Ecclesiastical history

The work is a compilation of historical accounts, documents, chronological lists and excerpts from various sources, arranged along the framework of a chronicle source. At the same time, in the later parts of the work the scope is clearly ecclesiastical. As he himself says, the compiler has fully included in his work the Ecclesiastical history of Zachariah Rhetor (or a reworked Syriac translation of it): books 3 to 6 are entirely based on it. This has brought later dependants and copyists to identify the whole work with Zachariah's Ecclesiastical history, and for this reason the anonymous compiler is still conventionally referred to as Pseudo-Zachariah. The current manuscripts represent an abbreviated version; Michael the Great had access to a fuller text.