As we take a close look at honesty in history, we are immediately faced with the fact that we do have a beginning, which is recorded and no amount of speculation or theory can take remove the fact that our knowledge of history is finite. We have what we call a fossil record to account for the history of animal and plant life. Therefore, we can call history the fossil record of man. History can be confirmed, authenticated and deemed acceptable when we find and/or present proof. Our proof is in the integrity of the authors. The early historians were making an honest attempt to leave a true record of events for the ones who would come after. Although bias occurred, for the most part, true and faithful recording of events was the goal of the writer. The greatest truthful account ever written is found in the original writings of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian testament.
Due to the convicting and powerful teachings of the Word of God, many men have tried to discredit the Bible as a complete and truthful book of facts. Historical writers are generally regarded as truthful and their works are useful to this day as guides for living. Leaders, teachers and military commanders have looked back at historical narratives to glean some understanding that could be helpful in the current day. Our hope is that history would teach us a lesson without having to go through the agony of the lesson firsthand. The fact that the beginning of history in all recorded accounts is limited to the same time frame is a starting point for believing in God of the Bible and yet many refuse to admit that the Bible is true.
Modern historians have put a lot of effort into trying to revise history. In attempting to apply scientific methods fo...
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... is doomed to a life of failure. Failure to reach his full potential, failure to understand the truth behind actions of his ancestors and failure to be the man that God created him to be. The goal of every person alive ought to be an honest, fair and factual presentation of history. It goes without saying that should the Christian man weaken in the battle against the evil forces, we will fail to do the work which God has called us to do. God is not glorified and honored when we fail to keep Him faithfully in sight as the reason for living. As history still shows, mankind has always looked for something or someone to idolize.
It is important to be honest about history because it can be an encouragement. When history is presented with all its flaws and mistakes, it is still valuable as a lesson in what not to do and that is just as important as what to do.
William C. Plachers’ article, “Is the Bible True?” explores deeper into the subject of the Bible and if it content it contains is credible information. Through Plachers’ statement, “We need to understand the genre to understand a text. Reading a text literally is not always reading it faithfully,” we are able to reach the idea that the Bible is in fact true, but it all depends on how the individual interprets the text.
Now I am going to put the Old Testament to the test to see if it has credibility to be the trustworthy document that it claims. "Religion, if it is worth believing, must be based on facts. Yes, there is room for faith, but unless it is faith in facts, faith is not only useless but destructive .The Bible cannot afford to have historical errors.
To study history, the facts and information must be passed down. To do so, historians record the information in textbooks and other nonfiction works. Whether or not the historians retell facts or construct their own version of history is debatable. History can be percieved as being “constructed” by the historians due to their bias, elimination of controversy, strive for entertainment, and neglect to update the information.
It’s truly fascinating how there are so many different approaches to history, how so many different types of minds and schools of thought can come together to study the events of the world’s past. There are so many ways to approach what happened in our past, and the groups of historians previously mentioned are only a fraction of the actual number of different ways of researching and thinking that exists as it pertains to the study of history. History is in some ways, always a mystery, and all historians, regardless of schooling, training or biases, seek to accomplish one goal: to understand what occurred before us and why, and to use that knowledge to learn how the world was shaped into the world we live in today.
Studying the Old Testament is not as straightforward as some may think. Being able to recall stories of the Bible does not necessarily mean you have a thorough grasp on the history of Israel and the surrounding nations. Some people read and discuss the Bible without a solid understanding of the history and social issues that were going on at the time. Being able to relate to the stories in the Bible and struggle with some of the same problems faced by the people in the Bible gives you a greater appreciation for the works in the Bible. I feel that having a firm understanding of all the related history of Israel gives a student of the Old Testament a far greater understanding of why these stories are in the Bible and what was meant to be learned from them. In this paper I give brief, yet significant, explanations of the Old Testament from the death of King David to the Maccabean revolt.
The larger repercussions of this form of history, is that it misses out on the larger purpose of history. The most important part of history to be told truthfully is the bad part. Imagine our history glazing over Hitler as a crazy guy who acted alone, and forced everybody in Germany to go along with his plan. We need to hear the story that regular people were pulled into his mentality, that random Joe's were converted into Jew-hating murderers.
