# History



## WrittenFromUtopia (Jan 17, 2006)

What is "History"?


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## Arch2k (Jan 17, 2006)

*Noah Webster*

History
HIS'TORY, n. [L. historia; Gr. knowing, learned, and to inquire, to explore, to learn by inspection or inquiry.]

1. An account of facts, particularly of facts respecting nations or states; a narration of events in the order in which they happened,with their causes and effects. History differs from annals. Annals relate simply the facts and events of each year, in strict chronological order, without any observations of the annalist. History regards less strictly the arrangement of events under each year, and admits the observations of the writer. This distinction however is not always regarded with strictness.

History is of different kinds, or treats of different subjects; as a history of government or political history; history of the christian church, or ecclesiastical history; history of war and conquests, or military history; history of law; history of commerce; history of the crusades, &c. In these and similar examples, history is written narrative or relation. What is the history of nations, but a narrative of the follies, crimes and miseries of man?

1. Narration; verbal relation of facts or events; story. We listen with pleasure to the soldier or the seaman, giving a history of his adventures.

What histories of toil could I declare?

2. Knowledge of facts and events.

History--is necessary to divines.

3. Description; an account of things that exist; as natural history, which comprehends a description of the works of nature, particularly of animals, plants and minerals; a history of animals, or zoology; a history of plants.

4. An account of the origin, life and actions of an individual person. We say, we have a concise history of the prisoner in the testimony offered to the court.

A formal written account of an individual's life, is called biography.


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## WrittenFromUtopia (Jan 17, 2006)

> _Originally posted by Jeff_Bartel_
> 1. An account of facts, particularly of facts respecting nations or states; a narration of events in the order in which they happened,with their causes and effects.



This is the 'definition' of 'history' that I'd like to focus most on. I think it is erroneous. But, I'll let others pipe in first....


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## RamistThomist (Jan 17, 2006)

the intepretation of past facts within a specific worldview (more along the lines of the discipline of history).


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## WrittenFromUtopia (Jan 17, 2006)

> _Originally posted by Draught Horse_
> the intepretation of past facts within a specific worldview (more along the lines of the discipline of history).



For clarification's sake, I am indeed referring to the discipline of history, as you have put it.

Can you define what you mean by "past facts" in this comment?


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## RamistThomist (Jan 17, 2006)

> _Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia_
> 
> 
> > _Originally posted by Draught Horse_
> ...



I was tempted to define the term by using the term. When I get my resources back, maybe tonight, I will try again.


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## Puritanhead (Jan 18, 2006)

The skeptics' views...



> All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just lies that have been agreed upon.
> --Voltaire, _Jeannot et Colin_


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## BobVigneault (Jan 18, 2006)

History should be a systematic and critical account of past events that teach and inform, that edify and persuade God´s people to worship the Jesus of scripture (who did indeed suffer under Pontias Polite in history) and bow before the Sovereign God of history.


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## SolaScriptura (Jan 18, 2006)

History is whatever the dominant group says it is.


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## Puritanhead (Jan 18, 2006)

The conspiracy theorist's view...



> "He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past."
> -George Orwell





> "There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Group has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, of any other groups, and frequently does so.
> 
> I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments.
> 
> ...


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## Puritanhead (Jan 18, 2006)

> _Originally posted by SolaScriptura_
> History is whatever the dominant group says it is.



History is a post-1865, on-going intellectual broadside against the south and southern people.



> "Surrender means that the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit subjects for derision."
> --General Pat Cleburne, CSA


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## Plimoth Thom (Jan 18, 2006)

From one of my textbooks in college:

"All history is narrative, all narrative is history."


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## bradofshaw (Jan 18, 2006)

I'll give a defenition a try, since I would like to teach it some day.


A record of the events of space, time, and being, a chronological study of the existence of the world. The scope of history should include all things that are: their actions, interactions, causes, effects, purposes and reasons. Thus, history is not simply a listing of people, places, dates and occurences, but it also involves the study of thoughts, ideas, and movements and their consequences in real time. 

Necessarily then for the Christian, History cannot be anything other than the story of God and His creation, His interaction with it, and His purposes throughout it. Revelation, records, and artifacts are all means by which we can reconstruct the past.

For the modern thinker, history can at best be reconstructed from the artifacts and evidences that are objectively observable, but questions of teliology are suspect, as they are beyond the scope of observation. Revelation is considered destructive of the ability of the objective observer to trust the reliability of cause and effect and is thus not considered reliable.

For the post-modern thinker who has done away with concrete space, time, purposes, etc., History can be nothing more than the present consciousness (or at best the present collective consciousness/culture) recreating events that may or may not have happened in the past according to his subjective reasoning. Any previously recorded history is suspect as simply being the product of the previous consciousness' subjective opinion (assuming one existed)


I like to oversimplify big things


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## Anton Bruckner (Jan 18, 2006)

History= What truly was.


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## WrittenFromUtopia (Jan 18, 2006)

Can you define "truly"?


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## Anton Bruckner (Jan 18, 2006)

> _Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia_
> Can you define "truly"?


Keon =that which is ordained by God.
R.C Sproul= Reality as perceived by God.

take your pick 

[Edited on 1-18-2006 by Slippery]


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## Ivan (Jan 18, 2006)

Dare I say it?... history is HIS(s)tory. 

I know...simplistic.


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## RamistThomist (Jan 18, 2006)

More specifically, back to the discipline of history. History is also theological. I will start a thread on that one.


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## Saiph (Jan 18, 2006)

History is God's fiction.


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## Anton Bruckner (Jan 18, 2006)

> _Originally posted by Saiph_
> History is God's fiction.


not if you are an arminian.


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## Puritanhead (Jan 18, 2006)

> _Originally posted by Slippery_
> 
> 
> > _Originally posted by WrittenFromUtopia_
> ...



Just no one say that history is God or it is becoming God... I'm not in the mood for Hegelian non-sense at the moment.


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## Puritanhead (Jan 18, 2006)

*God's view of history:*


> I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
> -Revelation 21:6
> 
> But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
> -2 Peter 3:8


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