We are going to have to move through material pretty quickly next week. In order to expedite matters, I would appreciate it if you would read as much as you can of the first two books (not chapters) of Euesebius of Caesarea's History of the Church.What do you find interesting in these books? What do you find not so interesting?
17 comments:
Eusebius is known as the father of church history, because he recorded early Christian church history. He grouped his material according to the reigns of the emperors, presenting it as he found it in his sources.
Eusebius blames the calamities which befell the Jewish nation on the Jews' role in the death of Jesus. … that from that time seditions and wars and mischievous plots followed each other in quick succession, and never ceased in the city and in all Judea until finally the siege of Vespasian overwhelmed them. Thus the divine vengeance overtook the Jews for the crimes which they dared to commit against Christ.
He praises the Lord for his provisions and kindness to them for allowing them to rebuild their churches after they have been destroyed.
I liked everything I read in the Eusebius book. From the explanation of the genealogies written In Matthew and Luke, to the inclusion of affairs in Rome and elsewhere along the timeline of Christ and his disciples, to learning more about that hideous bastard Herod and his order for the massacre of the infants and his suitable punishment.
I especially like the letter written to Christ by King Agbar begging him to come heal his infirmities. In his letter he acknowledges that Jesus is someone mighty, and though personally unknown, he knows that something divine guides him. And it came from beyond the Euphrates which meant it traveled a bit of distance. And the Lord replied that he would if he had the time, but he doesn't, and Thaddeus went unannounced, which made Agbar seek him out which is kind of liking searching for the Grace in a way, to do it.
I think we should have read this book along with the New Testament instead of the book by Tenney.
Brian Johnson
The things I liked the most about the first two books were the discussions of what was happening in Rome, especially with the Emporers. It was interesting to see the governmental background and context of what was happening in the Bible, as it provides a useful insight and gives a different perspective to what is read in the Bible. I especially liked the second book because it deal more with these subjects.
I didn't really have a problem with any of the material, but I couldn't really get interested in the section that detailed the genealogies of Jesus. There wasn't anything wrong with it, but I didn't find it as interesting as the rest of the book.
Annie Merkel
I completely agree with Louis Brown - this book is easier to understand. The big reason why I found it interesting was because it helps explain the Bible (better than our other textbook, I think). Overall, Euesebius just provided good background information that would have been, and will continue to be, helpful to understand the readings in the Bible.
In contrast, what I thought was not so interesting was, suprisingly, the material we had already discussed. For example, the geneology of Jesus I found boring just because of the fact that we already talked about it. But overall, I found a lot of the material interesting and helpful for understanding the Bible.
Everything in the first two books has been interesting. I had read a column by Hal Lindsey in which he made an allusion to the fact that the body that Jacob had seen was the body of Jesus. Eusebius goes into great deatail in explaining this and it cleared up a lot of things for me. Jesus was and is the embodiment of the Word. He is also the leader of the angels as Joshua saw Him,second-in-command, second only to His Father. This makes alot of sense. If I remember correctly no one has seen the face of God. Yet Abraham saw as well as Jacob and Joshua. This had to have been Christ.
I also found the writings of Josephus that Eusebius covers very informative. Josephus covers what happened to Herod in greater detail as well as the moral decline of society under the Roman rulers. When bandits are killing people in broad daylight and getting away with it, in Jerusalem of all places, there may be a problem there.
I truly believe this book should be mandatory reading for everyone. The only problem with the book is that once you start reading you don't want to put it down.
Sam Merkel
I agree with Louis and also my sister on this. It is easier to follow I thought and it helps that they explain the Bible by giving background information. It helped me to get a better idea of what was going on. The geneology I found was pretty boring since we have already covered that part. Yet there was some good parts that helped me understand the Bible a little better.
Jesse Peck
I found some of the footnotes to be an interesting part of this reading. In some parts the translator does not seem to have a lot of love for Eusebius. I realize that they are there to clear up what how serious one should take any given passage. Having said that, some of the criticisms seem to be a little grumpier than pointing out inconsistencies.
As for the text itself i found it interesting how willing eusebius is to explain events with divine punishment. Especially when he describes hardships that came to the Jews due to their mistreatment of Jesus and James the just. He also uses this type of reasoning for Pilate killing himself, which in the footnote it is pointed out that this claim is dubious. So it looks to me that he may have gone out of his way to make these types of claims.
I also found it interesting that in these first two books he spends a good deal of his time trying to prove the gospel text correct instead of writing on topics that had not previously been covered.
As for what i did not find interesting i can not really say. I did skim over parts of it and not surprisingly i do not recall much of what i skimed over, But i think i would agree with the others who pointed out the genealogy of Christ as being particularly uninteresting.
