Periodosering

I The Idea pf History skriver R. G. Collingwood att kristen historieskrivning kännetecknas av periodisering:

Any history written on Christian principles will be of necessity universal, providential, apocalyptic, and periodized.
... it will attach a central importance in this pattern to the historical life of Christ ... It will make its narrative crystallize itself round that event, and treat earlier events as leading up to it or preparing for it, and subsequent events as developing its consequences. It will therefore divide history at the birth of Christ into two parts, each having a peculiar and unique character ...
Having divided the past into two, it will then naturally tend to subdivide it again: and thus to distinguish other events, not so important as the birth of Christ but important in their way, which make everything after them different in quality from what went before. Thus history is divided into epochs or periods, each with peculiar characteristics of its own, and each marked off from the one before it by an event which in the technical language of this kind of historiography is called epoch-making.

Före Collingwood betonade Benedetto Croce i Teoria e storia della storiografia periodiseringens centrala roll i kristendomen:

I pensatori cristiani dividevano la storia in istoria precedente e seguente alla Redenzione; e questo periodizzamento non era un’appendice al pensiero cristiano, ma era il pensiero cristiano.

Den engelska översättningen lyder:

Christian thinkers divided history into that which preceded and that which followed the redemption, and this periodization was not an addition to Christian thought, but Christian thought itself.

Startsida

http://www.wadenstrom.net/histfil