RPH

Authenticity

The quality of being genuine or original, opposed to being fake or fabricated.

Historians

Scholars who study and analyze historical sources to understand the past.

Forged

Documents that have been created or altered to deceive or mislead.

Hoaxes

False or deceptive documents or sources.

Detective

A historian needs to be like a spy or detective to distinguish hoaxes from authentic sources.

Material

The substance or physical composition of a document or source.

Anachronistically

Out of time or context, not fitting with the historical period or events.

Author

The person or entity responsible for creating or writing a document or source.

Handwriting

The style and characteristics of a person's writing, used to identify the author of a document.

Provenance

The origin or source of a document or source.

Semantics

The study of how signs and symbols relate to their meaning.

Hermeneutics

The science or art of interpretation, used to understand and clarify the meaning of a text.

Falsehood

A statement or information that is not true or accurate.

Intentional

Falsehoods that are deliberately created or spread.

Unintentional

Falsehoods that occur due to errors or mistakes, often in documents with missing originals.

Textual criticism

The discipline of analyzing and restoring texts based on available copies and evidence.

Epigraphers

Scholars who restore and edit texts found in gravestones, monuments, and buildings.

Paleographers

Experts who authenticate ancient documents and study their old handwriting.

Archaeologist

Researchers who excavate ancient sites and provide information about ancient civilizations through artifacts.

Numismatics

The study of coins.

Sphragistics

The study of seals.

Heraldry and genealogy

The study of family trees and lines of descent.

Bibliographers

Experts who gather and provide information about books and authors.

Lexicographers

Scholars who compile dictionaries.

Social scientists

Researchers who study human society and behavior.

Credibility

The quality of being believable or trustworthy.

Analysis

The process of examining and breaking down historical facts to understand their meaning.

Synthesis

The process of combining historical facts to form a theory or hypothesis.

Historical fact

A unit of information derived from a historical text, considered credible after careful testing.

Evidence

Facts or information that indicate the truth or validity of a belief or proposition.

True

The quality aspect of things or beings that corresponds to reality.

Truth

The conformity between the mind and the thing, the1. Biographical:Pertaining to the personal details of an individual's life.

Valid

Reasonable and cogent so as to follow established laws of deductive logic.

Geographical

Relating to the specific location or region.

Chronological

In order of time; pertaining to the sequence of events.

Occupational

Related to one's profession or job.

Terminus non ante quem

The point not before which an event could have occurred.

Terminus non post quem

The point not after which an event could have occurred.

Eyewitness

Someone who personally witnessed an event.

Personal Equation

Factors such as personality and social situation that affect the ability and willingness of a witness to give dependable testimony.

Hearsay

Information received from someone who was not present at the event.

Credibility

The quality of being believable or trustworthy.

Independent Corroboration

Additional evidence that supports or confirms a particular detail.

Observation

The act of seeing or perceiving something.

Recollection

The act of remembering or recalling something.

Recording

The act of documenting or writing down information.

Competence

The degree of expertness or ability in a particular area.

Degree of Attention

The level of focus and objectivity of a witness.

Leading Questions

Questions that suggest a particular answer or bias.

Circular Reasoning

A logical fallacy where the conclusion is based on the premise, and the premise is based on the conclusion.

Egocentrism

Excessive focus on oneself or one's own perspective.

Errors of Omission

Mistakes or inaccuracies due to lack of completeness or balance in observation, recollection, or narrative.

Willingness to tell the truth

The readiness or inclination of a witness to be honest and truthful.

Interested Witness

A witness who benefits from distorting the truth for personal gain or propaganda.

Frame of Reference

The conscious philosophy of life that influences a witness's perspective.

Literary Style

The manner in which an author writes, which may affect the credibility of anecdotes or stories.

Laws and Conventions

Legal or societal norms that may influence the omission of certain data in historical documents.

Expectation or Anticipation

Bias or lack of precision in observation or recall due to preconceived notions or hypotheses.1. Prejudicial:Likely to be truthful when it is prejudicial to the witness.