I was really interested in reading about the different leaders in the time after Christ's death and their reactions to Christianity. Like how Tiberius tolerated Christianity and, to a degree, defended, and then how Caligula took power after him and started persecuting Christians. I also enjoyed reading about how Pilate and the Herod's acted towards Christianity, how Pilate was cruel to them and how Herod started proclaiming himself a god. I thought it was cool how Eusebius showed that the story of Herod dying and being eating by worms that appears in the Bible also appears in secular histories as well.
John Rawerts
Zach Anderson
The section I found to be most interesting is when it talks about the divinity of Christ. This was a extensively debated issue and Eusebius covers it well and has many references to scripture in support of the divinity of Christ.
Also, in this section, he credits Christ as being a second creator. To me this could have two very important meanings first of all it shows that Christ is divine because he was there since the beginning, but I felt it could also mean that Christ was the second creator as he was God incarnate on earth. Either way, these arguments go along way to prove Jesus as a divine being.
This book offers a great deal of useful information that clears up some things that may have appeared confusing previously. I really appreciate Eusebius' way of explaining the spread of Chrisianity. The description of the rulers, Christ's followers, and the events of the time helped me understand many of the readings we had done previously. I espcially enjoyed the second book -the first book felt rather 'dry' to me since, as others have pointed out, we've discussed Christ's geneology before.
Amanda Imberi
Joe Adam
What this book does is provide a understanding of major problems in the church that the early church is facing at the times such as the natures of god. This book does answer the question of the divine natures of Christ.
I found two interesting aspects pertaining to Pontius Pilate, both mentioned in the 2nd Book of Eusebius.
It is mentioned that Pilate started a riot in Jerusalem due to funding the construction of an aqueduct. In the synoptic Gospels, he doesn't wish to put Jesus to death, but hands him over to the Jews and their leaders, because Pilate saw no harm done by Jesus, but also to possibly avoid a riot. Yet, he starts one in this set of writings. Could it have been accidental?
I once heard that Pilate and his wife converted to Christianity a time after Jesus's death and resurrection, but it is not mentioned in the 2nd Book. It is mentioned that Pilate killed himself due to a series of misfortunes, which (as written) started at the time of Jesus's trial.
Could it be atonement for claiming to be free of any responsibility in Jesus's death? I don't believe so; he may have led a transgressional life, but he expressed interest in sparing the life of Jesus.
Brett Newton
Anytime you are trying to understand a set of events in time its very important to have a grasp upon what is happening and the enviroment that surrounds it at the time. This is what Eusebius does and what he is so helpful in gving us a context and history upone what life was like at the time of the early church.
One such example that he does help us with is understanding the government at the current time. We can then better understand why people and events happened the way they did in certain events.
Overall its kind of a boring read but very important in understanding certain details about the history of the church and why events occured the way the did.
As many people mentioned before I did, this book is definately easier to read than the Bible, and way less confusing. The Bible seems to have different meanings for everything while this book seems to explain what it means. Also, this book is fun to look at because of the pictures it has. The pictures give you a visual idea of the areas that Jesus walked on and I think that that is very impressive.
A reading in the book I really liked was when Tiberius found out about Jesus. He referred his report to the senate and they said that Jesus couldn't be a God because he wasn't deemed one by the senate. Even though the Senate said that Jesus was not a God, Tiberius still made no evil plans against the teachings of Jesus.
I think that this shows us that even though the senate deemed Jesus as a human because they didn't rule him a God, Tiberius must have believed it because he didn't prosecute the Christians at all.
The whole book was interesting. I like how he weaves in Roman history with the biblical scripture. It give a better sense of who the people were because of what was going on.
I thought it was really interesting about how he determined the length of Jesus' mission work by seeing the four priests be elected. He determined that Jesus was only a type of prophet for four years before his execution. I think that that really makes it interesting because of the short time span. His message must have been really radical at that time to cause such an uproar among the people. In four years time he went from only being known in small circles to being brought in front of Pilate and Herod for crimes. It is pretty amazing if you think about it.
Esesebius had wrote a lot of interesting information in his books. I found his explaination of Christs differing geneology in the gospels very interesting. Also very interesting I thought was the fact that he had 12 apostels but 70 plus disciples. It's too bad he doesn't go into depth more on this subject I would be interested in reading more about that.
Jon Hepola
I found the first two books of Eusebius to be very interesting. It is interesting to hear the gospels collaberated with other writings, stories, oral histories, etc. I like the explanations when there is some discrepency between Eusebius and the gospels. I like the details on how Herod who had brought so much death and heartache on the Jewish people in his maddened quest to kill Jesus, had suffered an unbelievably terrible and horrific death. It goes into great detail describing what Herod was going through. It was felt that he suffered because of what he had done. Even to the end Herod was plotting to cause misery amongst the Jews and make them mourn his death, by killing their leaders.
Post a Comment