He died soon after 337, leaving a panegyric of Constantine unfinished. Today, he is remembered mainly for his Ecclesiastical History, which remains the fundamental primary source for the history of the early church.

He also devised the first modern-style tables of dates and events in his Chronicle, which became the basis for all subsequent chronology. His tables of parallel passages in the bible appear in manuscripts for the next thousand years.

An Onomasticon of biblical sites known in his day is valuable to the archaeologist, while his works on the relationship of Greek culture to Christianity are a gold-mine of otherwise lost sources, quoted verbatim.

His biblical commentaries remain untranslated, and many other works are lost.

Why do the evangelists trace Joseph's descent, not Mary's?

1. "How can they trace Christ's ancestry as `a son of David'? It must be because of Joseph's descent from David. Yet Christ was not the son of Joseph, but of the Holy Spirit and Mary, as the scripture says; so, if they wanted to trace the descent of Christ, it was Mary's descent they should have traced, not Joseph's. Christ was not in fact fathered by Joseph, and has no physical connection with him; and if he is not actually Joseph's son, but only Mary's, he would not be descended from David, as there is no account showing David as Mary's ancestor. So, given that Christ is not Joseph's son and that Mary has no genealogical connection with David, to talk about him as `from the seed of David' is simply futile."

That is the sort of thing that presented the first of our problems. Its solution would be as follows.

2. [1] There were some of our Saviour Jesus Christ's actions about which his contemporaries had to say nothing, and others--those that would tend to the hearers' benefit--which were disseminated for numbers of people to hear. So, to take an example, it is in the thirtieth year of his
bodily life that he presents himself for John's baptism; and it is from that time that his teaching and miracles begin. No account reveals what he did during all those thirty years before the baptism, nor is it possible from any holy scripture to discover his previous life. Even aft er his public recognition, there were some things that he proclaimed for everyone to hear, and others that he treated as secrets, for his disciples alone; and in performing his miracles he sometimes gave orders not to tell anyone, but sometimes did his marvellous acts without any such prohibition. The miracle of his birth, then, was just one particular example of the matters he had decided not to divulge, and, with few exceptions, no-one at the time of his incarnate life gained any knowledge of it. ...