Abstract
By the early years of the nineteenth century, the threat of deism was eroding in the United States.1 During the eighteenth century, the Bible’s apologists used historical and empirical evidence to place Holy Writ firmly on safe and high ground, far out of reach of the arrows of the skeptics. However, at the beginning of the next century, the conservative defenders of the Bible were blindsided by a new threat. This threat was driven not from hostile skeptics but from European Christian scholars who meticulously examined the biblical text with increasingly rigorous historical scrutiny, often based on a naturalistic epistemology.
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Notes
Herbert M. Morais, G. Adolf Koch, and Kerry S. Walters all note that deism was no longer a prominent threat by the early nineteenth century. Herbert M. Morais, Deism in Eighteenth Century America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), 24; G. Adolf Koch, Religion of the American Enlightenment (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968), 239–84. Kerry S. Walters, Rational Infidels (Durango, CO: Longwood Academic, 1992), xiv; Walters, The American Deists: Voices of Reason and Dissent in the Early Republic (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), 34, 36.
It should be noted that at this point, Unitarians were theologically still close to their Congregationalist Trinitarian counterparts. Though they denied the Trinity, they still believed that Jesus was the “son of God” and the means of salvation. They also held the Bible in high regard as the revelation of God, but they challenged a particular and narrow view of inspiration. Early nineteenthcentury Unitarians should not be confused with modern Unitarians.
C. Berger, “Griesbach, Johann Jakob (1745–1812),” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. John H. Hayes (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999), 468–69.
On the life and work of J. J. Griesbach see John McClintock and James Strong, “Johann Jakob Griesbach,” in Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, 10 vols., vol. 3 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1871), 1008– 10. For an examination of his methods, see G. D. Kilpatrick, “Griesbach and the Development of Textual Criticism,” in J. J. Griesbach: Synoptic and Text--Critical Studies 1776–1976, ed. Bernard Orchard and Thomas R. W. Longstaff (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 136–53.
Historians have generally neglected Buckminster. Lewis P. Simpson describes Buckminster as an exemplary figure who transitioned Boston intellectuals from a focus on theology to literary and artistic culture. Literary historian Lawrence Buell explains Buckminster’s phenomenal popularity as a preacher. Buell argues that Buckminster met the spiritual needs of an increasingly prosperous, educated, and cosmopolitan population. Jerry Wayne Brown describes Buckminster’s contributions to biblical criticism. Lewis P. Simpson, “Joseph Stevens Buckminster: The Rise of the New England Clerisy,” in The Man of Letters in New England and the South: Essays on the History of the Literary Vocation in America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 3–31; Lawrence Buell, “Joseph Stevens Buckminster: The Making of a New England Saint,” The Canadian Review of American Studies 10, no. 1 (1979): 2–29; Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969).
See P. Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible (New York, 1999), 17–40; B. Bowe, “Inspiration,” in D. Freedman, ed., Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 641; and G. Bromley, “Inspiration, History of the Doctrine of,” in G. Bromley, ed., The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 4 vols., vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans,1995), 849–54.
This chapter makes no attempt to offer a thorough history of textual criticism. Rather this section briefly illustrates radical changes in the understanding of the transmission and accuracy of the Bible manuscripts. Also, this chapter focuses on American reactions to New Testament criticism. This is not to say that the Old Testament was neglected by textual critics. For example, Spinoza, Hobbes, Simon, and Le Clerc challenged Mosaic authorship. See the prologue. Also, in 1753, Jean Astruc in his Conjectures sur les Mémories Originauz argued that Genesis was compiled by two different authors. See Chapter 2. Years later, Benjamin Kennicott attempted to edit the Old Testament. In 1776 and 1780, he published Vetus Testamentum Hebraicum cum variis lectionibus [Hebrew Old Testament with Variant Readings]. 8. Erasmus’s Bible was the first Greek text published. The first printed Greek text was part of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible published in 1514 but not circulated until 1522. Because Erasmus’s text was disseminated first and was more affordable, it was vastly more popular than the Complutensian, although the Complutensian was far superior according to Metzger and Ehrman. Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005 [1964]), 139; Jerry H. Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 70–111. 9. From the mid-sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries, Robert Estienne (Latinized as Stephanus), Theodore Beza, and the brothers Bonaventure and Abraham Elezevir all published Greek New Testaments based largely on Erasmus’s text. Metzger and Ehrman, Text of the New Testament, 149–52. See also Lyle O. Bristol, “New Testament Textual Criticism in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Biblical Literature 69, no. 2 (1950): 101.
