How to Read Primary Sources

When you read a textbook, you are reading a book written for you, or at least for some hypothetical version of yourself. Authors and publishers have tested the book in college classroom situations. They have run the text through computer programs which have identified all vocabulary not readily accessible to high school seniors--the authors have had to justify their use of any words that might pose difficulties. The result, although sometimes bland and unchallenging, should be a text that you can read without undue difficulty.

But when you read "primary sources" out of a sourcebook or as documents downloaded from the web, the situation is very different. They are not written for you. If, for example, you are reading the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 2700 BCE), you are reading a law code written for citizens of a Babylonian Empire who lived about 4700 years ago. If you are reading Pericles' funeral oration for the Athenians who died in the first year of the Peloponnesian War (430 BCE), as conveyed by Thucydides who was writing a generation later, then you are dealing with a text written for a literate Greek audience who lived about 2400 years ago. Authors write for audiences. Documents result from a process of interaction between writers and readers, and to some extent reflect not only their common culture but also their desires, goals, and expectations. When you are reading sources written in past eras, you are out of this loop. Therefore you will find these sources difficult.

How do you proceed? Begin by recognizing the difficulties. Even when people talk to us face to face, we cannot always understand their messages and motives. When they speak to us in writing, their expression may be more refined and deliberate, but they have added an additional layer of insulation between us and them. When people of past ages speak in writing to their long dead contemporaries, the problems of interpretation we face in trying to understand them become immeasurably greater. Thus you cannot read historical documents with the same facility and familiarity as you can a textbook, a newspaper, or anything else written for you. Instead you have to try to put yourself into an alien textual community. To do this requires analysis on several levels:

1) Historical Circumstances. Read the document, and any introductory material, so that you understand the basic circumstances of its composition. This means being able to answer the standard repertorial questions: Who? What? When? Where? You cannot begin to enter into the world of the document until you have some idea of what that world was. The "what" of a document is particularly important, because the "truth" conveyed by written documents may depend on the laws of the genres in which they are written. Is the document a hymn, a law code, a history, a panegyric, a work of literary fiction, an attempt at literal scientific description, etc.? The kinds of information that can be extracted from a document depend to a considerable extent on what the author and audience expected of that document.

2) Purpose. Once you can put a document into a context, you need to determine why it came to exist there. Why was it written? What was the goal of the author? What does he or she hope will be achieved by this writing? Is the author honest? (And are we reasonably sure that the text is what it purports to be, not a later forgery?) It is important to recognize that the document you are reading probably did not exist in a void: there may have been earlier documents which it is rejecting, revising, improving, or even plagiarizing. When authors refer positively or negatively to prior works, this often helps clarify what they themselves are trying to achieve.

3) "Big Picture"Analysis. What is so important about this particular document? Past human events have left behind museums full of artifacts and libraries full of texts. So why did a teacher or editor ask you to look at this particular object or document? What are the "distinctives" that separate it from others in its class and make it special? What does it reveal about the "big picture" of the development of human society and culture? What does it say specifically to you? Does it have any points of tangency with problems humans still face today?

This kind of analysis is not easy. You may have to read a document two or three times to make a start. In order to get a handle on a document, you may have to turn it into your own personal text by highlighting topic sentences, as well as details that you find informative, interesting, or wierd. Fortunately, when you read historical documents you usually are not alone. Earlier readers may have already made considerable progress with the kinds of analysis suggested above: such readers may include editors, translators, writers of prologues, and historical researchers who delight in informative footnotes. Utilize their insights and information. But recognize that their comments may be based on no more evidence than the document that you yourself have in front of you. You, as a later reader who is working in yet another historical context, may be able to see some "big picture" implications that your predecessors did not. And you are the ultimate expert in determining the document's points of tangency with your personal universe.

Reading primary sources is hard work. But it can be rewarding mental exercise. And it can reveal to you the laborious process that created and continually revises the smooth historical narratives you find in textbooks.