Lucian of Antioch (Greek: Λουκιανός Αντιοχείας c. 240 – January 7, 312), known as Lucian the Martyr, was a Christian presbyter, theologian, and martyr. He was noted for both his scholarship and ascetic piety.
History
According to Suidas, Lucian was born at Samosata, Kommagene, Syria, to Christian parents, and was educated in the neighbouring city of Edessa, Mesopotamia, at the school of Macarius. However, this tradition might be due to a conflation with his famous namesake, Lucian of Samosata, the pagan satirist of the second century.
At Antioch, Lucian was ordained presbyter. Eusebius of Caesarea notes his theological learning and Lucian's vita (composed after 327) reports that he founded a Didaskaleion, a school. Scholars following Adolf von Harnack see him as the first head of the School of Antioch, with links to later theologians Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, but that contention is unrecorded in the extant sources.
He was buried at Drepanum on the Gulf of Nicomedia, which was later renamed Helenopolis to honour Helena, mother of Constantine the Great.
He is also commemorated as a saint, with a feast day of January 7 in the Roman Catholic Church The first writer to clearly attest such a discipleship for a number of Arian sympathisers—but not for Arius and his closer associates—was the Anomoean church historian Philostorgius.
Biblical text
thumb|right|350px|The inter-relationship between various significant ancient manuscripts of the Old Testament. LXX denotes the original [[Septuagint.]]
Lucian is credited with a critical recension of the text of the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament. The resulting manuscript was popular in Syria, Asia Minor, and Constantinople and was later used by Chrysostom and the later Greek fathers, and which lies at the basis of the textus receptus. However, Lucian took it upon himself to "fix" the manuscripts he received, saying he was correcting errors that had sneaked in over time. He undertook to revise the Septuagint based on the original Hebrew. For this, he received criticism. Jerome mentions that copies of his work on the Greek Old Testament were known in his day as "exemplaria Lucianea" but in other places he speaks rather disparagingly of the texts of Lucian. Jerome also wrote: "This (Testament) certainly differs in our language, and is led in the way of different streams; it is necessary to seek the single fountainhead. I pass over those books which are called by the name of Lucian and Hesychius, for which a few men wrongly claim authority, who anyway were not allowed to revise either in the Old Instrument after the Seventy Translators, or to pour out revisions in the New; with the Scriptures previously translated into the languages of many nations, the additions may now be shown to be false." In the absence of definite information it is impossible to decide the merits of Lucian's critical labors. The 6th century Gelasian Decree, a work of the Latin Western Church rather than the Greek Eastern Church where Lucian's work was more popular, contains a list of apocryphal books "to be avoided by Catholics" that includes "the Gospels which Lucianus forged." Modern scholars mark Lucianic rescensions with an L, to indicate that when variant readings arise, they may have been from Lucian's adjustments.
Lucian integrated a number of important minuscule manuscripts of 3 Maccabees.