16/04/2024

This lecture provides a guide to writing a historical paper. The ideas outlines in the lecture can be used to practice writing
a paper. I may not remember all the steps discussed, but apply these ideas into practice and soon it will become easier.

7. April 16, 2024: Historical Studies

and Theology

Part 1: Historical Studies

Historical Studies

What is History?
• An account of known events in the past. History is "our
memory or knowledge of what happened in the past."
(Land, Gary, 2000, p. 1)
• History "is not the past but knowledge of the past."
(van Leyden, Wolfgang, 1984, p. 54) History is the
study of the past.
• As such, the historian's primary task is the interpretation
of the past. (Sheppard, Beth M, 2012, pp. 15–17)

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Historical Studies

• "A systematic account over a long enough period of time

not only to establish relationships, connections, causes,
and consequences, but also to show how change occurs
and to suggest why." (Finley, M. I., 1985, pp. 5–6)
• "Its purpose is to understand the world in and through
the past." (Huizinga, Johan, 1936, p. 5)

Concept: Historical Conditioning

• All proponents of historical thinking share the basic idea

of historical conditioning, be it by more or less particular
events or constellations or grander narrative structures.
• Historical conditioning holds that all knowledge and
cognition are historically conditioned.

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Historical Conditioning
• A term from cultural anthropology.
• The view is that each culture represents an original
development,
• conditioned as much by its social as by its geographical
environment and
• by the manner in which it used and enriched the cultural
materials that came to it from neighbours or others
(through "diffusion")
• or from its own creativity (through "invention" and
"adaptation").

Historical Conditioning

A person's existence or life, actions, beliefs, events

• are always and unpreventably historically situated or
conditioned.
• Though we may attempt to escape historical influence,
we cannot.

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Basic Skills Needed in Doing Historical Studies

1. Knowledge Skills
2. Thinking Skills
3. Research and Writing Skills/Method

Basic Skill 1: Historical Knowledge

• Historical knowledge. To possess historical knowledge

means a person has a sense of history. (American Historical
Association, "History Tuning Projects," https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-
learning/tuning-the-history-discipline/2016-history-discipline-core.

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Basic Skill 1: Historical Knowledge

Mindset of a historian:
1. Gather and contextualize information in order to convey
both the particularity of past lives and the scale of
human experience.
2. Recognize how humans in the past shaped their own
unique historical moments and were shaped by those
moments.

Basic Skill 1: Historical Knowledge

Mindset of a historian:
3. Develop a body of historical knowledge with breadth of
time and place—as well as depth of detail—in order to
discern context.
4. Distinguish the past from our very different present.

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Basic Skill 2: Historical Thinking skills (American

Historical Association)
Overview of Historical Thinking sub-skills:
1. Chronological Thinking
2. Historical Comprehension
3. Historical Analysis and Interpretation
4. Historical Research Skills
5. Historical Issues: Analysis and Decision-Making

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 1. Mental processes

of Chronological Thinking
• Distinguish between past, present, and future time
• Identify how events take place over time
• Use chronology in writing histories
• Interpret data presented in time lines
• Analyze patterns of historical duration or continuity as
well as to recognize historical change
• Understand how the periodization of history is culturally
constructed.

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 2. Historical

Comprehension
• 2.a. Reading creatively, so that you can imagine yourself
in the roles of the men and women you study.
• 2.b. Understand their motivations and the historical
context within which events unfolded.
How do you understand motivation? By reading what they have written, etc.

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 2. Historical

Comprehension
• 2.c. Identify who was involved in the action, what
happened, where it happened, and what events led to
the action, and what consequences or outcomes followed
the action.
• understand the factors that got the principal into an
event.
• how the event transpired
• what happened as a consequence of the event.
This list of ideas are helpful in determining the method of a paper. These important points can help
direct the course of writing.
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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 2. Historical

Comprehension
• 2.d. Identify central questions in historical writing and to
come to some conclusions about the purpose,
perspective, or point of view from which they have been
constructed.
• 2.e. Understand the humanity (or sometimes lack of it)
of main characters: what were their probable motives,
hopes, fears, strengths, and weaknesses.
If you are descrining an event, identify the central question- what is the purpose of the event? etc..

If you are writing about people, study and understand their motives, fears, strengths and hope etc....

Example: Why was Butler against Waggonner and Jones?

15He was fighting for the church. He was thinking of the landmarks of Adventism. In his thought, do not touch
the landmarks. If you touch it, we will no longer be Adventists... etc.

Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 2. Historical

Comprehension
• 2.f. Use data presented in many different forms: maps,
visual and numerical data, and visual, literary, and
musical sources including:
• Photographs, paintings, cartoons, and architectural
drawings;
• Novels, poetry, and plays; and
• Folk, popular and classical music. Understanding
geographical information will explain a lot about how
the ancient world developed.

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 3. Historical Analysis

and Interpretation
• 3.a. Identify the author or source of a piece of evidence
and assess its credibility
• 3.b. Compare and contrast different sets of ideas, values,
personalities, behaviors, and institutions
• 3.c. Differentiate between historical facts and historical
interpretations
• Understand that multiple perspectives of the past are
possible, even though history is often written from the
point of view of winners

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 3. Historical Analysis

and Interpretation
• 3.d. Analyze "cause-and-effect relationships,"
understanding that many events probably have multiple
causes.
• Differentiate what happened because of individual
action, cultural factors, or pure chance
• 3.e. Understand that all historical interpretations are
tentative and that they might be revised with the
discovery of new evidence or by thinking about the
problem in a new way

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 3. Historical Analysis

and Interpretation
• 3.f. Evaluate major debates among historians and come
to your own conclusions about them
• 3.g. Think about how events in the past may be shaping
our present

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 4. Historical Research

Skills.
• This quality or process will be discussed in a separate
section.

