Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, September 9, 2024

When Did Written History Begin and Why Is This Important to Christians?

When Did Written History Begin
and
Why Is This Important to Christians?

by R.E. Slater

The bible has a lot of "history" in it... but what kind of history is the bible relaying to us in its narrative collections that portray all kinds of proto-literary genres to its ancient readers?

Assuming the bible was collected together from its oral histories between 500-300 BC, we first notice that the bible itself is not as old as we think... but rather it's narratives are old. So the first thing to notice is the bible is much younger than it's narratives.
As example, Abraham's time of collected essays had occurred after 2200 BC; Moses' was around 1400 BC, and David's around 1000 BC. In fact, most, if not ALL, of the bible had occurred BEFORE it's proto-histories had been collected and written down by returning Jewish exiles released by the Persians from Babylon's grip.

I

First, let's look at the history of history... how did history's evolving discipline begin?

The first thing we should be cognizant of is that the biblical narrative was used by the ancients to relay to us something which was important to them in their time(s). For Israel, they wished to witness to their God, Yahweh, and the kind of aims and purposes their God had in mind for them to accomplish, observe, obey, and focus upon. This was true in their Forefather's day even as it was after their exile and resettlement back into Canaan.

However, it is also important to note that not all histories are historically accurate in their telling and retelling and may have (many) historical inaccuracies in them. This would make sense when the evolving "art of history" was in the early stages of development even as it is in meta-modern times today.

Further, we are talking about long, loooong, looooong years of oral history where the content and aims of the Jewish narrative changes from generation to generation to generation to generation. Thinking about our own family histories five, ten, thirty years back... can you remember them? And if they had been written down, what perspective was being remembered? And how does one interpret the photographs of that time? Many eyes and hearts and minds carry many stories of the same family history. Ditto Israel.

And lastly, the kind of history being recounted by the ancients may not correlate with the kind of history we in the 21st Century have come to expect. More simply, today's church histories are emphasizing other past perspectives from church traditions and preachings of the early nineteenth or twentieth centuries which it thinks is relevant today.

Further, a bible historian may expect folkloric tradition and superstitions to be included in the retelling of a biblical history (as it is in many tribal, regional, and national accounts).

Hence, the work of the historical theologian has his or her's work cut out for them when parsing through the telling of ancient religious traditions and cultural knowledge within a lengthy and complex nationalized history such as Israel's.

II

All the more importantly is what this can mean for the Christian church with it's own aims and purposes evolving over centuries since the formation of the Old and New Testaments.

For us today, we should not come to the bible as a "polished" history but as a rough approximation of Israel's story of the Redeeming God of creation and it's culmination in Jesus as Redeeming-Savior of the world. Which means we may have to rethink what the church is telling us of Israel's biblicized history.

Having been catechised into the world of a polished bible with all it's histories, narratives, and various systematic theologies, it's hard for me not to suspect that the bible we hold so dear might have it's own "historical" problems.... To which we Christians have augmented said "problems" with various church apologies and defenses in order to keep a kind of congruity with the church's earlier traditional creeds and sentiments.

Such "biblical" defenses are too lengthy and complex to tell of here but perhaps over the space of one or two more introductory articles I might speak to the kind of work today's Christians have cut out for themselves when wishing to hold to an expected type of Christian belief churches tend to hold today as versus walking away from it all.

For myself, I have been actively reframing the church's creeds, theologies, traditions, and beliefs about God and Christian duty, and how the Christian faith should participate with the world rather than isolate itself from the world. This effort had to be done as philosophy and science have pushed on ahead of many religious faiths of this world leaving them in the realms of mysticism and folklore which I find untenable for any living faith.

As such, I and others have been working towards developing a new narrative for the church and the world's sciences and philosophies telling each in their own bailiwicks that such profane presuppositions are incorrect and that they should be cognizant of newer philosophical-theologies whichare both ancient and relatively new.

Thus and thus, Whitehead's philosophic metaphysic and ontology with its evolving derivative processes of theology and ethics. When applied to biblical study, faith, and faith practices - both within Christianity as well as within Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindic, and etc faiths - process thought comports exceedingly well with contemporary studies and can act as the ideological "spanning bridge" between ancient and contemporary faith teachings.

In sum,

As a Christian holding to a Redeeming-Saviour God - as versus other religious or irreligious versions of life - I chose to believe in a God of love in my spirit pursuit of who-and-what the world is, and is becoming, when beheld in the cosmos' eternally evolving processes which include it's continual iterative processual formations. Formations speaking to God's underlying Image flowing through these processual iterative structures reimagining with creation what divine generation and blessing might mean in a process-based teleology.
This construction also holds to any future evolving process-based sentient creations forming their own societies, beliefs, and portrayals of an evolving process creation into which a redeeming process God has spoken - and is continually speaking - remptive visions and modifications into a processual creationism in the universe.

Let's leave it at that; reading how the "art of history" has come to be formed from the Wikipedia artcle below, and then take the next step to reflect on what "biblical history" has come to mean in the next posting.

Blessings,

R.E. Slater
September 9, 2024




* * * * * *


HISTORY [Or, The History of History - re slater]
A collage of various records of history (clockwise from top-left):

History (derived from Ancient Greek ἱστορία (historía) 'inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation')[1] is the systematic study and documentation of human past.[2][3] History is an academic discipline which uses a narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect.[4][5] Historians debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians debate the nature of history as an end in itself, and its usefulness in giving perspective on the problems of the present.[4][6][7][8]

The period of events before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory.[9] "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts or traditional oral histories, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers.[10] History is incomplete and still has debatable mysteries.

Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends.[11][12] History differs from myth in that it is supported by verifiable evidence. However, ancient cultural influences have helped create variant interpretations of the nature of history, which have evolved over the centuries and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. History is taught as a part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major discipline in universities.

Herodotus, a 5th-century BCE Greek historian, is often considered the "father of history", as one of the first historians in the Western tradition,[13] though he has been criticized as the "father of lies".[14][15] Along with his contemporary Thucydides, he helped form the foundations for the modern study of past events and societies.[16] Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between [the cultural-focus of Herodotus] and the [military-focus of Thucydides] remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In East Asia a state chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, was reputed to date from as early as 722 BCE, though only 2nd-century BCE texts have survived. The title "father of history" has also been attributed, in their respective societies, to Sima Qian and Ibn Khaldun.[17][18]

Etymology

History by Frederick Dielman (1896)

The word history comes from historía (Ancient Greekἱστορίαromanizedhistoríālit.'inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge'[19]). It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his History of Animals.[20] The ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric HymnsHeraclitus, the Athenian ephebes' oath, and in Boeotic inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness", or similar). The Greek word was borrowed into Classical Latin as historia, meaning "investigation, inquiry, research, account, description, written account of past events, writing of history, historical narrative, recorded knowledge of past events, story, narrative". History was borrowed from Latin (possibly via Old Irish or Old Welsh) into Old English as stær ("history, narrative, story"), but this word fell out of use in the late Old English period.[21] Meanwhile, as Latin became Old French (and Anglo-Norman), historia developed into forms such as istorieestoire, and historie, with new developments in the meaning: "account of the events of a person's life (beginning of the 12th century), chronicle, account of events as relevant to a group of people or people in general (1155), dramatic or pictorial representation of historical events (c. 1240), body of knowledge relative to human evolution, science (c. 1265), narrative of real or imaginary events, story (c. 1462)".[21]

It was from Anglo-Norman that history was brought into Middle English, and it has persisted. It appears in the 13th-century Ancrene Wisse, but seems to have become a common word in the late 14th century, with an early attestation appearing in John Gower's Confessio Amantis of the 1390s (VI.1383):

"I finde in a bok compiled | To this matiere an old histoire, | The which comth nou to mi memoire".

In Middle English, the meaning of history was "story" in general. The restriction to the meaning "the branch of knowledge that deals with past events; the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs" arose in the mid-15th century.[21] With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the late 16th century, when he wrote about natural history. For him, historia was "the knowledge of objects determined by space and time", that sort of knowledge provided by memory (while science was provided by reason, and poetry was provided by fantasy).[22]

In an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese (史 vs. 诌) now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern GermanFrench, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are solidly synthetic and highly inflected, the same word is still used to mean both "history" and "story"Historian in the sense of a "researcher of history" is attested from 1531. In all European languages, the substantive history is still used to mean both "what happened with men" and "the scholarly study of the happened" or the word historiography.[20] The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669.[23]

Description

The title page to The Historians' History of the World

Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, and sometimes write to provide lessons for their own society. In the words of Benedetto Croce, "All history is contemporary history". History is facilitated by the formation of a "true discourse of past" through the production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the human race.[24] The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the institutional production of this discourse.

All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record.[25] The task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the historian's archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to represent the "true past"). Part of the historian's role is to skillfully and objectively use the many sources from the past, most often found in the archives. The process of creating a narrative inevitably generates debate, as historians remember or emphasize different events of the past.[26]

The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the humanities, other times part of the social sciences.[27] It can be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both. Some historians strongly support one or the other classification.[28] In the 20th century the Annales school revolutionized the study of history, by using such outside disciplines as economicssociology, and geography in the study of global history.[29]

Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing on an oral tradition, and attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have used such sources as monuments, inscriptions, and pictures. In general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories: what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved, and historians often consult all three.[30] But writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.

Archaeology is especially helpful in unearthing buried sites and objects, which contribute to the study of history. Archeological finds rarely stand alone, with narrative sources complementing its discoveries. Archeology's methodologies and approaches are independent from the field of history. "Historical archaeology" is a specific branch of archeology which often contrasts its conclusions against those of contemporary textual sources. For example, Mark Leone, the excavator and interpreter of historical Annapolis, Maryland, US, has sought to understand the contradiction between textual documents idealizing "liberty" and the material record, demonstrating the possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth made apparent by the study of the total historical environment.

