Sources and evidence: primary, secondary, early and late

Program / Course 16: Historical Defense / Lesson 1.1

What you will learn

• Define primary source, secondary source, early source and late source.
• Explain why historians ask who wrote a source, when, for whom and why.
• Describe the difference between a source and the event it reports.
• Apply the same questions to a Christian text and to a non-Christian text.

The big idea

History is not a pile of facts. It is a set of conclusions drawn from sources, and every source has an author, a date, an audience and a purpose. A historian does not ask only whether a source is old. The historian asks how close it stood to the events, what it wanted to achieve, and whether anyone else says the same thing independently. The same questions must be put to every text, whether it is friendly to Christianity or hostile to it.

Key terms

Primary source

A document or object from the time and place being studied, such as a letter, inscription, coin or official record. It is the raw material of history.

Secondary source

A later work that interprets primary sources, such as a modern history book or a commentary.

Early and late sources

Terms for how close a source stands to the events. An early source was written soon after, a late source long after. Early is usually better, but not always.

Independent attestation

The same event or saying reported by more than one source that did not simply copy each other.

Provenance

The origin and history of a source: who wrote it, where, when, and how it has been preserved.

Bias

A viewpoint or interest that shapes how a source reports things. Every source has some. The task is to account for it, not to pretend it is absent.

Manuscript

A hand-copied text. Almost all ancient writings survive only in manuscripts made centuries after the original.

Background

Most people meet history as a finished story. Historians meet it as a problem. They begin with surviving traces of the past, such as letters, books, inscriptions, buildings and coins, and they ask what can reasonably be concluded from them. Nobody can observe the past directly. Every claim about it rests on a source, and the quality of the claim can never be better than the quality of the source and of the reasoning built on it.

This course applies that method to the origins of Christianity. That means the method must come first. It also means a rule of fairness: the tests used on the Gospels must be the tests used on Tacitus, on Josephus and on any skeptical author. A Christian who relaxes the tests for favorite texts, or a skeptic who tightens them only for Christian texts, is not doing history. This lesson sets out the basic vocabulary and questions.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Primary and secondary

A primary source comes from the period under study. A letter written by Paul in the first century is a primary source for Paul’s thought and for the churches he addressed. A modern biography of Paul is a secondary source. Primary does not mean true. It means close to the material. A primary source can be mistaken, boastful or deceptive.

The labels also depend on the question. The Gospel of Luke is a primary source for how Christians in the late first century told the story of Jesus. It may or may not be a primary source for what Jesus said in Galilee around the year 30. Always ask: primary for what?

Step 2: Early and late

Distance in time matters because memory fades, stories grow and writers pick up rumors. A report written within a few decades of an event is generally preferred to one written two centuries after. But age alone settles little. A late writer may have used an excellent early source. An early writer may have been misinformed or may have been writing propaganda.

It also helps to ask how far a source is from the event in a chain. Did the writer see it, hear it from someone who saw it, or read it in a book? Each step adds the chance of error or reshaping.

Step 3: Who, when, for whom and why

Four questions should be put to every source. Who wrote it, and what did the author know? When was it written? Who was the audience? What was the purpose? A court history praising an emperor, a church letter encouraging the persecuted, and a tax record all have different aims, and the aims shape what is included.

Purpose does not cancel value. Many Christian texts were written to persuade. So were many Roman histories. A source with a purpose can still report facts accurately, and a detached source can still be wrong. Purpose tells the historian where to look for distortion.

Step 4: Independence and agreement

A claim is stronger when several sources report it and they did not copy each other. Five newspapers reprinting one press release count as one source. Historians therefore try to trace dependence. Are two accounts using a common source? Does one author know the other’s book?

Agreement also has a limit. If a story is repeated by many later writers who all get it from one early text, the number of copies adds nothing. Disagreement is not automatically bad either. Details that differ among accounts of the same event are common in ancient and modern reporting and do not by themselves show that nothing happened.

Step 5: From manuscript to text

No ancient book exists in its author’s own hand. Only copies of copies survive. Scholars compare surviving manuscripts to reconstruct the likely original wording, a field called textual criticism. For the New Testament the manuscript evidence is large by ancient standards, and the great majority of differences between manuscripts are small matters such as spelling. A few passages are genuinely disputed. The manuscript evidence tells a historian what the text said at a given time. It does not by itself show that the text is accurate about events.

1. Is this source primary or secondary, and for which question?
2. Who wrote it, and how could the author have known what is reported?
3. How long after the events was it written?
4. What did the author want the reader to do or believe?
5. Is there another source that reports the same thing independently?
6. Would I apply the same standard if this source supported the opposite conclusion?

Examples

Different perspectives

Secular historians

Most academic historians, believing or not, treat ancient sources by the same method as other sources. They argue that no text receives special treatment because of its religious status, and that a source’s claims are weighed like any other.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians

Both traditions hold that the Scriptures are inspired and that the church’s tradition is a trustworthy channel of apostolic teaching. Many Catholic and Orthodox scholars nevertheless use the ordinary historical method in their academic work, and the Catholic Church has encouraged historical study of Scripture, while teaching that faith in Scripture rests on more than historical argument.

Protestant Christians

Protestants hold Scripture as the supreme authority for faith and many accept the historical method as a useful servant. Some conservative Protestant scholars argue that the New Testament passes ordinary historical tests well. Others warn that faith should not be made to depend on the results of historical research.

Skeptical scholars

Some skeptical scholars argue that Christian sources are all written by believers for believers, and therefore cannot be treated as neutral witnesses. Christian scholars reply that this standard would eliminate most ancient history, since most ancient writers had a viewpoint, and that bias is a reason for care, not for dismissal.

Why it matters

A student who does not know how sources work will be at the mercy of whoever speaks most confidently, whether a popular apologist or a popular skeptic. The questions in this lesson protect against both. They also make the later lessons readable, because each claim about Jesus, the Gospels or the resurrection will be tested by these same questions.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. Which texts have you trusted without asking who wrote them and why?
2. Do you hold friendly and hostile sources to the same standard? Where might you be careless?
3. Think of a family story that has changed over the years. What does that suggest about oral reports?
4. What would count as evidence against a conclusion you now hold?

Independent assignment

Source profiles

In your own notebook, write about 400 words. Choose three texts: one Christian letter or Gospel passage, one Roman or Jewish source you know of, and one modern news report. For each, write a short profile answering who, when, for whom and why, and note whether it is primary or secondary. Then say which of the three you trust most for a specific question, and why. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Philosophy of History Read the opening sections on how historical knowledge is possible.
• Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration Read selectively on how manuscripts are compared and what variation means.
• F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? Read the opening chapters as one position on the sources, then compare it with more cautious views.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fallacies Use as a checklist for reasoning errors.
• Luke 1:1 Luke describes his use of earlier accounts and eyewitnesses.
• 1 John 1:1 A writer who claims direct contact with what he reports.