Post-Modernizing the Goths

I was reading an interesting book The Future of History by Breisach. The book itself focuses on the way post-modernism has shaped history. One particular aspect of post-modernism has affected a particular line of historical argument: ethnogenesis (see earlier posts for a thorough discussion of ethnogenesis).
According to Breisach, post-modernist philosophers sought to re-evaluate the role of time in the shaping of history. More specifically, nexuses, that is, the ways of explaining history, were declared 'characteristic only for one period of human development', or, as Breisach states '[nexuses] were no more than pragmatic, contextual constructions of Western culture for coping with life.'
One particular passage in The History of the Goths by Herwig Wolfram came to my mind as I was reading these considerations. As historians of the barbarians, we have, literally, no direct sources for the study of the Goths prior to their entry into the Roman world. Consequently, we have to rely on archeology, but if archeology can shed light on day-to-day life, they cannot help us derive a concrete picture of the history of the Goths. Furthermore, the lack of structural remains means that we have little or no idea as to the political structures of the Goths.
Wolfram remedied to this problem in an interesting way. He uses the Gothic bible of Ulfila (Bishop of the Goths, translated the bible into gothic, died ca.380), and compares it to the gothic terms found in the bible. For instance, Ulfilas chose to translate the word sanhedrin, the ruling council of the Jews, as gafaurd, which he transforms into a tribal council. Similarly, he finds that the gothic leader Athanaric (who led the Gothic army against the Huns) is not a military leader, but a 'judge', that is, which can be likened to the role of censor in the Roman republican apparatus.
This methodology begs an interesting question. Did Ulfila use these terms because they represented an actual situation, or did he use these terms to explain the Jewish reality in the first century B.C.? In more concrete terms, is the gafaurd a sanhedrin or merely the closest political structure to the sanhedrin? Whenever we write history, we have to make sure that our intended audience understands our argument. As such, the nexus to which Breisach refers to must be a compromise: that is, it must satisfy our quest for the truth, but it must also be understood by the people who are reading us. This begs a further question: can we really truthfully explain the past, or are we limited by our own social constraints?

For Futrer Reading:

1)Breisach, The Future of History
2)Wolfram, The History of the Goths
3)Grafton, Worlds Made by Words