There are varieties of ways in which history can be organized, including chronologically, culturally, territorially, and thematically. These divisions are not mutually exclusive, and significant intersections are present. It is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the very specific and the very general, though the trend has been toward specialization. The area called Big History resists this specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. History has often been studied with some practical or theoretical aim, but may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity.[31]

Prehistory

Human history is the memory of the past experience of Homo sapiens around the world, as that experience has been preserved, largely in written records. By "prehistory", historians mean the recovery of knowledge of the past in an area where no written records exist, or where the writing of a culture is not understood. By studying painting, drawings, carvings, and other artifacts, some information can be recovered even in the absence of a written record. Since the 20th century, the study of prehistory is considered essential to avoid history's implicit exclusion of certain civilizations, such as those of sub-Saharan Africa and pre-Columbian America. Historians in the West have been criticized for focusing disproportionately on the Western world.[32] In 1961, British historian E. H. Carr wrote:

The line of demarcation between prehistoric and historical times is crossed when people cease to live only in the present, and become consciously interested both in their past and in their future. History begins with the handing down of tradition; and tradition means the carrying of the habits and lessons of the past into the future. Records of the past begin to be kept for the benefit of future generations.[33]

This definition includes within the scope of history the strong interests of peoples, such as Indigenous Australians and New Zealand Māori in the past, and the oral records maintained and transmitted to succeeding generations, even before their contact with European civilization.

Historiography

The title page to La Historia d'Italia

Historiography has a number of related meanings.[34] Firstly, it can refer to how history has been produced: the story of the development of methodology and practices (for example, the move from short-term biographical narrative toward long-term thematic analysis). Secondly, it can refer to what has been produced: a specific body of historical writing (for example, "medieval historiography during the 1960s" means "Works of medieval history written during the 1960s").[34] Thirdly, it may refer to why history is produced: the philosophy of history. As a meta-level analysis of descriptions of the past, this third conception can relate to the first two in that the analysis usually focuses on the narratives, interpretations, world view, use of evidence, or method of presentation of other historians. Historians debate whether history can be taught as a single coherent narrative or a series of competing narratives.[35][36]

Methods

A depiction of the ancient Library of Alexandria
Historical method basics

The following questions are used by historians in modern work.

  1. When was the source, written or unwritten, produced (date)?
  2. Where was it produced (localization)?
  3. By whom was it produced (authorship)?
  4. From what pre-existing material was it produced (analysis)?
  5. In what original form was it produced (integrity)?
  6. What is the evidential value of its contents (credibility)?

The first four are known as historical criticism; the fifth, textual criticism; and, together, external criticism. The sixth and final inquiry about a source is called internal criticism.

Europeans have written and published extensively to pull together a "universal history" in the early modern period. This written corpus and discourse in Europe includes ethnographic encounters, comparative philosophy, as well as archaeological discovery.[37]

Herodotus, from the 5th century BC,[38] has been acclaimed as the "father of history". However, his contemporary Thucydides is credited with having first approached history with a well-developed historical method in the History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus, regarded history as the product of the choices and actions of humans, and looked at cause and effect, rather than the result of divine intervention (though Herodotus was not wholly committed to this idea himself).[38] In his historical method, Thucydides emphasized chronology, a nominally neutral point of view, and that the human world was the result of human actions. Greek historians viewed history as cyclical, with events regularly recurring.[39] - [or, in contemporary terms, helical. - re slater]

  • Through the Medieval and Renaissance periods, history was often studied through a sacred or religious perspective.

In the preface to his book, the Muqaddimah (1377), the Arab historian and early sociologistIbn Khaldun, warned of 7 mistakes he thought historians committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun criticized "idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data". He introduced a scientific method to the study of history, and referred to it as his "new science".[40] His method laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of statecommunicationpropaganda and systematic bias in history,[41] and so is sometimes considered to be the "father of historiography"[42] [43] or the "father of the philosophy of history".[44]

In the West, historians developed modern methods of historiography in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and Germany. In 1851, Herbert Spencer summarized these methods:"From the successive strata of our historical deposits, they [historians] diligently gather all the highly colored fragments, pounce upon everything that is curious and sparkling and chuckle like children over their glittering acquisitions; meanwhile the rich veins of wisdom that ramify amidst this worthless debris, lie utterly neglected. Cumbrous volumes of rubbish are greedily accumulated, while those masses of rich ore, that should have been dug out, and from which golden truths might have been smelted, are left untaught and unsought."[45]

By the "rich ore" Spencer meant scientific theory of history. Meanwhile, Henry Thomas Buckle expressed a dream of history becoming one day a science: "In regard to nature, events apparently the most irregular and capricious have been explained and have been shown to be in accordance with certain fixed and universal laws. This has been done because men of ability and, above all, men of patient, untiring thought have studied events with the view of discovering their regularity, and if human events were subject to a similar treatment, we have every right to expect similar results.[46] Contrary to Buckle's dream, the 19th-century historian with greatest influence on methods became Leopold von Ranke in Germany. He limited history to "what really happened" and by this directed the field further away from science. For Ranke, historical data should be collected carefully, examined objectively and put together with critical rigor. But these procedures "are merely the prerequisites and preliminaries of science. The heart of science is searching out order and regularity in the data being examined and in formulating generalizations or laws about them."[47]

As Historians like Ranke and many who followed him have pursued it, no, history is not a science. Thus if Historians tell us that, given the manner in which he practices his craft, it cannot be considered a science, we must take him at his word. If he is not doing science, then, whatever else he is doing, he is not doing science. The traditional Historian is thus no scientist and history, as conventionally practiced, is not a science.[48]

In the 20th century, academic historians focused less on epic nationalistic narratives, which often tended to glorify the nation or great men, to more objective and complex analyses of social and intellectual forces. A major trend of historical methodology in the 20th century was to treat history more as a social science rather than art, which traditionally had been the case. Leading advocates of history as a social science were a diverse collection of scholars which included Fernand Braudel and E. H. Carr. Many are noted for their multidisciplinary approach e.g. Braudel combined history with geography. Nevertheless, these multidisciplinary approaches failed to produce a theory of history. So far only one theory of history came from a professional historian.[49] Whatever other theories of history exist, they were written by experts from other fields (for example, Marxian theory of history). The field of digital history has begun to address ways of using computer technology, to pose new questions to historical data and generate digital scholarship.

In opposition to the claims of history as a social science, historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper argued the key to historians' work was the power of the imagination, and hence contended that history should be understood as artFrench historians associated with the Annales school introduced quantitative history, using raw data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of cultural history (cf. histoire des mentalités). Intellectual historians such as Herbert Butterfield have argued for the significance of ideas in history. American historians, motivated by the civil rights era, focused on formerly overlooked ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups. A genre of social history to emerge post-WWII was Alltagsgeschichte (History of Everyday Life). Scholars such as Ian Kershaw examined what everyday life was like for ordinary people in 20th-century Germany, especially in Nazi Germany.

The Marxist theory of historical materialism theorises that society is fundamentally determined by the material conditions at any given time – in other words, the relationships which people have with each other in order to fulfill basic needs such as feeding, clothing and housing themselves and their families.[50] Overall, Marx and Engels claimed to have identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.[51] Marxist historiography was once orthodoxy in the Soviet Union, but since the communism's collapse there, its influence has significantly reduced.[52]

Marxist historians sought to validate Karl Marx's theories by analyzing history from a Marxist perspective. In response to the Marxist interpretation of history, historians such as François Furet have offered anti-Marxist interpretations of history. Feminist historians argued for the importance of studying the experience of women. Postmodernists have challenged the validity and need for the study of history on the basis all history is based on the personal interpretation of sources. Keith Windschuttle's 1994 book, The Killing of History defended the worth of history.

Today, most historians begin their research in the archives, on either a physical or digital platform. They often propose an argument and use research to support itJohn H. Arnold proposed that history is an argument, which creates the possibility of creating change.[10] Digital information companies, such as Google, have sparked controversy over the role of internet censorship in information access.[53]

Potential shortcomings in the production of history

Many historians believe that the production of history is embedded with bias because events and known facts in history can be interpreted in a variety of waysConstantin Fasolt suggested that history is linked to politics by the practice of silence itself.[54] He said: "A second common view of the link between history and politics rests on the elementary observation that historians are often influenced by politics."[54] According to Michel-Rolph Trouillot, the historical process is rooted in the archives, therefore silences, or parts of history that are forgotten, may be an intentional part of a narrative strategy that dictates how areas of history are remembered.[26] Historical omissions can occur in many ways and can have a profound effect on historical records. Information can also purposely be excluded or left out accidentally. Historians have coined multiple terms that describe the act of omitting historical information, including: "silencing",[26] "selective memory",[55] and erasures.[56] Gerda Lerner, a twentieth century historian who focused much of her work on historical omissions involving women and their accomplishments, explained the negative impact that these omissions had on minority groups.[55]

Environmental historian William Cronon proposed three ways to combat bias and ensure authentic and accurate narratives: narratives must not contradict known fact, they must make ecological sense (specifically for environmental history), and published work must be reviewed by scholarly community and other historians to ensure accountability.[56]

Areas of study

Particular studies and fields

These are approaches to history; not listed are histories of other fields, such as history of sciencehistory of mathematics, and history of philosophy.

