The History of the Jehovah's Witnesses: An Appraisal of Recent Scholarship

Zoe Knox's analysis of the English‐language historiography of the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society was published in this journal in 2011. It assessed four types of historical writing on the organisation: the Watch Tower Society's own publications; material produced by two categories of detractors, namely ex‐Witnesses and Christians writing from other denominational perspectives; and academic studies. There are vast quantities of all but the last of these. Her article thus concluded with a call for scholars to take this religious community more seriously as an historical subject, echoing an appeal made by Rodney Stark and Laurence Iannaccone to social scientists in 1997. This review essay is intended to supplement Knox's historiographical analysis by appraising recent publications on the history of the Jehovah's Witnesses. As we shall see, although scholarship on this topic remains sparse, particularly given the organisation's visibility, since 2011 several important books have appeared alongside others which make contributions to the limited sum of our knowledge of the origins and emergence of the organisation and the way it has operated in different historical contexts. In short, the field requires reappraisal in light of these publications.     

Writing Gender into History and History in Gender: Creating A Nation and Australian Historiography

This paper reflects on the impact of gender in the writing of history by considering the reception of Creating A Nation, the first gendered history of Australia. It argues that while there has emerged an impressive volume of feminist history and with it has come an important acceptance of women's historical experience, the reception of ‘gender’ within the historical profession has paradoxically been ambivalent and ambiguous. This is the case because of an unease about feminist theory and its relevance to history. There also remains a prevailing belief that a gendered neutral historical place exists, to which historians can retreat.     

The Fate of Jewish Historiography after the Bible: A New Interpretation

What caused the eventual decline in later Jewish history of the vibrant historiographical tradition of the biblical period? In contrast to the plethora of historical writings composed during the biblical period, the rabbis of the early common era apparently were not interested in writing history, and when they did relate to historical events they often introduced mythical and unrealistic elements into their writings. Scholars have offered various explanations for this phenomenon; a central goal of this article is to locate these explanations within both the immediate historical setting of Roman Palestine and the overarching cultural atmosphere of the Greco‐Roman Near East. In particular, I suggest that the largely ahistorical approach of the rabbis functioned as a local Jewish counterpart to the widespread classicizing tendencies of a contemporary Greek intellectual movement, the Second Sophistic. In both cases, eastern communities, whose political aspirations were stifled under Roman rule, sought to express their cognitive and spiritual identities by focusing on a glorious and idealized past rather than on contemporary history. Interestingly, the apparent lack of rabbinic interest in historiography is not limited to the early rabbinic period. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, Jews essentially did not write their political, diplomatic, or military history. Instead, Jews composed “traditional historiography” which included various types of literary genres among which the rabbinic “chain of transmission” was the most important. The chain of transmission reconstructs (or fabricates) the links that connect later rabbinic sages with their predecessors. Robert Bonfil has noted the similarity between this rabbinic project and contemporary church histories. Adding a diachronic dimension to Bonfil's comparison, I suggest that rabbinic chains of transmission and church histories are not similar though entirely independent phenomena, but rather their shared project actually derives from a common origin, the Hellenistic succession list. The succession list literary genre, which sketches the history of an intellectual discipline, apparently thrived during the Second Sophistic and diffused then into both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. Thus, even though historiography was not terribly important to the early rabbis or to most Second Sophistic intellectuals, the succession list schematic, or the history of an intellectual discipline, was evaluated differently. Rabbis and early Christians absorbed the succession list from Second Sophistic culture and then continued to employ this historiographical genre for many centuries to come.     

两极之间的新史学：关于史学研究会的学术史考察

以吴晗等为首的史学研究会曾一度活跃于20世纪30年代的中国史坛,在本土史学由传统向现代转型的历程中扮演了一个积极角色。它将社会经济史设定为研究重心,尤其注意从社会、经济方面解析历史现象和历史问题;它奉行民间本位的治史立场,关注基层社会和普通人物的历史境况,并采取通俗化的表述策略;它遵循实证与诠释并重的致知取向,兼顾史料与史观;它主张从社会学、经济学、统计学等学科借取理论和方法阐释中国历史,使史学研究手段得到大幅度更新。其新史学应属于比“马克思主义史学”指涉更广的唯物史观派史学;它的出现,标志着唯物史观派日益走向成熟。     

论史学理论与史学史之间的关系

史学理论与史学史在学科结构中属于同一个二级专业,这其中反映了二者具有紧密的内在联系。探索史学理论与史学史的关系,首先应当跨过一个理念的门坎,即区分“历史理论”与“史学理论”。确认史学理论是对历史学的概括和总结,而不是研究客观的社会历史。厘清这种概念上的区别与联系,大有利于史学理论与历史理论的研究。如20世纪80年代中历史认识论研究的兴起,即得益于此。这里,需要防止像西方某些史学流派那样割断史学理论与历史理论的关系,批判那种取消历史理论研究的说法。在当今,史学史研究的可靠成果,应是史学理论研究的基础。揭示史学发展的规律,是史学史学科与史学理论研究共同的任务,将二者结合在一起的探索,大有学术开拓、理论创新的广阔前景。     

口述史学的特征与中共党史的研究

口述史学是搜集、保存和传播口述史料 ,以口述历史为研究对象的一门历史学分支学科。口述史学具有主体性、综合性、社会性、民主性的特征 ,开创了历史研究的一种新模式 ,对于拓展历史研究的领域、增强历史研究成果的真实性和可读性、减轻历史研究的学院气息功不可没。援引口述史方法研究中共历史对党史学科自身发展具有重要作用 ,迄今为止的中共历史研究和关涉中共历史的研究中 ,业已有了不少口述历史成果 ,但要做和可做的工作还有很多。     

