Historical Hermeneutics: Insughts From Classical and Modrn Non-Christian Approaches to History and Their Impact on Christian Historiogrphy

This article surveys foundational approaches at the core of historical writing. It provides helpful insights regarding various methods historians use for producing their research. It is worth noting that classical historians such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus emphasized a cyclical view of history. They wrote history to record Greek influence on history. Scientific Enlightenment thinkers rejected earlier accounts by classical as well as Christian historians who connected history to the realm of the supernatural. Voltaire rejected a metaphysical view of history. This secular approach to history denied the supernatural in the study of history. Ranke set a lasting precedent within historiography. He claimed to investigate the facts “as actually they happened.” From antiquity, it is possible to see two very basic approaches to history. Each emphasized the importance of writing down history for the sake of posterity. Ancient classical approaches viewed the gods as capricious or random. Humans were generally left to their own devising. Jews and Christians, in contrast, emphasized God’s direct involvement in history. They saw God as a loving God working out His ways to reveal a plan of redemption. Both Jews and Christians shared a worldview that recognized the supernatural, which was very much a part of their everyday life and worldview. These earliest methods in historical research have informed historians in how to approach history as a complex discipline. For example the views of Voltaire, Gibbon, Ranke, and Acton, and even of the French historians of the twentieth century would remain significant in shaping historical writings in general. All these historians, had, in one way or another, influenced Christian historians of late nineteenth century and twentieth century. These Christian historians sought a scrupulous examination of sources although they did not reject the possibility of God’s hand in influencing historical events. They provided thus plausible arguments against secular and postmodern views of the past.