  • Ancient history: the study of history from the beginning of human history until the Early Middle Ages.
  • Atlantic history: the study of the history of people living on or near the Atlantic Ocean.
  • Art history: the study of changes in and the social context of art.
  • Comparative history: the historical analysis of social and cultural entities not confined to national boundaries.
  • Contemporary history: the study of recent historical events.
  • Counterfactual history: the study of historical events as they might have happened in different causal circumstances.
  • Cultural history: the study of culture in the past.
  • Digital history: the use of computing technologies to do massive searches in published sources.
  • Economic history: the use of economic models fitted to the past.
  • Intellectual history: the study of ideas in the context of the cultures that produced them and their development over time.
  • Maritime history: the study of maritime transport and all connected subjects.
  • Material history: the study of objects and the stories they can tell.
  • Modern history: the study of modern times, the era after the Middle Ages.
  • Military history: the study of warfare, historical wars, and Naval history, which is sometimes considered to be a sub-branch of military history.
  • Oral history: the collection and study of historical information by utilizing spoken interviews with people who have lived past events.
  • Palaeography: the study of ancient texts.
  • People's history: historical work from the perspective of common people.
  • Political history: the study of politics in the past.
  • Psychohistory: the study of the psychological motivations for historical events.
  • Pseudohistory: studies about the past that fall outside the domain of mainstream history (sometimes equivalent to pseudoscience).
  • Social history: the study of the process of social change throughout history.
  • Women's history: the history of female human beings. Gender history is related and covers the perspective of gender.
  • World history: the study of history from a global perspective, with special attention to non-Western societies.

Periods

Historical study often focuses on events and developments that occur in particular blocks of time. Historians give these periods of time names in order to allow "organising ideas and classificatory generalisations" to be used by historians.[57] The names given to a period can vary with geographical location, as can the dates of the beginning and end of a particular period. Centuries and decades are commonly used periods and the time they represent depends on the dating system used. Most periods are constructed retrospectively and so reflect value judgments made about the past. The way periods are constructed and the names given to them can affect the way they are viewed and studied.[58]

Prehistoric periodization

The field of history generally leaves prehistory to archeologists, who have entirely different sets of tools and theories. In archeology, the usual method for periodization of the distant prehistoric past is to rely on changes in material culture and technology, such as the Stone AgeBronze Age, and Iron Age, with subdivisions that are also based on different styles of material remains. Here prehistory is divided into a series of "chapters" so that periods in history could unfold not only in a relative chronology but also narrative chronology.[59] This narrative content could be in the form of functional-economic interpretation. There are periodizations, however, that do not have this narrative aspect, relying largely on relative chronology, and that are thus devoid of any specific meaning.

Despite the development over recent decades of the ability through radiocarbon dating and other scientific methods to give actual dates for many sites or artefacts, these long-established schemes seem likely to remain in use. In many cases neighboring cultures with writing have left some history of cultures without it, which may be used. Periodization, however, is not viewed as a perfect framework, with one account explaining that "cultural changes do not conveniently start and stop (combinedly) at periodization boundaries" and that different trajectories of change need to be studied in their own right before they get intertwined with cultural phenomena.[60]

Geographical locations

Particular geographical locations can form the basis of historical study, for example, continentscountries, and cities. Understanding why historic events took place is important. To do this, historians often turn to the methods and theory from the discipline of geography.[61] According to Jules Michelet in his book Histoire de France (1833), "without geographical basis, the people, the makers of history, seem to be walking on air".[62] Weather patterns, the water supply, and the landscape of a place all affect the lives of the people who live there. For example, to explain why the ancient Egyptians developed a successful civilization, studying the geography of Egypt is essential. Egyptian civilization was built on the banks of the Nile River, which flooded each year, depositing soil on its banks. The rich soil could help farmers grow enough crops to feed the people in the cities. That meant everyone did not have to farm, so some people could perform other jobs that helped develop the civilization. There is also the case of climate, which historians like Ellsworth Huntington and Ellen Churchill Semple cited as a crucial influence on the course of history. Huntington and Semple further argued that climate has an impact on racial temperament.[63]

Regions

Allegory of the recognition of the Empire of Brazil and its independence. The painting depicts British diplomat Sir Charles Stuart presenting his letter of credence to Emperor Pedro I of Brazil, who is flanked by his wife Maria Leopoldina, their daughter Maria da Glória (later Queen Maria II of Portugal), and other dignitaries. At right, a winged figure, representing History, carving the "great event" on a stone tablet.[64]
  • History of Africa begins with the first emergence of modern human beings on the continent, continuing into its modern present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing states.
  • History of the Americas is the collective history of North and South America, including the Caribbean and Central America.
    • History of North America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's Northern and Western Hemispheres.
    • History of the Caribbean begins with the oldest evidence where 7,000-year-old remains have been found.
    • History of Central America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's Western Hemisphere.
    • History of South America is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation on the continent in the Earth's Southern and Western Hemispheres.
  • History of Eurasia is the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions: the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Europe, linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian Steppe of Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
    • History of Europe describes the passage of time from humans inhabiting the European continent to the present day.
    • History of Asia can be seen as the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal regions, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East, linked by the interior mass of the Eurasian Steppe.
      • History of East Asia is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation in East Asia.
      • History of India is the study of the past passed down from generation to generation in the sub-Himalayan region.
      • History of the Middle East begins with the earliest civilizations in the region now known as the Middle East that were established around 3000 BC, in Mesopotamia (Iraq).
      • History of Southeast Asia has been characterized as interaction between regional players and foreign powers.
  • History of Oceania is the collective history of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.
    • History of Australia starts with the documentation of the Makassar trading with Indigenous Australians on Australia's north coast.
    • History of New Zealand dates back at least 700 years to when it was discovered and settled by Polynesians, who developed a distinct Māori culture centered on kinship links and land.
    • History of the Pacific Islands covers the history of the islands in the Pacific Ocean.
  • History of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe.

Political

Political history covers the type of government, the branches of government, leaders, legislation, political activism, political parties, and voting.

Military

Military history concerns warfare, strategies, battles, weapons, and the psychology of combat.[65] The "new military history" since the 1970s has been concerned with soldiers more than generals, with psychology more than tactics, and with the broader impact of warfare on society and culture.[66]

Religious

The history of religion has been a main theme for both secular and religious historians for centuries, and continues to be taught in seminaries and academe. Leading journals include Church HistoryThe Catholic Historical Review, and History of Religions. Topics range widely from political and cultural and artistic dimensions, to theology and liturgy.[67] This subject studies religions from all regions and areas of the world where humans have lived.[68]

Social

Social history, sometimes called the new social history, is the field that includes history of ordinary people and their strategies and institutions for coping with life.[69] In its "golden age" it was a major growth field in the 1960s and 1970s among scholars, and still is well represented in history departments. In two decades from 1975 to 1995, the proportion of professors of history in American universities identifying with social history rose from 31% to 41%, while the proportion of political historians fell from 40% to 30%.[70] In the history departments of British universities in 2007, of the 5723 faculty members, 1644 (29%) identified themselves with social history while political history came next with 1425 (25%).[71] The "old" social history before the 1960s was a hodgepodge of topics without a central theme, and it often included political movements, like Populism, that were "social" in the sense of being outside the elite system. Social history was contrasted with political historyintellectual history and the history of great men. English historian G. M. Trevelyan saw it as the bridging point between economic and political history, reflecting that, "Without social history, economic history is barren and political history unintelligible."[72] While the field has often been viewed negatively as history with the politics left out, it has also been defended as "history with the people put back in".[73]

Subfields

The chief subfields of social history include:

Cultural

Cultural history replaced social history as the dominant form in the 1980s and 1990s. It typically combines the approaches of anthropology and history to look at language, popular cultural traditions and cultural interpretations of historical experience. It examines the records and narrative descriptions of past knowledge, customs, and arts of a group of people. How peoples constructed their memory of the past is a major topic. Cultural history includes the study of art in society as well is the study of images and human visual production (iconography).[74]

Diplomatic

Diplomatic history focuses on the relationships between nations, primarily regarding diplomacy and the causes of wars.[75] More recently it looks at the causes of peace and human rights. It typically presents the viewpoints of the foreign office, and long-term strategic values, as the driving force of continuity and change in history. This type of political history is the study of the conduct of international relations between states or across state boundaries over time. Historian Muriel Chamberlain notes that after the First World War, "diplomatic history replaced constitutional history as the flagship of historical investigation, at once the most important, most exact and most sophisticated of historical studies".[76] She adds that after 1945, the trend reversed, allowing social history to replace it.

Economic

Although economic history has been well established since the late 19th century, in recent years academic studies have shifted more and more toward economics departments and away from traditional history departments.[77] Business history deals with the history of individual business organizations, business methods, government regulation, labour relations, and impact on society. It also includes biographies of individual companies, executives, and entrepreneurs. It is related to economic history. Business history is most often taught in business schools.[78]

Environmental

Environmental history is a new field that emerged in the 1980s to look at the history of the environment, especially in the long run, and the impact of human activities upon it.[79] It is an offshoot of the environmental movement, which was kickstarted by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in the 1960s.

World

World history is the study of major civilizations over the last 3000 years or so. World history is primarily a teaching field, rather than a research field. It gained popularity in the United States,[80] Japan[81] and other countries after the 1980s with the realization that students need a broader exposure to the world as globalization proceeds. It has led to highly controversial interpretations by Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. Toynbee, among others.

