Writing diability history: Problems, perspectives and sources

[...]in the society that generated the book of Leviticus (which should never be equated with the variety of social perspectives that generated Old Testament in its entirety), the existence of deformity was addressed in terms of its fitness for ritual practice. [...]even the best histories warrant a style of critical reading that is not necessarily well developed among scholars whose first interest is not history. Vernacular Primary Sources Primary sources that reflect the vernacular perspective may, as noted above, vary much more widely in the forms that they take than is characteristic of institutional sources. Because of their diversity, and because they often address disability or impairment in passing, their recognition, as well as their interpretation may demand a substantial level of knowledge about the social context from which they have emerged. [...]the restricted scale and precisely identified location in time and place of microhistory can serve as a foil for the over-generalisation and anachronism that has pervaded so much of disability history to date.