Re: Eusebius as a forger.
Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 1:20 pm
Now I am not of the opinion that Eusebius was a master forger in support of his views about early Christian development.
That does not mean that Eusebius did not *want* early Christian history & literature to have been just so or said a certain that, because the church of his location (which was in Caesarea, not Rome) had already come to believe certain things about their history, which simply *had* to be true, so Eusebius made it so.
So Eusebius, who has been socialized by means of fully developed traditions within his community, experienced cognitive dissonance on account of poor documentation of the process by which these traditions had developed. He has bits and pieces of literature available that sometimes contradicted the established traditions at points. So, like any rational soul, he rationalized solutions that "explained" away the contradictions.
Many "classical" historians treat an author like Eusebius as using identifiable sources to which we can assign levels of trustworthiness and reliability. Postmodernist oriented historians, treat his portrayal of sources as his rationalizations of the sources and traditions he had been exposed to. Rationalizations generally reduce the dissonance between sources by coming up with ways to explain them away.
This does not mean that actual historical facts cannot be inferred from his rationalizations. Postmodern historians go about that all the time.
Doesn't anyone study psychology or postmodern historians?
DCH
That does not mean that Eusebius did not *want* early Christian history & literature to have been just so or said a certain that, because the church of his location (which was in Caesarea, not Rome) had already come to believe certain things about their history, which simply *had* to be true, so Eusebius made it so.
So Eusebius, who has been socialized by means of fully developed traditions within his community, experienced cognitive dissonance on account of poor documentation of the process by which these traditions had developed. He has bits and pieces of literature available that sometimes contradicted the established traditions at points. So, like any rational soul, he rationalized solutions that "explained" away the contradictions.
Many "classical" historians treat an author like Eusebius as using identifiable sources to which we can assign levels of trustworthiness and reliability. Postmodernist oriented historians, treat his portrayal of sources as his rationalizations of the sources and traditions he had been exposed to. Rationalizations generally reduce the dissonance between sources by coming up with ways to explain them away.
This does not mean that actual historical facts cannot be inferred from his rationalizations. Postmodern historians go about that all the time.
Doesn't anyone study psychology or postmodern historians?
DCH