Philip the Arab and Christianity that appear—save for one reference to Ishmael—figure in the political history of the first three centuries of the Christian era. To Eusebius, the Saracens of the 4th century are direct-line descendants of the biblical Ishmaelites, descendants of the handmaid, Hagar, and the patriarch, Abraham. They are thus outcasts, beyond God's Covenant with the favored son of Abraham, Isaac. The twin images of the Ishmaelite and the Saracen—outcasts and "latrones", raiders of the frontiers—reinforce each other and give Eusebius' portrait of the Arab nation an unhappy color. He may have been reluctant to associate the first Christian emperor with a people
Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael R. Ishmael and his pupils constitute the larger part of his Mekhilta. Similarly, most of the anonymous maxims in the work were derived from the same source, so that it also was known as the "Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael." The redactor must have been a pupil of Rebbi, since the latter is frequently mentioned (comp. Abraham ibn Daud in "Sefer HaKabbalah" in A. Neubauer, "M. J. C.", p. 57, Oxford, 1887, who likewise ascribes it to a pupil of Rebbi). He cannot, however, have been R. Hoshaiah, as A. Epstein assumes ("Beiträge zur Jüdischen Alterthumskunde," p. 55, Vienna, 1887), as