It is difficult to determine a beginning point for the process of examination and correction of the biblical text. In the fourth century, Jerome discovered as many different texts as manuscripts of the New Testament as he prepared the Vulgate. Detailed work with ancient biblical manuscripts ceased until Renaissance humanists began to examine seriously the problems of textual variants and corruptions. Lorenzo Valla attempted to correct the Latin Vulgate. Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ, 32–39; Dean Freiday, The Bible: Its Criticism, Interpretation, and Use in 16th and 17th Century England (Pittsburgh, PA: Catholic and Quaker Studies Series, 1979), 9.
W. S. M. Knight, The Life and Works of Hugo Grotius (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1925), 266; J. H. Hayes, “Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645),” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 470–71.
Knight, Grotius, 250.
John H. P. Reumann, The Romance of Bible Scripts and Scholars: Chapters in the History of Bible Transmission and Translation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1965), 113; A. W. Wainwright, “Mill, John (1645?–1707)” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 158; Wainwright, “Fell, John (1625–1686)” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 388.
The London Polyglot was the last of the great polyglots to be published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The other notable polyglots of the era were the Complutensian (1514–17), Antwerp (1569–72), and Paris (1629– 45). Erroll F. Rhodes, “Polyglot Bibles,” in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, ed. Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 601–3. See also Peter N. Miller, “The ‘Antiquarianization’ of Biblical Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653–57),” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 3 (2001): 463–82; Adam Fox, John Mill and Richard Bentley: A Study of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, 1675–1729 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), 47–49; Henry John Todd, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Right Rev. Brian Walton, 2 vols., vol. 2 (London: Rivington, 1821), 119; Freiday, The Bible, 10; Gerard Reedy, The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in Late Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 7, 8.
Mill’s conclusions were based on 103 Greek manuscripts, Latin translations of early versions found in Walton’s Polyglot, and uncritical editions of the early church fathers. Bart D. Ehrman, “Methodological Developments in the Analysis and Classification of New Testament Documentary Evidence,” Novum Testamentum 29, no. 1 (1987): 24. For Mill’s contributions, see Bristol, “New Testament Criticism.” Bristol also offers a good summary of developments from Mill to Griesbach.
Ehrman, “Methodological Developments,” 24; Richard Laurence, Remarks on the Systematic Classification of Manuscripts Adopted by Griesbach in His Edition of the New Testament (Oxford: University Press, 1814), excerpts reprinted in the United States in the Biblical Repository 2 (1826): 33–95. G. E. Schwerdtfeyer, “Bentley, Richard (1662–1742),” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 121.
Kristine Haugen, Richard Bentley: Poetry and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). For his critical method, see Richard Bentley, Dr. Bentley’s Proposals for Printing a New Edition of the Greek Testament, and St. Hierom’s Latin Version, with a Full Answer to All the Remarks of a Late Pamphleteer, 2nd ed. (London: J. Knapton, 1721), 16–27.
Quoted from Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 97; W. R. Baird, “Bengel, Johann Albrecht (1687–1752)” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 120.
Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible, 95; Johann Albrecht Bengel, Gnomon of the New Testament, trans. M. Ernest Bengel, 5 vols., vol. 1 (Edinburgh, Scotland: T&T Clark, 1873), 12–20. William Baird, History of New Testament Research: From Deism to Tübingen, 3 vols., vol. 1 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 72–83. For a deeper history of this principle, see Jerry H. Bentley, “Erasmus, Jean Le Clerc, and the Principle of the Harder Reading,” Renaissance Quarterly 31, no. 3 (1978): 309–21.
Reumann, The Romance of Bible, 119–20; W. R. Baird, “Wettstein, Johann Jacob (1693–1754)” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 642; and Baird, New Testament Research, 101–7.
Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 2001), 90, 145–52.
Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation (Newburgh, NY: David Denniston, 1798 [1730]), 288, 250–90; Anthony Collins, A Discourse of Freethinking, Occasioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect Called Freethinkers (London: [n.p.], 1713); John Toland, Nazarenus; or, Jewish, Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity (London: J. Brown, J. Roberts, and J. Brot, 1718), 11; Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Harbinger Books, 1962 [1876]), 180–82.
John Owen, Of the Divine Originall, Authority, Self-Evidencing Light, and Povver of the Scriptures (Oxford: Henry Hall, 1659), 154; Freiday, The Bible, 10.
John Edwards, A Discourse Concerning the Authority, Stile, and Perfection of the Books of the Old and New Testament, 3 vols., vol. 1 (London: Richard Wilkin, 1693), 65–66; Reedy, Bible and Reason, 111–12; and Robert E. Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 100.
Fox, Mill and Bentley, 106; Daniel Whitby, Examen Variantium Lectionum Johannis Milli (London: Bettesworth, W. Mears, W. and J. Innys, 1709); Richard Bentley in Remarks on a Late Discourse of Freethinking (Cambridge: C. Crownfield, 1725, [1713]).
Daniel Whitby, A Commentary on the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament, quoted from Baird, New Testament Research, 32.
Narrative of the Proceedings of Those Ministers of the County of Hampshire (Boston: [n.p.], 1736), 4, 5. For Jeremiah Jones, see David L. Wykes, “Jones, Jeremiah (1693/4–1724),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15021 (accessed December 10, 2007).
For the Breck affair, see Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible, 20–23; Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates: Biographical Sketeches of Those Who Attended Harvard College in the Classes 1726–1730, 18 vols., vol. 8 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1951), 663–73; Richard Warch, School of the Prophets: Yale College, 1701–1740 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 180–81; Louis L. Tucker, Puritan Protagonist: President Thomas Clap of Yale (Williamsburg, VA: Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1962), 47–59; Charles E. Jones, “The Impolitic Mr. Edwards: The Personal Dimensions of the Robert Breck Affair,” New England Quarterly 51, no. 1 (1978): 64–79; Ezra Hoyt Byington, “The Case of Rev. Robert Breck,” Andover Review 13 (1890): 517–33. Most accounts of the life of Jonathan Edwards relate that in the Breck affair Edwards was involved and sided with Clap. For two recent examples, see George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 176–82, and Philip F. Gura, Jonathan Edwards: America’s Theologian (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), 63–65.
Jones addressed the matter of textual corruption and interpolation from the original text in chapter 18 of his book, titled The Syriack Translation Is of the Greatest Antiquity, because There Is a Most Remarkable Agreement between It and Our Most Ancient Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament. Regarding the disputed verses, Jones wrote, “I need not cite more; it is plain, it was formerly wanting in many copies, which, with what has been said above, seems to be a good argument of the antiquity of the Syriack Version.” He also wrote that the verses in question were “wanting in almost all the ancient manuscripts.” Jeremiah Jones, A New and Full Method of Settling the Canonical Authority of the New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1798 [1726–27]), 110–13.
Narrative of the Proceedings, 57, 58.
Fifteen years later, Jonathan Edwards defended the canon of Scripture in his notebooks. His essay “Concerning the Canon of the New Testament” (“Misc” 1060) was essentially an excerpt from Jones’s Canonical Authority of the New Testament. In the essay, Edwards repeated Jones’s argument that the Syriac version of the New Testament demonstrated that the Canon was formed early and was therefore accurate. Edwards was marginally involved in the Breck affair, and he knew that Breck and Jones used the Syriac manuscripts to question the authenticity of some passages of the New Testament. Edwards did not mention the textual issues of variant manuscripts or corruptions. Edwards copied extensive sections of Jones’s work on the Syriac Bible into his notebook. However, he seems to have consciously avoided copying or summarizing the section that argued for a corrupted text. This is rather conspicuous because he extensively copied large sections of the preceding and following parts. Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible. 20–23; Jonathan Edwards, (Misc. 1060) “Miscellanies,” in Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 20, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 396–427; Byington, “The Case of Rev. Robert Breck,” 529.
