I posted this question on my Facebook wall yesterday, "If history has a combination of truths, lies, lack of information, religious and political manipulations, to whom are we going to believe then?" In addition, how much trust can we give to BBC, Discovery Chanel, National Geographic, Encarta, Encyclopedia Britannica, and the Holy Bible? What truths are we going to accept, and what lies are we going to reject? How can we know what are truths and lies in the first place?
You see, history is not a simple subject to be dealt with because it has a lot of complexity on it. History affects the way we understand the past, the present, and the future. Even the Europeans and Americans are divided on their belief if they come from Adam or old rotten apes.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said that the only thing we can learn from history is that no one learns anything from history. What can we learn from history then? Why does Hegel think that no one learns anything from history? How can we discriminate the truths and lies in historiographical records that are available for us to learn?
I have a copy of the April 1991 issue of National Geographic as an example. In one of their featured article entitled Ramses the Great, the editor has written, "Concerning the parting of the Red Sea, modern scholars suggest that Moses may have led his people through a swampy region of lakes east of Pi-Ramses. Perhaps strong winds blew aside shifting waters on one of these lakes. Then, when the pharaoh's charioteers were in hot pursuit, the winds could have turned, swamping the Egyptians." If you are a Christian who believes the Bible, you will in no doubt reject the assumptions of these "modern scholars" but how can you say that they are wrong and that you are right?
 |
| Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel |
We can not really learn from history if the truth was denied to us. For this reason, Lord Acton, a Victorian Englishman, insisted to maintain "morality as the sole impartial criterion of men and things." Historians are accountable for the anomalies they have created in narrating human phenomena.
One of my colleagues believes that the Virgin Mary had other sons and daughters, which I affirmed. But one of us asked if I was there to know if she did. With this, do we really need to be there on that side of history to know what happens? (Read this: "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." Mark 6:3,4).
Is it not that historians, academicians, philosophers, scholars, and social scientists should have the moral ascendancy to tell the truth and nothing but the truth for the sake of humanity? How come we believe in something while others believe in another? Faith then is needed for us to believe the truth about what really happened in the past. It takes great faith for us to believe in the existence of the unseen Supreme Being whom we call God. In the same manner, evolutionists and atheists need great faith to believe that everything came from a "Big Bang" though no one had seen and observed how energy resulted in a great expansion that has created millions of species by chance.
A Harvard philosopher, Georg Santayana, uttered that people who forget about the past are condemned to repeat it. Sometimes, an event could happen the same as it did in the past though not exactly the same in detail. World war happened twice and will possibly happen in the future. European colonization happened in different countries many times. Coup d'états, assassinations, cold wars, and ecclesiastical interventions are countless throughout history. Edward Gibbon, the great English historian of the Roman Empire, describes a historical record as containing "crimes, follies, and misfortune of mankind." Things will really repeat to happen again and again if we will forget and not learned from the past.
The 21st-century modern digital humans belong to three groups: those who know much, those who know little, and those who know nothing at all. Or, they belong to those who study well and those who don't care at all. It is up to you what or whom are you going to believe. Whether you believe the Holy Bible or the records of man is yours to choose.
Some have come up to believe the Textus Receptus and Masoretic Text over Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Rios and other Roman, Arabic, and Coptic codices because they believe the King James Bible to be the word of God. The records of the Authorized Version have passed from numerous textual criticisms but have stood throughout times. The great dilemma, however, is how to filter the things not written in the Bible. How about the so-called hidden records in the archives of the Vatican library, are they authentic? Why are they hidden from all the rest of mankind? As we go through reading and studying history, questions will continue to arise in front of us. The only hope that we can hold onto is that God is graceful enough to lead us into all truths while living in this evil and lying world.
