John of Ephesus

Brock (1979:6-7) described John of Ephesus (c.507-c.508) and his works as follows:

John of Amid, appointed bishop of Ephesus and Asia in 542, wrote towards the end of his life two works of the greatest importance for sixth century history, the Lives of the Eastern Saints (written 566-8; published by Brooks with an English translation in PO 17-19), and an Ecclesiastical History in three parts. As an independent work only Part III (written over the decade 575-585) survives, virtually complete. The original work consisted of:

• Part I : this covered from the late first century BC to AD 449, although for the period from Caesar to Constantine it appears to have contained no more than just a catalogue of emperors.
• Part II : this spanned the period 449 to 571. Some quite long extracts given in London Add. 14650 of AD 874/5: were printed by Land in Anecdota Syriaca II, 289-329; the variant readings of this manuscript are given by Chabot in his edition of the Zuqnin Chronicle at the appropriate places (this chronicle, together with other later chronicles, made very extensive use of John's work). Excerpts from various other manuscripts, deriving from this lost part, were published by Brooks in CSCO 104/53. pp. 402 - 17(10).
• Part III : this final part, covering from 571 to at least 585, is preserved almost complete in a seventh century manuscript, London Add. 14640 (some of the gaps in the manuscript can be filled in from excerpts from John's work in the later chroniclers). The Syriac text of this part was first edited by W. Cureton in 1853, and then reedited by Brooks in CSCO 105/54 (1935). There exist English, German and Latin translations: the English by R. Payne Smith (I860), who reorders the sequence of the chapters; the German by J.M. Schonfelder (1862), and the Latin by E. W. Brooks in CSCO 106/55 (1936). Of these that by Brooks is the most reliable.

There are two old monographs in John's Ecclesiastical History, by J.P.N. Land (1856, in Dutch), and by Diakonov (1908, in Russian)