Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Bede

I just started reading the 'Venerable Bede' again. Bede was an amazing man who proves the modern academic notions of the "Dark Ages" completely wrong. Bede lived toward the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth. He was fluent in Latin and wrote with an elegance worth studying. Further, he knew Greek and Hebrew, wrote commentaries on many books of the Bible, and wrote a history of the English people. Perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of Bede as an historian is his insight into the centrality of worship to history. The history is often referred to as an 'Ecclesiastical History', and this is because moderns think he goes a little overboard in his concern for the Church. Although a history that followed political, social, or economic concerns with the same diligence would be considered brilliant by the same. Bede saw the world a little better than we do. He saw the world and its story from the Cross at the center.

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