposed between the genealogies of our Saviour in Matthew and Luke.

Notes

Julius Africanus (c. 170-240), Christian historical writer, was born at Jerusalem (not in Africa) and subsequently lived at Emmaus-Nicopolis in Palestine. He was the author of a Chronicle, a history of the world from the Creation to 221; Cesti (embroidered girdles), a collection of notes on all kinds of subjects; a letter to Aristides on the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke; and a letter to Origen to show that the History of Susannah in the Apocrypha is a later addition from a Greek original. The last has been preserved in full, of the three first only fragments. According to his system of chronology, called the Alexandrian era, there were 5499 years between the Creation and the birth of Christ, which he antedated by three years.
The correct number is twenty-four.
Emperor 217-218. An extract in Georgius Syncellus, however, shows that the Chronicle really went down a little later.
“Where didst thou see them?” “Under a mastic tree (σχῖνος).” “The angel of God shall cleave (σχίσει) thy soul to-day.” “Under a holm-tree (πρῖνος).” “ The angel of God shall saw thee in two (πρίσει).”
Nothing is known of him.