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It is at this particular place where he had an access to various books and documents that were not available elsewhere. This took his interest and he begun to write the History of the Church, which was the initial all-inclusive account of the early Christian history that preserved the wide range of portions of the work otherwise not available today. Eusebius literary works has remained categorized into four groups; the apologetic, the history, the dogmatic, and the Biblical. However, this paper seeks to only review and evaluate the historical document in his writing, his biography and the readings from his book.
Eusebius was born in the early fourth century in Palestine Caesarea. The history he wrote about the church records the period from Christ’s birth up to the victory of the Constantine on the Licinius. He covers the duration of the persecution by the Jewish around the first millennium A.D. and goes through to the succession of the Roman bishops, Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria. In the historical documents in his History of the Church, the discourse proves a precious reference in studies of the early Christianity.
In his writings, he allows an extensive quote of various historians and authors in the beginning of the first millennium. . These include Socrates Scholasticus, Sulpitius Severus, Theodoret, Hermias, Bede the Venerable, and John of Ephesus. None of those authors made a similar argument. In fact, most of them simply took from where Eusebius left and continued with the history of Christianity (Eusebius & Arthur 256-270). In some of the readings from his book, he might not have followed the specified standards observed by various historians, but he stood out not as a person glossing over arguments or differences within the church, but as someone defining the true history of Christian church.
In the readings in his book, for instance the Epistle of James in the New Testament, Eusebius asserts that it is one of the disputed readings which are however recognized by majority. In his writing, he speaks of the James of Jerusalem who was recorded as the first bishop in a Christian church in that place. Eusebius states that James is recognized as the writer of the then Catholic Epistles although it is not indicated that it is disputed (Eusebius & Arthur 269-280). Nevertheless, everyone is aware that the Epistle of James among the others is read publicly in various churches.
Eusebius’ history discourse is a resourceful for anyone interested in the history of Christianity. This is even of more sense to those who are strictly looking into how the real figures in the history of their predecessors were. Although Eusebius’s history of the church would appear bias since it was written by a Christian, it was much closer to the truth than the history we have today that are more factual. The history we have today is a little inconsistent in that it only highlights the leaders and important men while forgetting the culture and life of the people who actually existed.
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