When you pick up a sacred text in translation, an article written by a religious studies scholar, or a museum placard describing a religious artifact, what type of source are you holding? This matters because different types of sources do different work. We need both primary and secondary sources in religious studies. You will need to know how to differentiate them so that you don’t mistake a secondary source for a primary source or expect a primary source to do all the interpretive work for you.
Consider these three pieces of information about a single religious holiday: a hymn that is sung during the holiday, a picture showing people celebrating the holiday, and an academic monograph recently published about the holiday. Who wrote or made each piece of information? When was it created? For whom was it originally created? What questions would this information help you answer? Some of this information might count as primary sources if the hymn and photo were made by the religious community or people living in the time period we want to study. Other pieces of information might be considered secondary sources because they are interpreting evidence, such as the hymn or photo, and are placing the holiday in a broader historical or sociological context.
A primary source gives us direct evidence about the people, institutions, ideas, or time periods we are studying. A primary source might be a sacred text, a spoken or sung tradition, a sermon, a legal decision, a diary, a ritual artifact, a government statement, an architectural space, a photograph, or a video interview. Primary sources are not necessarily objective, “original,” or trustworthy. A primary source simply means that we are studying the source itself. For example, a primary source produced by an institution may include only the official version of a doctrine, even though there might have been dissenting voices within the institution, regional variations in how the doctrine was understood, or different ways that the doctrine was lived out.
Secondary sources comment on, contrast, clarify, or interpret primary sources. Many scholarly monographs, journal articles, reliable encyclopedias, and well-researched history books are secondary sources. They might help you learn a term that you do not understand, clarify whether we know who wrote a particular work, explain differences among various translations, and situate a religious tradition in relation to broader social or political developments. Moreover, a good secondary source will tell you where your primary sources can be found, so you can look at the primary sources yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Sometimes the same material can be treated as either a primary or secondary source. A history book published in the 19th century about an ancient religion is a secondary source. But when we study 19th-century attitudes toward that religion, we treat that same 19th-century book as a primary source. It is a mistake to apply labels too rigidly, without asking what question you are asking. We must ask ourselves: What are we studying? Which time period matters? How does this item relate to our question?
Beginners might put too much faith in a quote because it seems to be taken directly from scripture or another authoritative source. But any excerpt needs to be read in context. Look at what genre the text belongs to, what other parts of the work surround the quote, which translation you are using, the context for whom the original text was written, and how that text has been interpreted in various religious groups or movements. Then, see if there is an appropriate secondary source that might help you understand this text better. This does not devalue the primary source; rather, it shows how texts gain their meanings through interpretations and commentaries over time and how historical contexts shape interpretations.
You will likely consult both primary and secondary sources in good research. For example, a secondary source might introduce you to a new religious ritual or text that you were not previously aware of, but then you can consult the primary source to see whether the secondary source’s claims match what the primary source says. Pay attention to which perspective is informing the argument as you read: Are you reading the words of a practitioner, an institution, a translator, a historian, or a later commentator? This subtle difference can make a huge difference in what a case study means.
