---
name: jaar-sources-and-evidence
description: Use when handling the evidence base of a Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR) article — primary texts, traditions, historical documents, material/visual sources, or ethnographic fieldwork. Plans rigorous, transparent source work for humanities scholarship in the study of religion; it does not run statistics.
---

# Sources & Evidence (jaar-sources-and-evidence)

Religious-studies scholarship rests on **primary materials**: scriptures and commentaries, ritual and
liturgical texts, historical archives, material and visual culture, or fieldwork. JAAR judges whether
your handling of these sources is careful, well-situated, and adequate to the claim. This is humanities
evidence — no datasets or replication, but rigor still governs.

## When to trigger

- Selecting and justifying the primary sources the argument rests on
- A reviewer questioned your translation, dating, provenance, or representativeness
- Integrating fieldwork/interviews into a humanities argument
- Deciding what is primary vs. secondary and how much to quote

## Source-work standards JAAR expects

1. **Cite from primary sources.** Ground claims in the texts/traditions/objects themselves, not only in
   others' summaries; secondary literature situates, primary evidence proves.
2. **Languages and translation.** Work from originals where the argument depends on wording; state which
   edition/translation you use and why; flag contested terms (and consider transliteration conventions).
3. **Provenance, dating, and context.** Establish what a source is, when/where it comes from, and its
   genre — a claim is only as strong as the source's status supports.
4. **Representativeness and selection.** Be explicit about why these sources/cases; do not generalize a
   tradition from one atypical text without saying so.
5. **Fieldwork/ethnography.** Describe access, consent, and positionality; protect interlocutors;
   represent them fairly (this connects to `jaar-theory-and-method` reflexivity).
6. **Disconfirming evidence.** Engage sources that cut against the thesis rather than omitting them.

## Quoting and apparatus

- Quote enough to let the reader see the evidence, not so much that the essay becomes a source-reader.
- Translations: provide the original where the argument turns on it; note translator.
- Images/material culture: secure permissions if reproduced; describe what the reader cannot see.

## Anti-patterns

- Building a claim only on secondary summaries of primary texts
- Cherry-picking passages and ignoring counter-evidence in the same corpus
- Generalizing a whole tradition from one unrepresentative source
- Silent reliance on a translation when the argument depends on the original wording
- Ethnographic claims with no account of access, consent, or positionality

## Output format

```
【Primary sources】what they are + why these
【Languages/editions】originals vs translations; contested terms flagged
【Provenance/context】dating, genre, status established?
【Selection/representativeness】justified? atypical cases flagged?
【Fieldwork (if any)】access, consent, positionality handled?
【Counter-evidence】engaged, not omitted?
【Next】jaar-theory-and-method
```

## Evidence-type rigor matrix

JAAR articles run on radically different evidence — a Sanskrit manuscript, a colonial archive, a temple
relief, a set of interviews — and a referee for the AAR/Oxford University Press flagship will judge each
by its own craft standard. Identify your dominant evidence type and meet the column that governs it.

| Evidence type | What a JAAR referee scrutinizes | Easy disqualifier |
|---------------|--------------------------------|-------------------|
| Scriptural / commentarial text | Edition, recension, language of access | Translation quoted where wording carries the claim |
| Historical archive | Provenance, dating, the document's genre and bias | A polemical source read as neutral report |
| Material / visual culture | Object description, context of use, permissions | Iconographic claims with no image |
| Ethnographic fieldwork | Access, consent, positionality, fair representation | Generalizing from a few interlocutors |
| Comparative corpus | Why these cases; commensurability | Cherry-picked exemplars that flatter the thesis |

## Worked vignette: an over-reaching textual claim, right-sized

An author argues that "Sufi poetry rejects legalism," quoting Rumi in a popular translation. A JAAR
reader will resist on source grounds:

- **Cite from the primary source.** The claim turns on wording, so the author moves to the Persian,
  names the edition, and notes where the popular translation smooths a key term.
- **Representativeness.** One poet's verses cannot stand for "Sufi poetry"; the author narrows the
  claim to the corpus actually examined, or flags the case as illustrative.
- **Disconfirming evidence.** The author engages Sufi texts that uphold *sharī'a* rather than omitting
  them, converting an over-claim into a defensible, bounded reading (with apparatus discipline that
  dovetails with `jaar-citation-and-style`).

## Source-handling pushback → the fix

- "You read translations as if they were the text" → supply the original; note edition and translator.
- "One case, whole-tradition claim" → narrow the claim or justify the selection.
- "Where is the consent / positionality account?" → add all three.

Hedged calibration: as a humanities venue JAAR has no datasets, statistics, or replication archive —
rigor is sourcing rigor, not reproducibility. Specific permissions practice for reproduced images and
any data-availability language for fieldwork-based work should be confirmed against the journal's
current submission guidelines, which can change with publisher policy.

## Supplementary resources

- [`../../resources/external_tools.md`](../../resources/external_tools.md) — primary-source databases and tools for the study of religion
- [`../../resources/official-source-map.md`](../../resources/official-source-map.md) — JAAR scope across traditions and methods