mountainman

But that is a rather big IF.
Would you trust Al Capone?

mountainman

YES of course.

We must remember that the highest technology prior to the invention and widescale use of the printing press was the making of CODICES. These things were fabricated by people in power for various reasons. The fabrication of Arthus is a later example. The fabrication of Jesus may of course be exactly the same but conducted in the 4th century by a Roman Emperor who employed Eusebius (possibly a man of Jewish descent) as his Editor-In-Chief.

PhilosopherJay

Hi mountainman,

I have a problem in that Eusebius undoubtedly gets a few things right in his History. I don't think it is as much as 25%, but I can't say everything is fictitious in Eusebius. I would go with 5-10% real history and 90-95% so badly distorted that it can be categorized as false and/or mistaken.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Minimalist

#4

Propaganda always needs a germ of truth. As the saying goes, one needs to know the truth in order to lie effectively.

Chili

I voted 4 but not because there was a man called Jesus and he did up to 25 % of what they say he did.

My reason is that the mythmaker has to hang his story on to some 'thing' and then make reference in time so it is more believable as an event that happened in history . . . but obviously not until at least some history is past because somebody will say that his family lived there all their life and know nothing about it.

The Spire tells part of the same story and people still wonder which steeple Golding was writing about while in fact he was writing about his own 'chest.'

Moreso even is the Hardy's Convergence of the Twain that could not have been written untill after the Titanic sunk but really has nothing to do with the event that took place in history and in time . . . while yet, the poem is timeless and will be real forever.

The early church, at least the one that survived, was not a Christian church an not even a Christian relgion and that is maybe where Eusibius was needed to set out parameters wherein his flock could have peace and quiet in a turbulant age.

Doug Shaver

No. I've been debating with them for over a decade, and many of their arguments clearly presuppose such inerrancy by patristic writers. But I haven't been taking notes, and if you wish to dismiss my observation on that ground, go right ahead. I won't lose any sleep if you don't believe me.

That was not my assertion, secondary or otherwise. My assertion was that this assertion is presupposed by what many apologists say about early Christian writers.

I was not referring to what they say about Eusebius in particular. I was referring to what they say about the patristic writers in general, and the similarity between what they say about them and what you imply about him.

Doug Shaver

If your mind, perhaps. It looks mighty credible to me.

That would depend on what he said and the context in which he said it. I don't assume that anybody always lies.

Chili

And at least there we have historical evidence and I have "old Chicago" bricks on my house with Al Capone bullet holes in them.

mountainman

Perhaps I have been too hard on Eusebius and he is not an absolutely 100% corrupted source of "Early Christian Church History". For the sake of the arguments to the contrary, to which everyone else appears to subscribe, let's say that I am willing to be persuaded that he got "some things right".

What are some of these more important historical events described in Eusebius' "History" which might been deemed to be valid historical citations? Could we get a few these "gems" out into the light? I would dearly love to join the majority opinion about Eusebius, but I need to be convinced that there may have been at least a few things he got right. What did he get right?

Doug Shaver

To answer that intelligently, I'd have to read him the way a historian would read him, and I don't have nearly enough time for that. My quarrel with you is not over how much he got right. It's over your presumption that his entire corpus was a bald-faced lie.

If I were to attempt to sift the historical facts out of his writings, I would start with the assumption that most (not necessarily all) of what he wrote was stuff that he actually believed. I would then try to ascertain why he believed it. In those cases where he cites some earlier authority, I would suppose that he had a document that he believed had been written by that authority, and I'd try to discern his reason for thinking that said authority had actually written said document.

I would expect rarely if ever to conclude that he had unassailable justifications for his beliefs. Therefore I would probably come away thinking that, at best, he was giving a reasonably accurate account of what he and his contemporaries, within his particular sect of Christianity, believed about Christianity's origins during his lifetime.