The Vita Porphyrii appears to be a contemporary account of Porphyrius that chronicles in some detail the end of paganism in Gaza in the early fifth century.

Porphyrius then went to Constantinople during the winter of 401–402, accompanied by the bishop of Caesarea Palaestina, and together they convinced the empress Eudoxia, who to request the emperor Arcadius for a decree for the destruction of the pagan temples at Gaza.

Eight temples, those of Aphrodite, Hecate, the Sun, Apollo, Kore (Persephone), Tyche (Tychaion), the shrine of a hero (Heroeion), and even the Marneion, were either pulled down or burnt.

To one of Hadrian's visits, also, one may conjecturally assign the foundation of the great temple of the god Marnas, which the Vita describes with a mixture of pride and abhorrence.

But they concluded that the text had a historical basis and "that the solution of most problems is to be found in the fact that the text of the Vita transmitted to us represents a revision of the sixth century, which borrowed from the church history of Theodoret of Cyrrhus of 444, e.g. for the Proemium, and deleted in particular each mention of John II, Bishop of Jerusalem, replacing it with the name of Praylius, his successor as bishop of Jerusalem in the time of Porphyrius".

Head wrote, "The textual problems can be resolved if we assume that the Life of St Porphyrius was composed in two successive stages: the original notes by a contemporary and eyewitness (whom we may call 'Mark') were later, perhaps in the 450's, given their final shape and put into circulation by another author who does not appear in the text."

He adds that "the text abounds with such convincing historical detail and shows such an intimate knowledge of the region of Gaza in late antiquity, that at the very least the general storyline merits our confidence."

"The vita "comes to be routinely cited as real history by all sorts of fine scholars" writes Ramsay MacMullen in Christianizing the Roman Empire, 1984, p 86.

He concludes that "it should be possible, then, to learn about the general way things happened in well-known and recurring situations around the turn of the fourth century, even as they appear in a manifestly deceptive text" (MacMullen 1984:87).