Hollerich, Michael J. Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2021, pp. 316, $95.00, hardback. Recent trends in early Christian studies have turned their attention toward questions of textuality: what does it mean to read a text, what choices informed an author’s inclusion or omission of details, and how has a text been received among its readers? Moreover, what does it mean to be a reader? These concerns rise to the surface rather quickly when engaging with Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History. In Making Christian History, Michael Hollerich (Professor of Theology, University of St. Thomas) provides students of early Christian studies, patristics, and Christian historiography with a necessary ground-clearing of all things Ecclesiastical History—and, in doing so, makes a welcome contribution to the field writ large. To be clear, Hollerich does not aim to provide commentary on Eusebius’s work itself; instead, Hollerich begins with the work’s composition and analyzes the ways it has been both received and reappropriated since. In other words, Hollerich’s interest lies primarily in the social and cultural impacts Eusebius’s work had rather than trying to dissect the contents within the work itself. This caveat noted, Hollerich provides a helpful introduction…