The World History Association publishes the Journal of World History every quarter since 1990.[82] The H-World discussion list serves as a network of communication among practitioners of world history, with discussions among scholars, announcements, syllabi, bibliographies and book reviews.[83]

People's

people's history is a type of historical work which attempts to account for historical events from the perspective of common people. A people's history is the history of the world that is the story of mass movements and of the outsiders. Individuals or groups not included in the past in other types of writing about history are the primary focus, which includes the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the poor, the nonconformists, and the otherwise forgotten people. The authors are typically on the left and have a socialist model in mind, as in the approach of the History Workshop movement in Britain in the 1960s.[84]

Intellectual

Intellectual history and the history of ideas emerged in the mid-20th century, with the focus on the intellectuals and their books on the one hand, and on the other the study of ideas as disembodied objects with a career of their own.[85][86]

Gender

Gender history is a subfield of History and Gender studies, which looks at the past from the perspective of gender. The outgrowth of gender history from women's history stemmed from many non-feminist historians dismissing the importance of women in history. According to Joan W. Scott, "Gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relations of power",[87] meaning that gender historians study the social effects of perceived differences between the sexes and how all genders use allotted power in societal and political structures. Despite being a relatively new field, gender history has had a significant effect on the general study of history. Gender history traditionally differs from women's history in its inclusion of all aspects of gender such as masculinity and femininity, and today's gender history extends to include people who identify outside of that binary. LGBT history deals with the first recorded instances of same-sex love and sexuality of ancient civilizations, and involves the history of lesbiangaybisexual and transgender (LGBT) peoples and cultures around the world.[88]

Public

Public history describes the broad range of activities undertaken by people with some training in the discipline of history who are generally working outside of specialized academic settings. Public history practice has quite deep roots in the areas of historic preservation, archival science, oral history, museum curatorship, and other related fields. The term itself began to be used in the United States and Canada in the late 1970s, and the field has become increasingly professionalized since that time. Some of the most common settings for public history are museums, historic homes and historic sites, parks, battlefields, archives, film and television companies, and all levels of government.[89]

Historians

Benedetto Croce
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban, was the first known female Chinese historian.
Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban, was the first known female Chinese historian.

Professional and amateur historians discover, collect, organize, and present information about past events. They discover this information through archeological evidence, written primary sources, verbal stories or oral histories, and other archival material. In lists of historians, historians can be grouped by order of the historical period in which they were writing, which is not necessarily the same as the period in which they specialized. Chroniclers and annalists, though they are not historians in the true sense, are also frequently included.

Judgement

Since the 20th century, Western historians have disavowed the aspiration to provide the "judgement of history".[90] The goals of historical judgements or interpretations are separate to those of legal judgements, that need to be formulated quickly after the events and be final.[91] A related issue to that of the judgement of history is that of collective memory.

Pseudohistory

Pseudohistory is a term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions. It is closely related to deceptive historical revisionism. Works which draw controversial conclusions from new, speculative, or disputed historical evidence, particularly in the fields of national, political, military, and religious affairs, are often rejected as pseudohistory.

Teaching

Scholarship vs teaching

A major intellectual battle took place in Britain in the early twentieth century regarding the place of history teaching in the universities. At Oxford and Cambridge, scholarship was downplayed. Professor Charles Harding Firth, Oxford's Regius Professor of history in 1904 ridiculed the system as best suited to produce superficial journalists. The Oxford tutors, who had more votes than the professors, fought back in defense of their system saying that it successfully produced Britain's outstanding statesmen, administrators, prelates, and diplomats, and that mission was as valuable as training scholars. The tutors dominated the debate until after the Second World War. It forced aspiring young scholars to teach at outlying schools, such as Manchester University, where Thomas Frederick Tout was professionalizing the History undergraduate programme by introducing the study of original sources and requiring the writing of a thesis.[92][93]

In the United States, scholarship was concentrated at the major PhD-producing universities, while the large number of other colleges and universities focused on undergraduate teaching. A tendency in the 21st century was for the latter schools to increasingly demand scholarly productivity of their younger tenure-track faculty. Furthermore, universities have increasingly relied on inexpensive part-time adjuncts to do most of the classroom teaching.[94]

Nationalism

From the origins of national school systems in the 19th century, the teaching of history to promote national sentiment has been a high priority. In the United States after World War I, a strong movement emerged at the university level to teach courses in Western Civilization, so as to give students a common heritage with Europe. In the U.S. after 1980, attention increasingly moved toward teaching world history or requiring students to take courses in non-western cultures, to prepare students for life in a globalized economy.[95]

The teaching of history in French schools was influenced by the Nouvelle histoire as disseminated after the 1960s by Cahiers pédagogiques and Enseignement and other journals for teachers. Also influential was the Institut national de recherche et de documentation pédagogique (INRDP). Joseph Leif, the Inspector-general of teacher training, said pupils children should learn about historians' approaches as well as facts and dates. Louis François, Dean of the History/Geography group in the Inspectorate of National Education advised that teachers should provide historic documents and promote "active methods" which would give pupils "the immense happiness of discovery". Proponents said it was a reaction against the memorization of names and dates that characterized teaching and left the students bored. Traditionalists protested loudly it was a postmodern innovation that threatened to leave the youth ignorant of French patriotism and national identity.[96]

Bias in school teaching

History books in a bookstore

In several countries history textbooks are tools to foster nationalism and patriotism, and give students the official narrative about national enemies.[97] In many countries, history textbooks are sponsored by the national government and are written to put the national heritage in the most favorable light. For example, in Japan, mention of the Nanking Massacre has been removed from textbooks and the entire Second World War is given cursory treatment. Other countries have complained.[98] Another example includes Turkey, where there is no mention of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish textbooks as a result of the denial of the genocide.[99] Academic historians have often fought against the politicization of the textbooks, sometimes with success.[100][101]

It was standard policy in communist countries to present only a rigid Marxist historiography.[102][103] In the United States, textbooks published by the same company often differ in content from state to state.[104] An example of content that is represented different in different regions of the country is the history of the Southern states, where slavery and the American Civil War are treated as controversial topics. McGraw-Hill Education for example, was criticized for describing Africans brought to American plantations as "workers" instead of slaves in a textbook.[105] In 21st-century Germany, the history curriculum is controlled by the 16 states, and is characterized not by superpatriotism but rather by an "almost pacifistic and deliberately unpatriotic undertone" and reflects "principles formulated by international organizations such as UNESCO or the Council of Europe, thus oriented towards human rights, democracy and peace." The result is that "German textbooks usually downplay national pride and ambitions and aim to develop an understanding of citizenship centered on democracy, progress, human rights, peace, tolerance and Europeanness."[106]

See also

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    • Gervereau, Laurent, ed. (2006). Dictionnaire mondial des images [World Dictionary of Images]. Paris: Nouveau monde éd. ISBN 978-2847361858. (With 275 specialists from all continents, all specialities, all periods from prehistory to nowadays).
    • Gervereau, Laurent (2008). Images: Une histoire mondiale (in French). Paris: Nouveau monde éd. ISBN 9782847363623.
  75. ^ Watt, D. C.; Adams, Simon; Bullen, Roger; Brauer, Kinley; Iriye, Akira (1988). "What is Diplomatic History ... ?". In Juliet Gardiner (ed.). What is History Today ... ?. Macmillan Education UK. pp. 131–142. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-19161-1_12ISBN 978-0333422267Archived from the original on 28 January 2021. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  76. ^ Muriel E Chamberlain, Pax Britannica'? British Foreign Policy 1789–1914 (1988) p. 1
  77. ^ Robert Whaples, "Is Economic History a Neglected Field of Study?", Historically Speaking (April 2010) v. 11#2 pp. 17–20, with responses pp. 20–27
  78. ^ Franco Amatori, and Geoffrey Jones, eds. Business History Around the World (2003) online edition Archived 19 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  79. ^ J.D. Hughes, What is Environmental History (2006) excerpt and text search Archived 22 April 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  80. ^ Ainslie Embree and Carol Gluck, eds., Asia in Western and World History: A Guide for Teaching (M.E. Sharpe, 1997)
  81. ^ Shigeru Akita, "World History and the Emergence of Global History in Japan", Chinese Studies in History, Spring 2010, Vol. 43 Issue 3, pp. 84–96
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  85. ^ Grafton, Anthony (2006). "The History of Ideas: Precept and Practice, 1950–2000 and beyond" (PDF)Journal of the History of Ideas67 (1): 1–32. doi:10.1353/jhi.2006.0006S2CID 143746040. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 6 December 2015.
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  87. ^ Wallach Scott, Joan (1988). "Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis". Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 28–50. ISBN 0231188013.
  88. ^ Morris, Bonnie J. "History of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Social Movements"American Psychological AssociationArchived from the original on 11 January 2021. Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  89. ^ Glassberg, David (1996). "Public History and the Study of Memory". The Public Historian18 (2): 7–23. doi:10.2307/3377910JSTOR 3377910.
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  91. ^ Curran, Vivian Grosswald (2000) Herder and the Holocaust: A Debate About Difference and Determinism in the Context of Comparative Law in F.C. DeCoste, Bernard Schwartz (eds.) Holocaust's Ghost: Writings on Art, Politics, Law and Education p. 415 Archived 12 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine
  92. ^ Ivan Roots, "Firth, Sir Charles Harding (1857–1936)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) Online; accessed 10 Nov 2014 Archived 30 July 2022 at the Wayback Machine
  93. ^ Reba Soffer, "Nation, duty, character and confidence: history at Oxford, 1850–1914." Historical Journal (1987) 30#01 pp. 77–104.
  94. ^ Frank Donoghue, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities (2008)
  95. ^ Jacqueline Swansinger, "Preparing Student Teachers for a World History Curriculum in New York", History Teacher, (November 2009), 43#1 pp. 87–96
  96. ^ Abby Waldman, " The Politics of History Teaching in England and France during the 1980s", History Workshop Journal Issue 68, Autumn 2009 pp. 199–221 online
  97. ^ Jason Nicholls, ed. School History Textbooks across Cultures: International Debates and Perspectives (2006)
  98. ^ Claudia Schneider, "The Japanese History Textbook Controversy in East Asian Perspective", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 2008, Vol. 617, pp. 107–122
  99. ^ Guillory, John (2015). The Common Core and the Evasion of Curriculum (vol 130 ed.). PMLA. pp. 666–672.
  100. ^ "Teaching History in Schools: the Politics of Textbooks in India", History Workshop Journal, April 2009, Issue 67, pp. 99–110
  101. ^ Tatyana Volodina, "Teaching History in Russia After the Collapse of the USSR", History Teacher, February 2005, Vol. 38 Issue 2, pp. 179–188
  102. ^ "Problems of Teaching Contemporary Russian History", Russian Studies in History, Winter 2004, Vol. 43 Issue 3, pp. 61–62
  103. ^ Wedgwood Benn, David (2008). "Blackwell-Synergy.com". International Affairs84 (2): 365–370. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2346.2008.00708.x.
  104. ^ Goldstein, Dana (12 January 2020). "Two States. Eight Textbooks. Two American Stories"The New York TimesArchived from the original on 5 May 2020. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  105. ^ Fernandez, Manny; Hauser, Christine (5 October 2015). "Texas Mother Teaches Textbook Company a Lesson on Accuracy"The New York TimesArchived from the original on 15 July 2018. Retrieved 14 July 2018.
  106. ^ Simone Lässig and Karl Heinrich Pohl, "History Textbooks and Historical Scholarship in Germany", History Workshop Journal Issue 67, Spring 2009 pp. 128–129 online at project MUSE

