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William Adler

the investment of time and effort. Like many of his contemporaries, the philological-
ly-minded Gelzer was unforgiving in his judgment of Malalas’ “elende Elaborat”, far
inferior to the more technically competent works produced in Alexandria a century
earlier. Nor was he at all impressed by Malalas’influence on later generations of chron-
iclers. The deference that his successors paid to him when so many better alternatives
were still available amounted in Gelzer’s estimation to a sweeping indictment of the
deplorable state of monastic learning in Byzantium.78
Gelzer assessed the worth of Malalas’ chronicle according to the same criteria
that he applied to most other Byzantine chronicles: the author’s command of the
finer points of chronology, and its value as a witness to fragmentarily preserved older
sources, chiefly Julius Africanus. Measured against these standards, Malalas’handling
of pre-Abrahamic history would fare poorly. For the modern scholar interested in
recovering the scattered remnants of Africanus’ chronicle, chronological notices in
Malalas derived, however indirectly, from Africanus’ chronicle contribute only mar-
ginally to our understanding of his dating system.78 79 But while scientific study of chro-
nology and painstaking collection and analysis of primary source material may not
have been matters of first importance to him, there are other more constructive ways
to evaluate this part of the chronicle. Instead of writing it off as a disorganized ware-
house of material from older sources, we would do better to consider it in the broader
context of developments in chronicle writing in late Antiquity and early Byzantium.
At the heart of the widely different strategies that Christian chronicles adopted
in their treatment of primordial history lay one fundamental and unresolved ques-
tion: what exactly defines a “universal” chronicle? In its long chronological sweep from
Adam to his own day, Africanus’ chronicle may have satisfied the temporal require-
ments of the genre. But Africanus had little patience for sources resistant to his tightly
constructed millennialist vision of sacred history. Greek records, in his words “all mud-
dled and in no point agreeing among themselves”, were of limited use for anything
preceding the first Olympiad.80 On the other hand, the chronological records of the
Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Phoenicians were in his view outlandish fabrications,
an “absurdity” (Λήρον) completely irreconcilable with the 5500 years of sacred history
from Adam to Christ set forth in the “more modest and moderate teaching of Moses”
and the rest of Jewish scriptures.81 To the extent that Eusebius was more receptive to
sources lying outside the domain of sacred history, his chronicle was probably more
78 Gelzer (1885), p. 129.
79 See, for example, Malalas, Chronographia II10 (p. 25, 21-23 Thurn). Malalas’ reference here to the 3000
years from Adam to Phalek “according to the prophecy” (κατα την προφητείαν) calls to mind Afri-
canus’millennialist dating of the death of Phalek in the “middle of time”. For Phalek’s death in the year
3000 as the mid-point in Africanus’ millennialist chronology, see lulius Africanus, Chronographiae fr.
16c, 8 and fr. 94 Wallraff/Roberto. For other traces of Africanus’ millennialist chronology surviving in
Malalas, see the garbled chronological notice about the date of Christ’s incarnation in the year 5500
(Chronographia X 2). For discussion of Malalas and millennialist chronology, see Jeffreys (1990b),
pp. 113-120. See further Gelzer (1885), pp. 130-132.
80 lulius Africanus, Chronographiae fr. 34,1-2 Wallraff/Roberto.
81 lulius Africanus, Chronographiae fr. 15, 9-12 Wallraff/Roberto.