Common knowledge

Statements that are a matter of common knowledge, although not legally proven.

Credibility

Statements that are incidental and probable, indicating a high degree of credibility.

Hearsay

Secondary evidence used by historians when primary evidence is not present.

Secondary evidence

Evidence utilized by historians when primary evidence is not available.

Corroboration

Accepting as historical only those particulars that rest upon the independent testimony of two or more reliable witnesses.

Certitude vs Certainty

The difficulty in concluding something that will remain unchallenged, especially in more recent periods of study.

Historicity

The condition of human history and the understanding of human temporality.

Being and Time

Martin Heidegger's magnum opus that explores the hermeneutic of the Dasein.

Understanding

The power to grasp one's own possibilities for being within the context of the lifeworld in which one exists.

Demystification

The process of uncovering hidden meanings or destroying false realities.

Hans Georg Gadamer

A philosopher who argues that understanding is an historical act connected to the present.1. Objectivations:The interpretation of human experience that emphasizes the autonomy of the object of interpretation and the possibility of historical objectivity.

Autonomy

The independence or self-governance of the object of interpretation.

Historical objectivity

The ability to make valid interpretations of history by leaving behind the historian's own present standpoint.

Hermeneutics

The study of the methodological principles of interpretation and explanation, specifically in the context of understanding biblical texts.

Interpretation

The act of understanding and explaining the meaning of something.

Etymology

The study of the origin and history of words.

Hermeneuein

The Greek verb meaning "to interpret."

Hermeneia

The Greek noun meaning "interpretation."

Hermes

The wing-footed messenger-god in Greek mythology associated with bringing understanding to human intelligence.

Martin Heidegger

A philosopher who connects philosophy-as-hermeneutics with the role of Hermes in bringing messages and laying open understanding.

Three directions of hermeneuein

Expressing aloud in words, explaining a situation, and translating a foreign tongue.

Biblical exegesis

The theory of interpreting and explaining biblical texts.

Philological methodology

The general methodological approach to understanding language and texts.

Linguistic understanding

The science of understanding language in general.

Geisteswissenschaften

The German term for the human sciences, which hermeneutics serves as the methodological foundation for.

Phenomenology

The study of the structures of consciousness and the phenomena that appear in human experience.

Existential understanding

Understanding that is grounded in the lived experience of existence.

Interpretation systems

The methods used by humans to reach the meaning behind myths and symbols, which can be both recollective and iconoclastic.

German hermeneutical tradition

The tradition in Germany that revived the monadic character of the mind and explored the availability of the world to the mind and the mind to other minds.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

A theologian, preacher, and professor of philology who called for a general hermeneutics as the art of understanding.

Divination

The act of re-experiencing the mental processes of another person in order to understand them better.1. Understanding:The act of comprehending or grasping the meaning or intention of something.

Divinatory Method

A method of understanding where the reader tries to understand the intention of the author by putting oneself in place of the writer.

Wilhelm Dilthey

A philosopher who was concerned with establishing the epistemological foundation for the human sciences or Geisteswissenschaften.

Geisteswissenschaften

Sciences of understanding, as opposed to sciences of explanation like the natural sciences.

Nacherleben

The living out in understanding of some experience already lived by another.

Erlebnis

A unit of experience whose content is contained in its very occurrence.

Text

The work considered as an object of interpretation.

Interpretation

The act of understanding or assigning meaning to something.

Hermeneutics

The study of the understanding of the works of man, transcending linguistic forms of interpretation.

Object vs Work

The distinction between treating works as silent, natural objects (amenable to scientific methods of interpretation) and understanding them as works (calling for more subtle and comprehensive modes of understanding).

Scientific vs Hermeneutical

The contrast between scientific understanding and historical or hermeneutical understanding.

Fusion of Horizons

The aim of reading/interpreting is to arrive at a fusion of horizons, where different perspectives and understandings come together.