Bruce Metzger points out two obscure exceptions. William Boyer, an English printer, published a Greek text of the New Testament in 1763. Boyer, using Wettstein, departed from the Textus Receptus when the textual evidence warranted change. He sent a copy of his edited Greek New Testament to Harvard, and in 1767 the President and fellows of Harvard sent him a letter, thanking him for his “very curious edition.” In 1800, Isaiah Thomas Jr. published the first Greek text of the New Testament printed in America. Though the title page claimed that the text was based on John Mill’s Greek Bible, Thomas eclectically chose from various Greek texts. Almost no one in late-eighteenth- or early-nineteenth-century America mentioned either Boyer’s or Thomas’s texts. Bruce M. Metzger, “Three Learned Printers and Their Contribution to Biblical Scholarship,” The Journal of Religion 32, no. 4 (1952): 257–58.
For a brief biography of Dexter, see “Biographical Notice of the Late Hon. Samuel Dexter,” Monthly Anthology 9 (1810): 3–7.
Portions of Dexter’s will were printed in the General Repository. See “Intelligence,” General Repository and Boston Review 1 (1812): 204, 205, 208.
Peter S. Field, Crisis of the Standing Order: Clerical Intellectuals and Cultural Authority in Massachusetts, 1780–1833 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998); Daniel Walker Howe, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy 1805–1861 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1988).
Eliza Buckminster Lee, Memoirs of Rev. Joseph Buckminster, D.D., and of His Son, Rev. Joseph Stevens Buckminster (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851), 331. The Buckminsters’ letters and journals are preserved in a volume edited by George Ticknor with commentary and biography filled in by Eliza Buckminster Lee, sister of the younger Buckminster.
Joseph S. Buckminster, “Sources of Infidelity,” in Sermons by the Late Rev. Joseph S. Buckminster with a Memoir of His Life and Character, 2nd ed. (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1815 [1814]), 146.
Buckminster, “The Reasonableness of Faith,” in Sermons, 148.
For example, see Joseph S. Buckminster, “Defence of the Accuracy and Fidelity of Griesbach,” General Repository 1 (1812): 89–101.
Letter from Buckminster Sr. to Buckminster Jr. May, 1799. Quoted from Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 98, 99, 100.
Parker compared Buckminster with the Apostle Paul in their steadfastness. Both were convicted by a “miraculous interposition” of the mind. Nathan A. Parker, Discourse Occasioned by the Death of the Rev. Joseph Buckminster, D. D. Pastor of the North Church in Portsmouth, Delivered June 19, 1812 (Portsmouth, NH: S. Whidden, 1812), 6, 10, 14.
Letter from Buckminster Sr. to Eliza Buckminster Lee. Quoted from Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 436–37.
Eliza Buckminster Lee gave the impression that the elder Buckminster had been a strong if not oppressive and nagging presence in the young Buckminster’s life. The elder Buckminster comes across as a cold, stingy, humorless ogre who made unreasonable demands on a young, sweet boy. Buckminster Lee made the curious conclusion that the elder Buckminster’s Calvinism was rooted in his sour personality. In contrast, the younger Buckminster’s happy and sunny disposition made Calvinism an impossible option. Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 331, 364.
These works helped move him in Unitarian directions. For example, Priestley’s Corruptions argued for the corruption of original Unitarian Christianity by Greek philosophy. Locke’s Paraphrase similarly argued that Christian belief was originally a simple belief in Jesus as Messiah. At one point, while he was investigating the idea of the Trinity, his notes filled ten pages of a commonplace book. Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 122, 248.
Buckminster claimed that his notes on Hume and skepticism did not survive, for they were accidentally destroyed. In an early American version of “the dog ate my homework,” he wrote, “When this ingens opus was nearly completed, as it lay loose upon my table, it was by some mischance torn and mutilated, and rendered wholly useless.” Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 128.
Letter dated March 1801. Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 129.
Buckminster, “Lecture to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, Delivered on Thursday, August 31, 1809,” in Sermons, lx, lxi.
Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 130.
Buckminster, “On the Dangers and Duties of Men of Letters,” in Sermons, lxxvii, lxxviii.
Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 191.
Buckminster, “The Reasonableness of Faith,” Sermons, 145.