Further reading

  • Norton, Mary Beth; Gerardi, Pamela, eds. (1995). The American Historical Association's Guide to Historical Literature (3rd ed.). Oxford U.P; Annotated guide to 27,000 of the most important English language history books in all fields and topics.
  • Benjamin, Jules R. (2009). A Student's Guide to History.
  • Carr, E.H. (2001). What is History?. With a new introduction by Richard J. Evans. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacmillanISBN 0333977017.
  • Cronon, William (2013). "Storytelling"American Historical Review118 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1093/ahr/118.1.1Archived from the original on 23 July 2016. Retrieved 24 July 2016; Discussion of the impact of the end of the Cold War upon scholarly research funding, the impact of the Internet and Wikipedia on history study and teaching, and the importance of storytelling in history writing and teaching.
  • Evans, Richard J. (2000). In Defence of History. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393319598.
  • Furay, Conal; Salevouris, Michael J. (2010). The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide.
  • Kelleher, William (2008). Writing History: A Guide for Students; excerpt and text search.
  • Lingelbach, Gabriele (2011). "The Institutionalization and Professionalization of History in Europe and the United States"The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Vol. 4: 1800–1945. Oxford University Press. pp. 78–. ISBN 978-0199533091Archived from the original on 15 September 2015. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
  • Presnell, Jenny L. (2006). The Information-Literate Historian: A Guide to Research for History Students; excerpt and text search.
  • Tosh, John (2006). The Pursuit of History. Pearson Longman. ISBN 1405823518.
  • Woolf, D.R. (1998). A Global Encyclopedia of Historical Writing. Vol. 2. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities; excerpt and text search.
  • Williams, H.S., ed. (1907). The Historians' History of the World. Vol. Book 1. Archived from the original on 15 September 2015. Retrieved 2 July 2015; This is Book 1 of 25 Volumes.
  • Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz (1998). As barbas do imperador: D. Pedro II, um monarca nos trópicos (in Portuguese). São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. ISBN 85-7164-837-9.


Saturday, September 7, 2024

Becoming Bereans and the Process-based Christian Faith




The last three articles dealt with how to read the bible as it presents itself against all those voices reading the bible to support the kinds of beliefs they wish to protect, promote, and propagate in their own beings:
And as I have shown through each of the above articles we have choices to make whether to continue with these kinds of religious, irreligious, and non-religious stories about God and the bible or whether we are ready to "grow up and eat spiritual meat":

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly–mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men? I Corinthians 3:1-4 NIV

Though the Apostle Paul would apply his words to the Jewish-Gentile churches he was planting and discipling I have personally given up instructing evangelical churches how to reorient their faith and have rather been speaking to exvangelicals, the none-and-dones of the church, and radicalized ex-Christians or non-Christians, to reconsider how to read all doctrines of the Christian faith (or, any religious faith) with God's love.

I do not debate God's existence. To believe God is, or is not, will always be a faith matter. My own assumptions begin with a theistic application that God is... before next debating the kind of God whom/which God is. In doing so, I've come to the conclusion I must have a process-based God rather than an evangelical-God or a folkloric traditional God, or a God of trickery, hate, wrath, or inaction. Hence, this kind of God who sings within my being is unbound by human imagination, actively present in this world, and continuously redeeming and resurrecting the world from death and hatred.

Looking around ourselves we all can admit that if we become active participants with God in continuously redeeming and resurrecting the world around us... even church worlds, faith worlds, and non-faith worlds... our efforts would vastly assist God in God's activity of reclamation and reconstruction.

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. Hebrews 5:12-6:2. NIV

Secondly, this process God whom I follow is a God of love at all times. Never hate. Never wrath. Never hellish, harmful, or toxic. Again, my past Christian background was one which supported a dipolar God of love and wrath, but the God whom I chose to see and follow is a monopole God of love, not wrath. So again, over these past many years of rewriting the story of God and who God is I have also rewritten the stories of the bible and the kinds of theologies we entertain from those stories... stories of love, perseverance, failure, doom and recovery, and so forth. But never have I doubted that God is not loving through the stories we read or the stories of our own life. It has always been the conflictions within our own hearts of which God we wish to think upon.

Mainly, the evangelical story of who God is in our own lives as opposed to the kind of God we think God is to the world is one of fickleness, fictional fabulism, folkloric tradition, and unhealthy beliefs. It has led to the kind of religious turbulence both church and world have found themselves within... that of an evolving process world of shifting faith stories, morals, ethics, migrations, settlement, despair and hope. However, I was more happy when seeing God as a God of love within my story of failure, loss, and tragedy, than as a God who blames me for outcomes, heaps on guilt upon my broken heart, or disappears when I needed God most.

And so, my second intent when writing through all these years has been to write a Christian theology and faith which is centered in the love of God and not in the theology of the church. To do this, I had to ironically remove the bible from the center of my faith and put the Author of the bible there instead. I facetiously tell people that the bible is no longer my faith center but that God's love is this center as expressed by Jesus. Of course, it's a slight-of-hand-trick as well as circular-logic but one in which I wish to be centered in an evolving bible speaking to God's love. If my beliefs, theologies and religious practices can get this right then I have the possibility of hope that the kind of process world we live upon might make more sense to our faith.

And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him, he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, II Timothy 2:24-25. NIV

At the last, I have provided many perspectives and many stories and many teachings how a reorientation to a loving, process-based, faith and circumspection of life might assist in breaking, upsetting, disturbing, and revolutionizing the Christian faith. One which might get us back into the game and win it by emphasizing a loving theology which is weak (Paul: "I am strong when I am weak"), recenters science via process philosophy, is balanced out by panpsychic process mysticism which throws out insipid, unpalatable, mystery statements refusing science in favor of folkloric tales and beliefs and new ageism.

Jesus said tha he came to disrupt, overthrow, remove, and burn down all religious faith structures which prevent his disciples from seeing the God of love around them (as surely Pariseeism had done). In many ways I and other process exvangelicals, nones-and-dones, and radicalists both Christian, agnostic, atheistic, and so forth, are doing the same. Of these categories I and process theists are but one voice - but I find this voice to be the more helpful to my faith journey.

A journey where I could have easily lapsed into these other categories but now no longer need to. I simply have found a spirit voice within my being that helps me co-exist in a healthier way against the other voices which would have led me to their own conclusions guided by their own spirit constructions. I like mine own version of Christian faith and so, I write of it sharing my journey of discovery. It could not have been done without God blowing up my former faith and reconstitutionalizing it's traditional baptistic and conservative evangelic centers.

Since doing the hard work of reconstruction, and learning how to continually apply this work into new and novel settings, I can confidently state that God is alive and well and lovingly present in all that we do should we listen to the simplest of voices to love as Jesus loved. Whenever teaching the bible, teach it from the vantage point of a God love and not from a God of wrath and vengeance as I have explained in the past three articles. Whether living through life's sadness and horror, if possible, rise from the ashes like the phoenix rocs of old knowing God is there, having done all that could be done in a wicked world of sin and death.

The Christian faith is not a faith of escapism from the world but a living present faith re-engaging with the world - even religiously unhealthy worlds of Christian faiths. And, at all times, by being led by a God of love. The prophets of the Old and New Testaments vouchsafed this faith time and again though many turned from the prophet's speech and sought God on their own terms. Terms which left them less wise, less gracious, angry and broken.

I suspect the Christian faith can do better today than it has recently done under trumpian maga-ism and Q'anon foolishness... even as those surviving progressive Christians are now doing rising over the broken shards of their past evangelical faith. But even these faithful need a newer theology to which I propose a process-based theology currently being described by Tom Oord (who is my friend and whom I support) as an Open and Relational Theology. Yet, by adding one word to this phrase, and then giving that one word depth, and this contemporary Christian phrase will be fully energized and engaged with today's societies. 

The word? Open and Relational Process Theology, ala Whiteheadian process philosophy and the process theology which results from this metaphysic, ontology and ethic. To wit, I will now turn over the discussion to my friend, Jay McDaniel, in part II of this three part discussion ending with John Cobb's Whireheadian video.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
September 7, 2024

Acts 17
New International Version

In Thessalonica

17 When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. 4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.

5 But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.[a] 6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” 8 When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. 9 Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.

In Berea

10 As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

13 But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. 14 The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. 15 Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.

In Athens

16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

 


FULL SERIES










 * * * * * * *



Twenty Key Ideas

in the Process Worldview

by Jay McDaniel


1. Process: The universe is an ongoing process of development and change, never quite the same from moment to moment. Every entity in the universe is best understood as a process of becoming that emerges through its interactions with others. The beings of the world are becomings.

