We are going to have to move through material pretty quickly in the next several weeks. 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 for Thursday's class. We are going to be looking at Eusebius' strengths and weaknesses as a historian. Please bring the book to class with you.
In my view, a good history should be interesting. Do Books I and II meet this standard? What do you find interesting in these books? Does Eusebius ever lose your attention? If so, why?
I personally found the readings very difficult. I didn't like how Eusebius jumps around from subject to subject. For example in book one, he starts out with the different names Jesus was called, moves to Jesus birth, then to the geneologies of Jesus, and somehow keeps moving onto the relationship between Herod and the infants of Bethlehem. The order in which he puts these items can be very confusing at times and it also makes me lose interest in the reading very fast.
ReplyDelete-Melinda Quade
I find the readings very interesting, because the book has pictures for most of the things he is talking about. He does jump around a lot and this causes me to lose interest, but the pictures perk my interest every time. I enjoy being able to have some kind of image that aids in talking about things. It helps to understand the more difficult ideas that Eusebius is talking about. -Kelly Longden
ReplyDeleteI found the reading to be somewhat difficult to read but it was certainly interesting. Close to the beginning he talks about the nature of Jesus and I think that is to help understand who Jesus was and how the early church's understanding of who Jesus was, was important to how it formed. He quotes the opening of John's gospel where it says that the Word was with God and the Word was God. He goes on to show that realizing that Jesus is one with the Father and that the Father does all of his work through Jesus... short story version: Jesus = God. He's not a messenger, he's not an extension he is the I AM referred to in the Old Testament. That was important to the early church and it was interesting to read even though it was a set-up to Eusebius' actual history. -Zach Kuhlman
ReplyDeleteI too found this book a little hard to take in. It's facts about the birth, and life of Jesus however were very interesting. The way the books were written were a kind of turn off because of the way that it jumped around and wasn't in the chronological order that the events happened in and this confused me in that sense. However, with this said when it talks about the nature of Christ and how the "trinity" worked together, and how the names of Jesus and Christ were first brought to the people of the Earth.Also gives us a deeper insight of not only the life of Jesus himself, but also the Apostles and their lives when the spread the world of the Gospel. So overall the books gave a lot of good info but was difficult at times to understand and take in.
ReplyDelete-Dylan Mickelson
The books were a little difficult to read. They presented plenty of information, but in a format that I was not very comfortable with as he jumped around quite a bit as most people seem to agree with. The footnotes help to keep interest as well because (for me at least) it saves much time thinking about meanings of passages and I think they give a good description of what is going on. Overall I would say the books were well intentioned and not to say badly written, but the format and organization was certainly one I was not accustomed to.
ReplyDelete-Zack Krage
I personally found the books very interesting. I really liked that he put "primary" documents I really enjoyed the correspondence between the king and Jesus at the end of the first book. I did not ever loose attention i tried reading it at work and struggled to put it down so i had to finish the section I was on and work on it after work.
ReplyDeleteTaylor Linn
I thought that the reading was interesting. The first book was interesting because of all the issues he was covering. He bounced all over the place like Melinda had commented, but he used scripture from both Testaments to prove his viewpoints. I find it intriguing the different problems that the church had back then that almost every Christian today just accepts like the Trinity. The second book I just skimmed through, but I enjoyed the early church history. It was very similar to the way Acts was written at least in my mind.
ReplyDeleteI think from a historical perspective, Eusebius organizes the content of the bible in a very detailed and clear manner. I think that the facts are clearly stated, it is simply difficult to take in all that the book says in a short time of sitting down reading. This book would be great to break down little by little, and asses all of the parallels that are drawn.
ReplyDeleteI think from a historical perspective, Eusebius organizes the content of the bible in a very detailed and clear manner. I think that the facts are clearly stated, it is simply difficult to take in all that the book says in a short time of sitting down reading. This book would be great to break down little by little, and asses all of the parallels that are drawn.
ReplyDelete