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 5. Historical Issues:

Analysis and Decision-Making
• 5.a. Identify issues and problems in the past and analyze
the interests, values, perspectives, and points of view of
those involved in the situation.
• 5.b. Marshal evidence of antecedent circumstances and
contemporary factors contributing to problems and
alternative courses action.

Do not only describe about what happened, you analyze what happened and make your decision.

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 5. Historical Issues:

Analysis and Decision-Making
• 5. c. Identify relevant alternative courses of action,
keeping in mind the information available at the time, in
terms of ethical considerations, the interests of those
affected by the decision, and the long- and short-term
consequences of each.
• 5.d. Formulate a position or course of action on an issue
by identifying the nature of the problem, analyzing the
underlying factors contributing to the problem, and
choosing a plausible solution from a choice of carefully
evaluated options.

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Historical Thinking Sub-skill: 5. Historical Issues:

Analysis and Decision-Making
• 5.e. Evaluate the implementation of a decision by
analyzing the interests it served; estimating the position,
power, and priority of each player involved; assessing the
ethical dimensions of the decision; and evaluating its
costs and benefits from a variety of perspectives.

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Skill 3: Historical Research and Writing Skills

Overview of Research and Writing Skills

• Formulate historical questions
• Obtain historical data
• Evaluate the data
• Contextualize the data
• Present/write your history in a meaningful form

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Guidelines for Historical Research and Writing.

References:
• http://www.begbiecontestsociety.org/historicalmethod.htm
• Adapted from Richard Marius, A Short Guide to Writing About
History.
https://www.mnhs.org/sites/default/files/preservation/grants/histori
cal_research_guidelines.pdf

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Steps in Historical Research

Step 1: Be aware of your audience, that you are writing a

scholarly paper.
There are many ways of writing. Imagination is needed but an academic paper is reasoned judgment.
Be aware of how you are writing your paper based on the audience you are writing to.

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Steps in Historical Research

Step 2: Formulate historical questions. Have a sharply focused

and limited topic that you can finish in a semester, the most.
• 2.a Start with a topic that interests you, perhaps something
you have studied or best if have written broadly before.
• 2.b Read superficially and write down your thoughts.
• 2.c Start by reading several encyclopedia articles, or textbooks
related to the topic that you are interested in so that you will
have a good foundation for further research.
Read and Reflect and write down ideas. In this way, you can find out your historical questions.

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Steps in Historical Research

Step 2: Formulate historical questions. Have a sharply

focused and limited topic that you can finish in a semester
• 2.d Compile a bibliography while you are doing initial
reading. Check both the bibliographic references and
recommendations for further reading in the
bibliographies appended to articles in the encyclopedias
read.
When reading a source, be aware of the bibliography of that source because they are already your
guide for resources that you need for your paper.

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Steps in Historical Research

Step 2: Formulate historical questions. Have a sharply

focused and limited topic that you can finish in a semester
• 2.e. Read and write down your thoughts as you read. Ask
or note the questions that come as you read. Note an
issue that strikes your interest. Carry a notebook with you
at all times to jot down ideas. As you do more reading, as
questions about your preliminary topic and then try to
answer them. You may be able to start shaping the
argument that you will be making in your paper.

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Steps in Historical Research

• Step 3: Limit your Topic. By far the greatest flaw in most

research papers is that students attempt to write on
topics that are so broad that their paper lacks focus and
originality.

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Steps in Historical Research

Step 3: Limit your Topic.
• 3.a. Your topic must be defined narrowly if you are to write an
interesting, informative paper that covers most of the
following interconnected dimensions of historical thinking, as
defined by the National Standards for History (USA, 1996).
• Chronological Thinking Consider if all these points have sources
• Historical Comprehension that you can use to support each one
• Historical Analysis and Interpretation
• Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision-Making
• 3.b. Determine if the primary sources of the topic you have
chosen are available
Makes sure that it is narrow enough so that you can: demonstrate your chronological thinking,
historical comprehension, historical analysis and interpretation and your decision.
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Step 4: Starting your research

• Obtain historical data. Most of theological research are

documentary; exceptions are the quantitative/action
research in practical theology.
• The bibliographies in the articles you read in reference
works will give you a start toward both the primary
sources for your study and the secondary sources. The
secondary sources will broaden your understanding and
help you see the problems and opportunities in the
sources as other writers have seen them.
Primary sources- the actors and those involved.
Secondary sources- the scholars interpretation of these events.
Choose a topic that has primary sources.

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Historical Writing

• Step 5: Present an argument.

• Step 6: Base your paper on primary sources and a
thorough reading of secondary sources.
• Step 7: Build your paper step by step on evidence.
• Step 8: Provide a good title for your paper.
• Step 9: Get to the point quickly and stick to it.

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Historical Writing

• Step 10: Tell a good story by using the different modes in

historical writing. Capture the readers' imagination by
writing descriptively, while at the same time writing
analytically
• Description
• Narration
• Exposition
• Argument

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Historical Writing

• Step 11: Document your sources.

• Step 12: Write dispassionately.
• Step 13: Reach independent conclusions.
• Step 14: Consider counter-evidence.
In theology, we consider the view of others, we do the same in historical.

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