2. Interconnectedness: The universe as a whole is a seamless web of interconnected events, none of which can be completely separated from the others. Everything is connected to everything else and contained in everything else. As Buddhists put it, the universe is a network of inter-being.

3. Continuous Creativity: The universe exhibits a continuous creativity on the basis of which new events come into existence over time which did not exist beforehand. This continuous creativity is the ultimate reality of the universe. Everywhere we look we see it. Even God is an expression of Creativity. Even as God creates, God is also continuously created.
4. Nature as Alive: The natural world has value in itself and all living beings are worthy of respect and care. Rocks and trees, hills and rivers are not simply facts in the world; they are also acts of self-realization. The whole of nature is alive with value. We humans dwell within, not apart from, the Ten Thousand Things. We, too, have value.

5. Ethics: Humans find their fulfillment in living in harmony with the earth and compassionately with each other. The ethical life lies in living with respect and care for other people and the larger community of life. Justice is fidelity to the bonds of relationship. A just society is also a free and peaceful society. It is creative, compassionate, participatory, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying - with no one left behind.

6. Novelty: Humans find their fulfillment in being open to new ideas, insights, and experiences that may have no parallel in the past. Even as we learn from the past, we must be open to the future. God is present in the world, among other ways, through novel possibilities. Human happiness is found, not only in wisdom and compassion, but also in creativity.

7. Thinking and Feeling: The human mind is not limited to reasoning but also includes feeling, intuiting, imagining; all of these activities can work together toward understanding. Even reasoning is a form of feeling: that is, feeling the presence of ideas and responding to them. There are many forms of wisdom: mathematical, spatial, verbal, kinesthetic, empathic, logical, and spiritual.

8. Relational Selfhood: Human beings are not skin-encapsulated egos cut off from the world by the boundaries of the skin, but persons-in-community whose interactions with others are partly definitive of their own internal existence. We depend for our existence on friends, family, and mentors; on food and clothing and shelter; on cultural traditions and the natural world. The communitarians are right: there is no "self" apart from connections with others. The individualists are right, too. Each person is unique, deserving of respect and care. Other animals deserve respect and care, too.

9. Complementary Thinking: The process way leans toward both-and thinking, not either-or thinking. The rational life consists not only of identifying facts and appealing to evidence, but taking apparent conflicting ideas and showing how they can be woven into wholes, with each side contributing to the other. In Whitehead’s thought these wholes are called contrasts. To be "reasonable" is to be empirical but also imaginative: exploring new ideas and seeing how they might fit together, complementing one another.

10. Theory and Practice: Theory affects practice and practice affects theory; a dichotomy between the two is false. What people do affects how they think and how they think affects what they do. Learning can occur from body to mind: that is, by doing things; and not simply from mind to body.

11. The Primacy of Persuasion over Coercion: There are two kinds of power – coercive power and persuasive power – and the latter is to be preferred over the former. Coercive power is the power of force and violence; persuasive power is the power of invitation and moral example.

12. Relational Power: This is the power that is experienced when people dwell in mutually enhancing relations, such that both are “empowered” through their relations with one another. In international relations, this would be the kind of empowerment that occurs when governments enter into trade relations that are mutually beneficial and serve the wider society; in parenting, this would be the power that parents and children enjoy when, even amid a hierarchical relationship, there is respect on both sides and the relationship strengthens parents and children.

13. The Primacy of Particularity: There is a difference between abstract ideas that are abstracted from concrete events in the world, and the events themselves. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness lies in confusing the abstractions with the concrete events and focusing more on the abstract than the particular.

14. Experience in the Mode of Causal Efficacy: Human experience is not restricted to acting on things or actively interpreting a passive world. It begins by a conscious and unconscious receiving of events into life and being causally affected or influenced by what is received. This occurs through the mediation of the body but can also occur through a reception of the moods and feelings of other people (and animals).

15. Concern for the Vulnerable: Humans are gathered together in a web of felt connections, such that they share in one another’s sufferings and are responsible to one another. Humans can share feelings and be affected by one another’s feelings in a spirit of mutual sympathy. The measure of a society does not lie in questions of appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement, but in how it treats those whom Jesus called "the least of these" -- the neglected, the powerless, the marginalized, the otherwise forgotten.

16. Evil: “Evil” is a name for debilitating suffering from which humans and other living beings suffer, and also for the missed potential from which they suffer. Evil is powerful and real; it is not merely the absence of good. “Harm” is a name for activities, undertaken by human beings, which inflict such suffering on others and themselves, and which cut off their potential. Evil can be structural as well as personal. Systems -- not simply people -- can be conduits for harm.

17. Education as a Lifelong Process: Human life is itself a journey from birth (and perhaps before) to death (and perhaps after) and the journey is itself a process of character development over time. Formal education in the classroom is a context to facilitate the process, but the process continues throughout a lifetime. Education requires romance, precision, and generalization. Learning is best when people want to learn.

18. Religion and Science: Religion and Science are both human activities, evolving over time, which can be attuned to the depths of reality. Science focuses on forms of energy which are subject to replicable experiments and which can be rendered into mathematical terms; religion begins with awe at the beauty of the universe, awakens to the interconnections of things, and helps people discover the norms which are part of the very make-up of the universe itself.

19. God: The universe unfolds within a larger life – a love supreme – who is continuously present within each actuality as a lure toward wholeness relevant to the situation at hand. In human life we experience this reality as an inner calling toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity. Whenever we see these three realities in human life we see the presence of this love, thus named or not. This love is the Soul of the universe and we are small but included in its life not unlike the way in which embryos dwell within a womb, or fish swim within an ocean, or stars travel throught the sky. This Soul can be addressed in many ways, and one of the most important words for addressing the Soul is "God." The stars and galaxies are the body of God and any forms of life which exist on other planets are enfolded in the life of God, as is life on earth. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. As God beckons human beings toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity, God does not know the outcome of the beckoning in advance, because the future does not exist to be known. But God is steadfast in love; a friend to the friendless; and a source of inner peace. God can be conceived as "father" or "mother" or "lover" or "friend." God is love.

20. Faith: Faith is not intellectual assent to creeds or doctrines but rather trust in divine love. To trust in love is to trust in the availability of fresh possibilities relative to each situation; to trust that love is ultimately more powerful than violence; to trust that even the galaxies and planets are drawn by a loving presence; and to trust that, no matter what happens, all things are somehow gathered into a wider beauty. This beauty is the Adventure of the Universe as One.

Explanation: ​

Process thinking is an attitude toward life emphasizing respect and care for the community of life. It is concerned with the well-being of individuals and also with the common good of the world, understood as a community of communities of communities. It sees the world as a process of becoming and the universe as a vast network of inter-becomings. It sees each living being on our planet as worthy of respect and care.

People influenced by process thinking seek to live lightly on the earth and gently with others, sensitive to the interconnectedness of all things and delighted by the differences. They believe that there are many ways of knowing the world -- verbal, mathematical, aesthetic, empathic, bodily, and practical - and that education should foster creativity and compassion as well as literacy.

Process thinkers belong to many different cultures and live in many different regions of the world: Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, North America, and Oceania. They include teenagers, parents, grandparents, store-clerks, accountants, farmers, musicians, artists, and philosophers.

Many of the scholars in the movement are influenced by the perspective of the late philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead. His thinking embodies the leading edge of the intellectual side of process thinking. Nevertheless, a mastery of his ideas is not necessary to be a process thinker. Ultimately process thinking is an attitude and outlook on life, and a way of interacting with the world. It is not so much a rigidly-defined worldview as it is a way of feeling the presence of the world and responding with creativity and compassion.

The tradition of process thinking can be compared to a growing and vibrant tree, with blossoms yet to unfold. The roots of the tree are the many ideas developed by Whitehead in his mature philosophy. They were articulated most systematically in his book Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. The trunk consists of more general ideas which have been developed by subsequent thinkers from different cultures, adding creativity of their own. These general ideas flow from Whitehead's philosophy, but are less technical in tone. The branches consist of the many ways in which these ideas are being applied to daily life and community development. The branches include applications to a wide array of topics, ranging from art and music to education and ecology.

Much of this website -- Open Horizons - is devoted to the branches and trunk. Of course, some people will be interested in the roots. For those interested in gaining knowledge of the roots, we have created a free course of short videos which provides an introduction to Alfred North Whitehead's organic philosophy and serves as a guiding companion to Whitehead's seminal work, Process and Reality. These twenty six-minute videos are offered below. They can be viewed in sequence or in parts, depending on your interests. If you would like to get started on this short course to better understand the roots of process thinking, go to What is Process Thought? The ideas above represent the twenty key ideas in the trunk. 


Jay's PowerPoint Summation:


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John Cobb has been very instrumental to my and Jay's process faith.
Here is an introduction to what it is and how it should be regarded from
Claremont College and it's Graduate School of Theological Studies.
 - re slater

John Cobb - An Introductory Introduction: 01





Tuesday, September 3, 2024

Is Yahweh ‌a‌ ‌Warrior‌ ‌God ‌or‌ ‌a‌ ‌God‌ ‌of‌ ‌Shalom?



INTRODUCTION

Following up on my last post, How to Read the Cruel and Violent Acts in the Bible, I thought a note from the Catholic Church may lend added balance and thought to  yesterday's discussion.

Stine's article below gives a succinct background to the problem of evil in the bible to which he parsed out several stratagems. For myself, I most identified with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' position.

I also recognized several older antagonists in Baumgartel and Harnack when working through in seminary class how to fit together theologically the continuities and discontinuities between the Old and New Testaments (and yes, this is a subtle and often overlooked theme / motif in biblical study). 

Nor do I think calling everything a "mystery" in Christian circles is much help either as previously discussed here at Relevancy22 over the years. By this I mean that there is always some mystery about God and life but to use it as a common Christian phrase simply shows the laziness of many in the Christian faith when refusing to think a bit deeper. Naturally, I have written as best as I could over the years removing metaphors like mystery for better meta-descriptors like science, theology, and metaphysics.

