Primary sources are documents, images or artifacts that provide firsthand testimony or direct evidence concerning an historical topic under research investigation. Primary sources are original documents created or experienced contemporaneously with the event being researched.

Primary sources can include visual sources such as historical artifacts, photographs, or art work produced during the period you are studying.

What is a Primary Source. Primary sources include documents or artifacts created by a witness to or participant in an event. Primary sources may include diaries, letters, interviews, oral histories, photographs, newspaper articles, government documents, poems, novels, plays, and music.

Primary sources are original materials, regardless of format. Letters, diaries, minutes, photographs, artifacts, interviews, and sound or video recordings are examples of primary sources created as a time or event is occurring.

This method based its teaching on four sources as the basis of theological and doctrinal development. These four sources are scripture, tradition, reason, and Christian experience.

According to both Jewish and Christian Dogma, the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (the first five books of the Bible and the entirety of the Torah) were all written by Moses in about 1,300 B.C. There are a few issues with this, however, such as the lack of evidence that Moses ever existed ……

Yeshua

The meaning of “Torah” is often restricted to signify the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), also called the Law (or the Pentateuch, in Christianity). These are the books traditionally ascribed to Moses, the recipient of the original revelation from God on Mount Sinai….

Moses

Hebrew Scriptures

The Christian Bible has two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is the original Hebrew Bible, the sacred scriptures of the Jewish faith, written at different times between about 1200 and 165 BC. The New Testament books were written by Christians in the first century AD….

Primary sources can include: Texts of laws and other original documents. Newspaper reports, by reporters who witnessed an event or who quote people who did. Speeches, diaries, letters and interviews – what the people involved said or wrote.

Primary sources can be described as those sources that are closest to the origin of the information. They contain raw information and thus, must be interpreted by researchers. Secondary sources are closely related to primary sources and often interpret them.

Data from an experiment is a primary source. Secondary sources are one step removed from that. Tertiary sources summarize or synthesize the research in secondary sources. For example, textbooks and reference books are tertiary sources.

Words to look for as clues include: analysis, study, investigation, examination, experiment, numbers of people or objects analyzed, content analysis, or surveys. To contrast, the following are not primary research articles (i.e., they are secondary sources): Literature reviews.

Components of a Primary Research Study

1. When you do a search in the database, find a promising article in your results list and then look at the record for that item (usually by clicking on the title).
2. Although the abstract often tells the story, you will need to actually look at (and read) the article to know for sure.