For those few brave souls today interested enough in theology and textual criticism to appreciate what a new and modern translation of “Church History” would add to their ability to understand the history of the Church, this is the only book out there. Dr. Maier follows up his classic translation of Josephus with a modern translation of Eusebius. His most important contribution to Eusebian studies is his decision to cut out the repetitiveness in the original work and translate Eusebius’ train of thought instead of merely translating all of the asides and rhetorical flowerings of the nearly impossable-to-read and vast Church history. Each chapter of Eusebius is summarized and critiqued by Dr. Maier in an attempt to help the reader recognize both the value and the critical diffuculties in the original work. This kept me in the text and allowed me to skip certain sections that I wasn’t interested in. (I challenge anybody to read the entire volume word for word, I made it through almost 8 chapters before starting to skip whole sections) The content of Eusebius is gripping at time, especially his vivid descriptions of the martyrdom of the early Church and his eyewitness biographical details of Origen and other early church fathers who he knew and studied under. Without Eusebius we would know almost nothing of the march of Christianity across the Roman empire and even less about the crucial critical history of the New Testament in the first 3 centuries. Dr. Maier has opened up access to this invaluable source both to lowly theologians like myself, and to the leading scholars of the day. I pray that Dr. Maier will continue to translate other ancient authors who up until this day are only available in translations so old that there are no publishing dates on the title pages!