Further, Stine's three insights at the end of his article are simply expressions of giving God and Christians excuses to continue in their prejudices and violence. Firstly, God is love - not wrath, not murder, not genocide. The God of violence in the bible is a God I don't recognize and refuse as a teaching of the ancients. To me, the bible is a semi-historical narrative of the differing kinds of myths and folklores the late Semitic religions were working out about God. Their idea of God as a violent God is one of them.

Secondly, God's "foresight" - which we describe as "omniscience" - may be more aptly described here, What Does It Mean to Live in Hyperdimensional Worlds? But, in process theology, though God may know and understanding the many permutations of unfolding "time stubs" yet, because of God's love, God doesn't determine the course of a freewill universe but rather participates with it in moment-to-moment relational divine presence (contra Calvinism; but PRO Open and Relational PROCESS Theology).

And thirdly, I do not give God any room for justifying divine violence... as in NONE. Hence, I underlined the last two paragraphs below where Stine submits these as reasonably wise statements but I find these Christian statements unworthy of the God I worship who schemes and plays dice with our lives. Rather, God is always actively creating, sowing, planting, reaping relationally present life-circumstances as living agents which continual are at play atoning, redeeming, renewing life from man and creation's destructions and damage. It is why I find process evolution so intriguing... that it never quits but continues to adapt, morph, assume, consume, change, and move always towards some version of living life. I imagine God doing the same within a freewill creation of agency.

See what you think...

R.E. Slater
September 3, 2024





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“The Victory of Joshua Over the Amalekites,” Nicolas Poussin [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

Violence‌ ‌and‌ ‌Nonviolence‌ ‌in‌ ‌the‌ ‌Hebrew‌ ‌Scriptures‌ ‌

by Brian Stine   |   July 20, 2020

Yahweh,‌ ‌a‌ ‌Warrior‌ ‌God,‌ ‌or‌ ‌a‌ ‌God‌ ‌of‌ ‌Shalom?


In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are a series of actions that one can only classify as violence. Many of these actions are condemned by God. However, a great deal of them are not. Some are even condoned and commanded by God. For readers of the Hebrew Scriptures, this has posed a dilemma as to how does one interpret these verses. If one is to understand that God is a loving God, the various verses would seem to contradict the matter. Yet, the Old Testament reminds us repeatedly that God is still, in fact, a loving God, who commands that his people do not kill. How these two aspects of God should be reconciled is not readily apparent.

First, observe the actions that God allows, permits, performs, condones and commands in the Old Testament. In Genesis chapter 6, in the flood narrative, God destroys all of humanity for the sin of their iniquity.

And when God had seen that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth,) He said to Noe: The end of all flesh is come before me, the earth is filled with iniquity through them, and I will destroy them with the earth… Behold I will bring the waters of a great flood upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, under Heaven. All things that are in the earth shall be consumed (Genesis 6:12–13,17 Douay Rheims).

Here, God’s retribution is in response to a crime, but the crime committed by most of the world is never described. Rather it is just referred to as corruption. Nor is it entirely clear if every inhabitant of the earth bore guilt in such a scenario. There is some ambiguity in the use of the word “all” as God is presumably not referring to Noe and his family, and one can only hope that infants in their innocence are incapable of committing such corruption.

In 1st Samuel 15:2–3, God commands the Israelites to kill all that belongs to Amalec. This includes living people.

Thus saith the Lord of hosts: I have reckoned up all that Amalec hath done to Israel: I how he opposed them in the way when they came up out of Egypt. Now therefore go, and smite Amalec, and utterly destroy all that he hath: spare him not, nor covet anything that is his: but slay both man and woman, child and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass (1st Sam. 15:2–3).

Here in this passage, even if someone knows nothing about the guilt of Amalec or his nation, they can still deduce that there is a moral problem with killing all those who “belong to him.” God is not willing to spare the children, women or men regardless of their own culpability, but based on their association.

There are numerous situations in the Old Testament where people are killed in war in the name of God. One example would be in the book of Joshua. After the Israelites finally arrive in the land promised to them, they found that it was inhabited by the Canaanites. Here the Israelites spared no one in conquering the land:

“And killed all that were in it, man and woman, young and old. The oxen also and the sheep, and the asses, they slew with the edge of the sword” (Jos. 6:21).

Later in the book of Joshua, there are over 12 mentioned cities destroyed. While the land was promised to them, or in God’s infinite wisdom, was rightfully given to them, the Israelites owe a reason as to why they felt justified killing children who had no say in the matter, and the reason given is that God commanded them to do such:

“But of those cities that shall be given thee, thou shalt suffer none at all to live” (Duet. 20:16). Similarly, children were also not spared when God sent the Angel of Death to kill every firstborn son in Egypt (Ex. 11:4–6).

If the wars commanded by Yahweh in the Old Testament are compared to a contemporary understanding of the Just War Doctrine, Yahweh’s approach can not be said to be justified. Easily, if any man advocated for what God did in the Old Testament in a modern context, society would condemn him for being a cruel vicious tyrant. Consider the criteria Jus Ad Bellum (the right to battle and war) in regards to the Battle of Jericho. The conquests may have had a just cause, and most assuredly a just authority, but the proportionality and last resort factor are easily questioned. Certainly, the Israelites did more harm to Jericho than Jericho did to them. Also, considering that God is all-powerful, He presumably would have been able to move the Israelites and Canaanites in a way that would not cause conflict, so the Battle of Jericho can not be said, with certainty, to be a last resort. In regards to the criteria given for Jus In Bello, proportionality and discrimination are entirely absent. God targets entire nations, not just combatants when they’re not even in the position to be able to harm the Israelites, so much as the Israelites with God’s help are able to harm them.

Rather than what can be classified as a just war, what is seen throughout the Old Testament are clear examples of Holy War. Consider the Battle of Jericho, where we find that before the battle Joshua is greeted by a man with a sword who said he came to lead the Lord’s army (Josh. 5:13–14). based on Joshua’s response, where he venerates this man, one could presume that this man leading the Lord’s army was an angel. Undeniably, an angel with a sword is a sign of a militant people, and to the Israelites, there is something truly wholesome about a strong courageous army that fights relentlessly for its conquest. The theologian John Howard Yoder expresses the sentiment as such,

Holy War is undeniable in the foundational experience of the Hebrew people… the entire impression left with the modern reader by the narrative of Hebrew Bible is one of violence being not merely tolerated but fostered and glorified.

This glorification is perhaps most apparent when Yahweh is directly referred to as a Warrior God (Ex. 15:3). In Matthew Curtis Fleischer’s book The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence he makes the point that violence in the Old Testament has been used to justify essentially every atrocity committed by Christians. He cites clergyman and Old Testament scholar Christopher J.H. Wright to further his point.

The centuries of Christendom have witnessed professing Christian leaders right up to our modern times using the methods of conquest, torture, execution, horrifying punishments, and racist genocide- and claiming theological justification from their reading of the Old Testament.

The consensus for both Wright and Fleischer is essentially the same; the most unjust actions committed by Christians have been justified based on a reading or interpretation of the violence of the Old Testament. For them and many other critics, this is a problem.

If one were to suppose that this violence was limited to situations concerning war, they would be surprised. In addition to the element of violence within God’s warfare, there is also an element of violence in God’s precepts. In the scriptures, he commands the Israelites to stone rebellious teenagers and those who worship false idols (Deut. 21:18–21, 13:6–10). While this command is a response to real crimes, by almost any measurable understanding of proportional morality, stoning a rebellious teenager would naturally seem excessive.

Collectively there are numerous examples of God allowing, permitting, performing, condoning, and commanding violence in the Old Testament. Among the various Christian traditions and attitudes that exist today, even the most radical would seem to be somewhat tame in comparison to the violence advocated by God, Himself. Yet in what is perhaps the most shocking twist, in light of everything mentioned, God is also a God of love and peace. While there may be numerous examples from Scripture that show God’s wrath, there are additionally numerous examples that show God’s mercy towards his people and humanity.

One example can be found in the book of Jonah in contrast to the book Nahum. While in the book of Nahum, God glorifies sexual violence against Ninevites (Nah. 3:5), in the book Jonah, God converts the entirety of Ninevah peacefully through the words of the prophet Jonah. In this event, God does so without shedding a single drop of blood and ultimately forgives the entire city. While if a person were to just read Nahum they would presume God would wish punishment on the Ninevites, as they were quite brutal, but in Jonah, we see that God’s mercy is not limited to the Israelite people, but to all humanity. Meanwhile, the method used by Jonah is not a Holy War, nor is it a just war, rather it is a form of pacifism or militant nonviolence, of the likes of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. Jonah speaks to the entire rival nation, but never once resorts to violence. There is a negative aspect to this as Jonah does use coercion and threatens the destruction of Nineveh, but this destruction never occurs (Jon. 3:4), so ultimately, God saves Nineveh in the most peaceful manner possible, through preaching.

In a rather different situation, we also find that God tends to use the call to violence in order to prevent further violence. In Genesis, when God commands Abraham to kill Isaac, in an act that would normally violate the sanctity of life, God stops Abraham from doing so at the last minute (Gen. 22). While one may suppose that this act was unnecessary and a simple precept from God to avoid human sacrifice, would have been sufficient, the event was used as an effective morality tale that prevented the Israelites from sacrificing children to God, as this was a common practice of the time. By creating the scenario for such a memorable tale, God may have saved the lives of Hebrew children, without needing to rely on a specific command. In other words, while God may have been able to order that the Israelites stop sacrificing children, the story of Abraham and Isaac was much more effective.