Whenever one thinks of Christianity and the Christian church, one cannot avoid Jesus Christ. This is understandable because, for without Jesus, Christianity would not exist; Christianity is based on Jesus. Jesus has become so well associated with Christianity that it is assumed and widely accepted that Jesus was a Christian. Followers of Christianity often use the reference “being Christ-like” as a model for ideal human behavior (meaning to use the life of Jesus as a blueprint).
Writings of historical scholars, Josephus, Aristotle, and Plato, to name a few, are taken as truth and fact, yet the writings of the Scripture are constantly disputed. Why? Perhaps because of the ethical imperatives imposed to which people do not want to adhere. Perhaps because of man’s ego and pride that disallows them to submit to a Higher Authority. Nonetheless, The Bible has been, and still remains, the most widely read and revered book of all
John Lewis Gaddis, in his book, The Landscape of History, generates a strong argument for the historical method by bringing together the multiple standpoints in viewing history and the sciences. The issue of objective truth in history is addressed throughout Gaddis’s work. In general, historians learn to select the various events that they believe to be valid. Historians must face the fact that there is an “accurate” interpretation of the past ceases to exist because interpretation itself is based on the experience of the historian, in which people cannot observe directly (Gaddis 10). Historians can only view the past in a limited perspective, which generates subjectivity and bias, and claiming a piece of history to be “objective” is simplistic. Seeing the world in a multidimensiona...
The historical reliability of the Bible is the first matter that needs to be discussed. There are three criteria that the military historian C. Sanders lists as principles for documentary historical proof: the bibliographical test, internal evidence test, and the external evidence test (McDowell 43). The bibliographical test is the examination of text from the documents that have reached us. The reliability of the copies of the New Testament is tested by the number of manuscripts (MSS) and the time intervals between the time in which the piece of literature was written and our earliest copy. There are more than 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and 10,000 Latin vulgate manuscripts, not to mention the other various translations.
The authors of After the Fact The Art of Historical Detection, make the assertion that history is not an account of what happened in the past because what happened in the past is only the raw material: "History is not some inert body of knowledge `out there' in the past, but a continual act of construction whose end product is being reshaped and made anew every time someone ventures into the archives" (Davidson and Lytle IX). Davidson and Lytle mean that the interpretation of history changes based on the methods of investigation used by the historian. Interpretations also change based on how long "after the fact" we choose to go back and investigate. Current beliefs, social trends, and a person's racial background can't help but play an influential role in how we perceive a past event.
We are all taught essentially the same things in school. We learn of the presidents and what they did and when they did it. But we know, as adults, that we did not get all the facts or even a portion of the correct facts in regards to history. In the essay, "The Historian and His Facts," Edward Hallett Carr shares a bit of insight into the people who record history and write about it. We are given a deeper understanding of historians and just what it is they do and what they know. By doing so Carr gives the reader an opportunity to question much of the history that we are exposed to and taught. The historian Barbara Tuchman says that the most common question asked of historians by the public is whether history serves a purpose and whether we can learn from the lessons of history (Tuchman 608).
Historians use sources and knowledge to piece together the history of the human existence while Human scientist study the human behavior as well as the lifestyle we live in. They indeed focus on these areas and provide information to each other. However, a historian will also look to the future and foretell using his or her knowledge of the past. In the same way, a human scientist might look at human behavior today and compare it with the past. For when we look at human science, historians find it as useful term for science with the word ‘human’ as the subject (Smith). This opens the possibilities for the historian to research and thus history can be considered as a ‘Human Science’ (Smith).
Learning about history helps us learn about the humanities own reflection and what’s good or bad about it. This is just like a diary , people and by people I mean historians , just wrote what they saw and what seemed to cause a major change in society and we just happen to be reading it a couple of years later. I believe that historians actually wrote historical truth because it makes sense and it has been scientifically proven
We can use the word history in so many ways and it can have so many meanings and usages. We often find that using the term history without considering the underlying concepts can be troublesome at best. In some instances we use the word history to articulate an actual event that has happened prior to today. We can also say history to show a timeline that includes a group of events or actions. We try to learn from history but often find ourselves repeating the patterns depending on if we have learned anything previous history, sometimes repeating because we did learn effective uses of past history. We want things to be consistent, in our minds we want to repeat those things that went well and avoid the things that did not. So many things are locked in our minds and psychology is our way of unlocking those thoughts and processes from the mind. What makes us who we are is history; it also makes society what it is. Because we have an understanding of our history it will always influence the present.