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To: FBDinNJ
Excuse me? You Catholics like to pick and choose which history to believe. You can't argue you have all this historical support listing writings from one or two authors and then turn around and say some other historian was "well known for embellishing".
35 posted on 04/21/2004 12:11:03 PM PDT by HarleyD (For strong is he who carries out God's word. (Joel 2:11))
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To: HarleyD
Excuse me? You Catholics like to pick and choose which history to believe.

LOL!! Don't throw rocks when you live in a glass house...

36 posted on 04/21/2004 12:13:17 PM PDT by Pyro7480 (Sub tuum praesidium confugimus, sancta Dei Genitrix.... sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper...)
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To: HarleyD; FBDinNJ
Eusebius was a perfectly fine, balanced historian. And he does say that Ss. Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome, as well as reporting a letter from St. Dionysius of Corinth which says the same.
(5) The Church History. It would be difficult to overestimate the obligation which posterity is under to Eusebius for this monumental work. Living during the period of transition, when the old order was changing and all connected with it was passing into oblivion, he came forward at the critical moment with his immense stores of learning and preserved priceless treasures of Christian antiquity. This is the great merit of the Church History. It is not a literary work which can be read with any pleasure for the sake of its style. Eusebius's "diction", as Photius said, "is never pleasant nor clear". Neither is it the work of a great thinker. But it is a storehouse of information collected by an indefatigable student. Still, great as was Eusebius's learning, it had its limitations. He is provokingly ill-informed about the West. That he knows very little about Tertullian or St. Cyprian is due, no doubt, to his scant knowledge of Latin; but in the case of a Greek writer, like Hippolytus, we can only suppose that his works somehow failed to make their way to the libaries of the East. Eusebius's good faith and sincerity has been amply vindicated by Lightfoot. Gibbon's celebrated sneer, about a writer "who indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion", can be sufficiently met by referring to the passages (H. E., VIII, ii; Mart. Pal. c. 12) on which it is based. Eusebius does not "indirectly confess", but openly avows, that he passes over certain scandals, and he enumerates them and denounces them. "Nor again", to quote Lightfoot, "can the special charges against his honour as a narrator be sustained. There is no ground whatever for the charge that Eusebius forged or interpolated the passage from Josephus relating to our Lord quoted in H. E., I, 11, though Heinchen is disposed to entertain the charge. Inasmuch as this passage is contained in all our MSS., and there is sufficient evidence that other interpolations (though not this) were introduced into the text of Josephus long before his time (see Orig., c. Cels., I, 47, Delarue's note) no suspicion can justly attach to Eusebius himself. Another interpolation in the Jewish historian, which he quotes elsewhere (11, 23), was certainly known to Origen (l. c.). Doubtless also the omission of the owl in the account of Herod Agrippa's death (H. E., 11, 10) was already in some texts of Josephus (Ant., XIX, 8, 2). The manner in which Eusebius deals with his numerous quotations elsewhere, where we can test his honesty, is a sufficient vindication against this unjust charge" (L., p. 325). ("Eusebius", Catholic Encyclopedia)

38 posted on 04/21/2004 12:25:24 PM PDT by gbcdoj (Et ecce ego vobiscum sum omnibus diebus usque ad consummationem saeculi)
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To: HarleyD
You Catholics like to pick and choose which history to believe.

Not on this issue, bud. Eusebius says flatly that Peter was in Rome, and died there. There's not a shred of evidence to the contrary.

41 posted on 04/21/2004 12:27:52 PM PDT by Campion
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To: HarleyD
"You can't argue you have all this historical support listing writings from one or two authors and then turn around and say some other historian was "well known for embellishing".

Actually, you can.

Not only can you, you must.

Go to some university history department, buttonhole a professor, and ask him if all historians are accorded equal credibility.

Don't stand too close; he might spray you when he bursts out laughing.
96 posted on 04/21/2004 9:59:13 PM PDT by dsc
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