History, Memory, and the Law: The Historian as Expert Witness

There has been a widespread recovery of public memory of the events of the Second World War since the end of the 1980s, with war crimes trials, restitution actions, monuments and memorials to the victims of Nazism appearing in many countries. This has inevitably involved historians being called upon to act as expert witnesses in legal actions, yet there has been little discussion of the problems that this poses for them. The French historian Henry Rousso has argued that this confuses memory with history. In the aftermath of the Second World War, judicial investigations unearthed a mass of historical documentation. Historians used this, and further researches, from the 1960s onwards to develop their own ideas and interpretations. But since the early 1990s there has been a judicialization of history, in which historians and their work have been forced into the service of moral and legal forms of judgment which are alien to the historical enterprise and do violence to the subleties and nuances of the historian's search for truth. This reflects Rousso's perhaps rather simplistically scientistic view of the historian's enterprise; yet his arguments are powerful and should be taken seriously by any historian considering involvement in a law case; they also have a wider implication for the moralization of the history of the Second World War, which is now dominated by categories such as "perpetrator,""victim," and "bystander" that are legal rather than historical in origin. The article concludes by suggesting that while historians who testify in war crimes trials should confine themselves to elucidating the historical context, and not become involved in judging whether an individual was guilty or otherwise of a crime, it remains legitimate to offer expert opinion, as the author of the article has done, in a legal action that turns on the research and writing of history itself.     

The History and Historiography of American Diplomacy: Principles, Traditions and Values

The Council on Foreign Relations in New York is known throughout the world both as a leading centre for the study of international affairs and as having an influential voice in current debates on the future global role of the United States. Since the First World War the Council has promoted these goals through organizing working groups, sponsoring specialized monographs, and publishing a number of journals and yearbooks. The Council has now sponsored the publication of a multivolume encyclopaedic dictionary of American foreign relations. Michael Dunne's review of these four volumes concentrates on the broad themes which run through the many hundreds of essays, and asks whether the study of the American diplomatic past can help us to understand the special features of the course and conduct of US foreign relations.     

The Study of Chinese Historiography from the Perspective of Intellectual History

To promote historical research today, one needs to create a vigorous environment for historiographic criticism, to summarize the progress and state of all fields and topics of history, and to enhance the study of historiography. All these three aspects, which share similar characteristics, can be called “historiography.” Their essence is the basic method for deepening the study of historiography as a whole and refining its branches from the perspective of intellectual history. They can help us to form a healthy scholarly mechanism to review historical achievements, which would be crucial to the development of academic research. Translated from Nankai Journal (Philosophy, Literature and Social Science Edition), No. 2, 2004     

The British and Foreign Bible Society in Port Said and the Suez Canal

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson visited the Hawaiian Islands from January–June 1889, in the middle of one of the most turbulent periods in its history. While staying on the islands he became associated with King Kalakaua's royalist faction, which was then involved in a struggle for power against the Reform Party, whose members were responsible for leading Hawai‘i first to republican rule (1893) and then to American takeover in 1898. This article examines Stevenson's encounter with the Reverend Sereno Bishop, author of a pamphlet enquiring into the causes of indigenous depopulation, within the context of significant social and political change on the islands. While evidencing the growing politicisation of Stevenson's later years, his experience also bears witness to the development of Americanism in the Reform Party, who prepared the way for annexation by aligning themselves ideologically with sympathetic elements in the United States.     

史学期刊与中国史学的现代转型——以20世纪二三十年代为例

学术的现代转型是传统社会向现代社会过渡的重要环节,而中国传统学术与现代学术的真正对叠则迟至20世纪二三十年代。在学术从传统向现代迈进的艰难历程中,这一时期的史学期刊则对中国学术的重镇——史学的现代转型起到了举足轻重的作用。具体表现在：西方史学乃至西方学术的动向得以大量绍介;史学期刊某种程度上还梳理了民国史学的学理,推动了中国史学走上综合融创之路;同时史学期刊为培养新型专业史学研究队伍、提供专业研究的“公共空间”(public sphere)以及史学研究本土化的尝试等。     

再析金毓黻《中国史学史》撰写中的影响因素

金毓黻的<中国史学史>在撰写过程中受到了梁启超和朱希祖的影响,但金毓黻并非只是简单地采纳、承袭他们的观点;而梁、朱二人对金氏<中国史学史>撰写中的影响因素,也从另一个方面反映了金毓黻史学思想的某些进程.     

论历史学的起源和早期历史记载的方式

本文认为历史学基本形成的标志是编年史一类史书及编写相关条件的出现.作这一说明是为追寻比它更原始的形态确立一个标准.本文的重心是提出和阐述纯粹的口编口传史是历史学的最初萌芽形态即源头,并以九个典型实例与几点分析加以论证和推理.简论在口编口传史初步发展后早期历史学记载方式的发展序列,包括对口编口传史起帮助记忆、传承作用的结绳、图画、刻记;对萌芽形态既有发展又发生质的流变的传说、史诗;应用文字写成的历史学雏形：年代记、大事记等,直到编年史的出现.本文是为把史学史向源头推进而寻找方向和排出序列的一个尝试.