In regards to Biblical commandments, many of them are mentioned in the Old Testament. One that stands out as the most relevant, though, is “thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13). At the heart of the issue of violence, this commandment would seem to speak for itself, while the rest of the commandments also show a sense of compassion from our Lord. While some theologians may point towards the sermon on the mount as the first time our Lord told us to love our neighbors, the same commandment is mentioned prior, in the book of Leviticus (Lev 19:9–18). Here God tells the Israelites that they should not hate their neighbor in their heart. This love is not limited to those who belong to the nation of Israel. Among American immigration activists, often cited are numerous Old Testament commandments to welcome foreigners in Israel’s midst, (i.e. 1 Kings 8:41–43, Exodus 22:21, Exodus 23:19, Deuteronomy 10:19, Deuteronomy 24:14, and Deuteronomy 27:19.) Perhaps the clearest and most succinct example is Exodus 22:21, “Thou shalt not molest[mistreat] a stranger, nor afflict him: for yourselves also were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 22:21). Among the verses listed, God tells His people that their love should not be limited to those who are within their race or their group. Rather they are to welcome all people. This can be seen as an extension of the same principle expressed in Leviticus as it is focused on loving one’s neighbor. This precept also recognizes that our neighbor is not limited to just those in our own community.

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How the contradiction between the violence and peace of God is explained varies based on different theological approaches to hermeneutics and divine providence. Dianne Bergant in an article entitled “Yahweh: A Warrior God?” notes that while there is a great deal of violence committed by God, one can see this violence as a violence that was in response to persecution. Nearly every situation or struggle the Israelites faced, from their enslavement in Egypt to the attacks they faced from Assyrians, showed that they were a persecuted people. Yahweh as a warrior God is not to be seen as an oppressor in light of these circumstances, but rather as a liberator of Israelite people. “And [The Lord ]brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand, and a stretched out arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders”(Deut. 26:8).

While this interpretation of liberator is perhaps quite evident, it still doesn’t quite explain the exact militant proportions that Yahweh takes in the Old Testament. The retributive attack on Amalek, for example, may have been justified, but children, such as the ones mentioned in 1st Samuel 15:2–3, would generally be presumed to be innocent of any such guilt. One interpretation is that every single one of those who God commanded to be slaughtered, including babies, really were quite evil. Even here, God’s retribution is not to be seen as the initial offense. For example, the Amelecs were known to “attack from behind” which was a way of saying that they fought in a vile manner. In extension, so were Israelites vile when they disobeyed God’s Commandments. This approach suggests that mankind truly deserves these punishments from God as all are guilty before God, and this can be supported even in the New Testament: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). This comes at the assumption that mankind is deserving of being killed or condemned and that this is the default position for all sinners. Perhaps the Calvinist teaching on total depravity is the single strongest example of this particular interpretation, as no one is presumed worthy of being considered innocent in light of God. With the traditional western Christian teaching of Original Sin, this approach can perhaps be justified among Catholics as well, since the catechism states that while “human nature has not been totally corrupted” all have lost original holiness and justice (CCC 404), which could serve as a basis for the violent Old Testament passages.

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This interpretation, however, is not accepted by all theologians, and the paradox between violence and peace in the Old Testament has caused many theologians to resort to neo-Marcionism. That is, in the spirit of the 2nd-century heretic, Marcion of Sinope, many theologians reject the Old Testament, and choose rather to focus only on the New Testament. Baumgartel, for instance, says that the Old Testament is impossible for us to understand in light of our faith, and therefore should be rejected. “Nothing in the Old Testament is accepted.” Adolf Von Harnack is famous for holding this viewpoint, and Franz Hesse also says every manner in the Old Testament must remain inadequate. For these theologians, the Old Testament is qualitatively different from that of the New Testament.

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For those who are not Marcionists, there is still another interpretation of the Old Testament, which renders such a justification of God’s actions, unnecessary. Commonly it’s asked if these precepts were ever directly ordered by God or were they the creation of the Hebrew people. For those who presume the latter, the scriptures may still be understood to be the divinely inspired Word of God, but divinely inspired in a way that is not so interpretatively demanding. In other words, scripture doesn’t have to be taken literally. Rather it is seen more as a device for learning and less as a list of precepts from God. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks adapts a version of this stance and argues that violence can not be done in God’s name, and what’s really important for Scripture is that it be interpreted within a specific tradition. Here, the emphasis is not on Scripture itself, but a tradition surrounding it. Similarly, the Catholic Church adopts a manner of tradition surrounding Scripture, as Scripture is not the only foundation for Christian doctrine in Catholicism.

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For those who do not accept this approach to interpretation, the contradiction between the Yahweh of violence and peace is a mystery worthy of spiritual contemplation all on its own. Rudolf Bultman describes it as a contradiction in which believers may find fulfillment in the contradiction. Just as paradoxes are observed in other areas of life, so are they observed in Yahweh himself. In a presentation at the Ukrainian Catholic University, Professor Klaas Spronk noted this violence and told the audience that there was no simple answer, but in many respects, God calls on us to dwell on such a matter. Perhaps the mystery, is similar to that of Abraham and Isaac, as Abraham really had no way of understanding how God’s will in that situation could be justified, and in a similar way, just as Abraham could not have known that his attempt to kill Isaac would end child sacrifice, the truth or effect of God’s demand for violence is good in a way also beyond our knowledge.

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The one thing that remains certain despite the confusion of readers when considering the Biblical controversy is that God is justified, and humanity is not God. God holds all existence in being, gives every living creature life, and possesses an essence that’s synonymous with goodness. Whether the violence in Scripture reflects this goodness or is merely the product of a particular literary tradition, God’s goodness cannot be denied. When approaching God’s providence, there is a required sense of humility on the part of man. God explains this to Job when he questions God. “Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4). The violent actions God commands in the Old Testament may be wrong when carried out by humanity. That is if a person or group were to attack the Canaanites indiscriminately by their own volition, without God’s explicit condonation, it would be unjust. However, in the event where scripture be taken literally at face value, and such actions are ordered directly by God, these types of actions can be justified for 3 main reasons:

The first reason these violent actions are not to be acknowledged as problematic is that all human life belongs to God. Murder is wrong because when someone murders, they take something that does not belong to them. Suicide, for example, is wrong, because an individual’s life belongs to God and is meant to serve a purpose outside of oneself. All of humanity and all of existence belongs to God, and to suppose he can’t take a life, when all life is His, is wrong. He created it, and can do what he pleases with it, for it was created in order to give him glory. Considering that he creates out of mercy and benevolence, and “wills the salvation of all,” (1 Tim. 2:4) this shows that he is still all good. His mercy being the winning factor, shows that while people are killed under his command, it’s always done for benevolent purposes.

The second reason God’s violence is justified is related to the first reason, which is that humanity is unable to make restitution for human life, in the same way God can. While God has been compared to a dictator by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, unlike a dictator, God can offer people eternal salvation. When putting this in a manner of priority, this is far more important than our finite earthly lives, so while yes, God does allow for our finite lives to be taken from us, he also offers so much more in return. In theory, God could order all of humanity to undergo the most “unjust” miserable human lives, yet if this were carried out and humanity was guaranteed salvation, then the light of eternal salvation would render the pain this causes as inconsequential. There is no reason to suppose that God did not redeem the lives of those killed in the battle of Jericho, or use their deaths to prevent them or others from falling into even greater evil. This is within God’s ability, while earthly tyrants could not have guaranteed such an outcome. That is the essential difference.

The third reason God can remain all good while ordering the death of thousands of people is because of his foreknowledge of all events. God uses evil that was brought into the world by men but never causes evil directly. While God did not cause death, nor did he bring death into the world, he uses it to prevent an even greater evil, eternal death (damnation). If one dared to presume to know what God intended by ordering the slaughter of Jericho, they could perhaps assume that God was protecting the Israelites in order to bring about Christ, as the Israelites were chosen to do such. Certainly, the everlasting life brought by Christ is worth more than all the finite lives in the world if such an interpretation is accurate. By the unjust killing of Christ, all of humanity has been atoned.

The contrast between violence and nonviolence in the Old Testament has caused considerable confusion for those reading the scriptures. While humanity may never know exactly what God intends, it is through an act of faith that Christians know that God intends the best for all. Whether Scripture is literal and refers to actual events where God condoned the killing of seemingly innocent people or whether Scripture is to be interpreted in a more abstract manner, God can be said to desire the best for all humanity. This is a certainty that can not be underappreciated or overstated as all are called to trust in God’s word. Whether that be God’s word in the Hebrew Scriptures or the Christian Scriptures, believers can rest assured that God is calling us to receive his mercy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bergant, Dianne. “Yahweh: a Warrior God?” The Bible Today, 1983, 156–61.

Fleischer, Matthew Curtis. The Old Testament Case for Nonviolence. Oklahoma City, OK: Epic Octavius the Triumphant, 2017.

Filat, Sergiu. “Who Was the Man Mentioned in the Passage of Joshua 5:13–15?” Moldova Creștină, September 18, 2018. https://moldovacrestina.md/en/who-is-the-man-of-joshua-5-13-15/.

Goodman, James. “Understanding Genesis 22: God and Child Sacrifice,” My Jewish Learning, April 7, 2015, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/members-of-the-scribe/understanding-genesis-22-god-and-child-sacrifice/)

Hanson, Paul D. “War and Peace in the Hebrew Bible.” Union Seminary Review 38, no. 4 (1984): 341–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/002096438403800402.

Kierkegaard, Søren. Trans. Lowrie, Walter. Fear and Trembling, Kindle Edition. Fig, 2012.

Spronk, Klaas. Genocide and Revenge in the Name of YHWH. Кафедра Біблійних наук УКУ, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRUWmxOBH6s.

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Editor for St. Ambrose Press

A former catechetical teacher, and current theology master student. The opinions expressed are my own and do not reflect the views of my university or employer.