Resumen de Porphyry in Fragments. Reception of an Anti-Christian Text in Late Antiquity
David J. DeVore (res.)
To exemplify Magny's results: her chapter on Eusebius's citations of Porphyry in his Praeparatio and Demonstratio Evangelica stresses that the Caesarean scholar's aim, behind the veneer of impartiality that accompanied his heavy quotation of pagan authors, was to explain Christianity and neutralize attacks against Christian antiquity and sacred texts. Despite the cautionary turn in Porphyrian studies, an excellent German edition of fragments and testimonia from Against the Christians has just been edited by Matthias Becker (Porphyrios, "Contra Christianos," De Gruyter, 2015), and English and French editions are forthcoming (from Johnson and Morlet). Because such editions tend to have a longer shelf life than the scholarly works that scrutinize them, awareness of cover-texts' purposes and rhetoric will be crucial for informing these editions and their earliest audiences. [...]Becker's edition, which includes lengthy passages surrounding all reliquiae, enables scholars to assess for themselves how much of Porphyry's voice can be discerned in the cover-texts.) It must be remarked that the book contains some typographical errors and even a few historical ones (e.g. "Origen died a martyre" [sic, 2]: cf.
