Matthieu Cassin: Eunomius’ Apology of apology, III: preliminary remarks to the edition

Fragments of the third book of Apologia apologiae by Eunomius are preserved in the third book of Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium. I shall study how far we can reconstruct AA III's original structure and content, thanks to the remaining parts and to Gregory’s refutation, and in particular shall identify the main difficulties for delimiting extracts of Eunomius’ work inside Gregory’s refutation. Some continuities still appear between extracts, fortunately, and, as for the first two books, Gregory’s indications help us to understand part of the structure; however, we cannot pretend to offer a full reconstruction of the third book, nor an undisputable reconstruction of Eunomius' argumentation in it. Then, I shall focus on one important fragment (Eun. III.3.15-25), that has the interest to offer both an exegetical development (about Ac 2:36) and a quotation and refutation of Basil’s Contra Eunomium.