Paul of Samosata Zeus. How he gained such a privilege I shall show.’’^157 The close resemblance
to what will have been said to Aurelian about Paul of Samosata needs no
stressing. It does not follow of itself that a Christian community could have
come easily to make such a claim before a pagan emperor. But the ground-
work for such an advance had in fact long been prepared. For just about a
century before the case of Paul arose, we find Theophilus, bishop of Anti-
och, discussing the Christian view of the emperor.^158 Why do the Christians
not worship the emperor? Because he is not a god, but a man, appointed by
God, not to receive homage, but to give judgment rightly.
It must be remembered that Gallienus’ edict of toleration was by now
about a decade old. There was on the face of it nothing to stop the increas-
ingly settled and well-established church from taking its place with other
institutions in the life of the Empire. The moral had indeed been drawn im-
mediately after the edict. For Eusebius reproduces a rescript (antigraphē)of
Gallienus, written in answer to a request from the bishops of Egypt for re-
covery of church property there; in the same paragraph he mentions what
was evidently another rescript to a different group of local bishops concern-
ing the recovery of Christian cemeteries.^159
It was therefore only a relatively small further step that the congregation
of Antioch should address themselves to the Emperor for help in recovering
their church house from an impudent heretic. To do so they did not neces-
sarily have to wait until the Emperor was in the locality. We have no reason to
think that Gallienus ever visited Egypt, and the likelihood is that the Eygp-
tian churches—like innumerable associations or cities before them—sent a
delegation to him.
What then was the sequence of events leading to the deposition of Paul?
Nothing in the admittedly extremely brief narrative of Eusebius prepares us
for the possibility that a period of three and a half years passed, with Paul
in illegal possession of the church house until Aurelian arrived in person in
Antioch. Moreover, Eusebius mentions the succession of Timaeus to Dom-
nus, Paul’s successor, as bishop of Antioch, quite separately from the affair of
Paul—and Jerome puts Timaeus’ consecration precisely in , and before
the reconquest by Aurelian, which he puts in .^160 So it is equally possible
. P. Roussel and F. de Visscher, ‘‘Les inscriptions du temple de Dmeir,’’Syria (–
): ; W. Kunkel ‘‘Der Prozess der Gohariener vor Caracalla,’’ inFestschrift H. Lewald
(), ;SEGXVII . On the lines in question (–), see N. Lewis, ‘‘Cognitio Cara-
callae de Goharienis: Two Textual Restorations,’’TAPhA (): .
. Theophilus,Ad Autolycum, II.
.HE, .
.HE,,;Jerome,Chron., ed. Helm, .