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Bishop Colenso and His Critics: The Strange Emergence of Biblical Criticism in Victorian Britain*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Timothy Larsen
Timothy Larsen
Affiliation:
Covenant College, Nettle Hill, Brinklow Road, Ansty, Coventry CV7 9JL, England, UK
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Extract

In October 1862, John William Colenso, bishop of Natal, published a book entitled The Pentateuch and book of Joshua critically examined. Although this volume proved to be only the first of seven parts, and the bishop's life was eventful in other ways, the controversy surrounding this volume did more than any other single factor to determine Colenso's enduring reputation. To his critics, the publication of such a book was an outrageous and heretical act. When the book was discussed in the Lower House of Convocation, C. E. Kennaway was convinced that it should be labelled ‘Poison!’ and Archdeacon Denison declared that ‘No book can ever be brought under our consideration of a worse character than this’ and that ‘if a man asserts such things as are in this book — anathema esto — let him be put away’. In the end, both houses of Convocation resolved that ‘the main propositions’ of the book ‘involve errors of the gravest and most dangerous character’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , November 1997 , pp. 433 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1997

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References

1 Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, 11 February 1863, 1041, 1049–50.

2 Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, 19 May 1863, 1180, 1184; Upper House, 20 May 1863, 1208.

3 Colenso, J. W., The Pentateuch and the book of Joshua critically examined, pt i (second edition), London 1862, pp. viii–ixGoogle Scholar. (The second edition replaced the First in less than a month. It contained only minor changes, all of which are listed in the front of part ii, for the benefit of those holding first editions.)

4 Letter to Theophilus Shepstone, 2 March 1863: Cox, C. W., Life of John William Colenso, vol. i, London 1888, 236.Google Scholar

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6 Professor Max Müller listed Colenso with Galileo and Darwin as a defender of truth. Cox allows his subject to bask in this light in which Müller had placed him as does, in recent years, Ferdinand Deist. Cox, Colenso, i, 215; Deist, Ferdinand, ‘John William Colenso: biblical scholar’, in Loader, J. A. and le Roux, J. H. (eds), Old Testament essays, vol. ii, Pretoria 1984, 129–130.Google Scholar

7 Hinchliff, Peter, Benjamin Jowett and the Christian religion, Oxford 1987, 54–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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14 Record, 13 October 1862, 2. A copy of the more unguarded version found its way into the hands of the Record which duly exploited the opportunity to the full. Cox, , Colenso, i, 195–196Google Scholar. Prothero, R. E., Life and correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, vol. ii, London 1893, 103.Google Scholar

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40 The first was by ‘An Unknown Pen’ [G. H. Mason] and the second by James G. Murphy. Jeff Guy, who does not cite a single item from the flood of such literature or even one of the numerous lengthy articles published in the religious press, is simply mistaken when he asserts: ‘There were few attempts to answer him [Colenso]’. Heretic, 137.

41 Letter to the Record from ‘Clavis’; 10 November 1862, 4.

42 John Rogerson, whose book also manages to deal with Colenso's critics almost entirely without citing their writings, claims that ‘Colenso's argument did not rest upon this figure alone [the 600, 000 adult males mentioned in Exodus xii], as some of his critics supposed’ and then goes on to list some of the other passages in the Pentateuch in which this number is either reiterated or implied. Coienso's critics, however, whatever other deficiencies they might have had, knew their Bibles. The ‘harmonisation hypothesis’ was incorporated into this speculative explanation from the very beginning, anticipating Rogerson's objection. Old Testament criticism in the nineteenth century: England and Germany, London 1984, 221.Google Scholar

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61 Letter to B. H. Hodgson, 6 December 1862; Letter to Charles Darwin, 16 February 1864: Huxley, Leonard, Life and letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, vol. ii, London 1918, 57–59.Google Scholar

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77 Rogerson purports to list the four main lines of approach taken by Colenso's critics, but this crucial response is not one of them. Moreover, his third point — an assumption that Colenso's alleged difficulties were overcome by special miracles — is hardly representative (no references are given). Old Testament criticism, 233–4.

78 Letter to Bishop Tait, 19 November 1862: Davidson, , Tait, i, 338.Google Scholar