Quoted from Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969), 25.
Buckminster, “Review of A Theoretick Explanation of the Science of Sanctity,” Monthly Anthology, 2 (1805): 418; Brown, Biblical Criticism, 18.
For a history of The Anthology Society and the Monthly Anthology, see Lewis P. Simpson, “A Literary Adventure of the Early Republic: The Anthology Society and the Monthly Anthology,” The New England Quarterly 27, no. 2 (1954): 168–90.
From the diary of Rev. Dr. John Pierce, DD (1773–1849). June 1812, quoted in Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 378; Brown, Biblical Criticism, 23.
For Thomson and his translation, see Boyd Stanley Schlenther, Charles Thomson: A Patriot’s Pursuit (Newark: University of Delaware, 1990), 206–11; Edwin Hendricks, Charles Thomson and the Making of a New Nation, 1729– 1824 (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1979), 168–83; and Lewis R. Harley, The Life of Charles Thomson (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs, 1900).
Hendricks, Charles Thomson, 170; Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 93–95.
Charles Thomson, The Old Covenant, Commonly Called the Old Testament; Translated from the Septuagint (Philadelphia: Jane Aikin, 1808). For a twentieth-century appraisal of Thomson’s translation efforts, see Kendrick Grobel, “Charles Thomson, First American N.T. Translator—An Appraisal,” Journal of Bible and Religion 11, no. 3 (1943): 145–51. Thomson was also the first American to translate and publish the Greek New Testament.
Joseph S. Buckminster, “Thomson’s Septuagint,” Monthly Anthology and Boston Review 7 (1809): 396–97.
Buckminster cites Humphrey Hody (1659–1707) and Prideaux as authorities on this matter. Hody, in 1684, published Contra historiam Aristeae de LXX. interpretibus dissertatio, in which he argued that the so-called letter of Aristeas, containing an account of the production of the Septuagint, was the late forgery of a Hellenistic Jew. Buckminster, “Thomson’s Septuagint,” 397.
Buckminster, “Thomson’s Septuagint,” 398. For a modern assessment of the LXX, see S. K. Soderlund, “Septuagint,” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: Q–Z, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 4 vols., vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 400–409.
Buckminster, “Thomson’s Septuagint,” 399.
Thomson did not use the 1653 London Septuagint. He had in fact used the four-volume 1665 Cambridge edition of the Septuagint printed in England by John Field, which he stumbled across by accident at a Philadelphia bookseller. It was from this Cambridge edition that Thomson made his translation. Buckminster was wrong, but his guess was not far from the truth. The editors of the 1653 London Septuagint altered and interpolated the text to bring it nearer to the Hebrew text and modern versions. These errors were retained in the 1665 Cambridge edition. See Schlenther, Charles Thomson, 206; Albert J. Edmunds, “Charles Thomson’s New Testament,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 15 (1891): 334; Thomas Hartwell Horne, An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, 2 vols., vol. 2 (New York: Robert and Carter and Brothers, 1852 [1818]), 23; Buckminster, “Thomson’s Septuagint,” 399–400.
Holmes’s work was completed by James Parsons (1762–1847). They produced the first attempt to restore the original LXX by examining the variant texts and provided a critical apparatus. Their type of critical scholarship was the sort that Buckminster hoped Americans could soon appreciate, but the work of Thomson depressingly reminded him that his countrymen had a long way to go. For information on Holmes and Parsons, see Henry Barclay Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 185. See Buckminster, “Thomson’s Septuagint,” 398, and Robert Holmes and John Parsons, Vetus Testamentum Graecum cum variis lectionibus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1798–1827).
John Ernest Grabe, Septuagint (Oxford: Jacob Wright, 1859 [1707–20]).
Thomas Randolph, The Prophecies and Other Texts Cited in the New Testament Compared with the Hebrew and the Septuagint Version (Oxford: J. and J. Fletcher, 1782).
Henry Owen, An Enquiry into the Present State of the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament (London: B. White, J. Fletcher, T. Payne, 1769).
Buckminster, “Thomson’s Septuagint,” 197.
Joseph Buckminster, “Review of Griesbach’s New Testament,” Monthly Anthology and Boston Review, 10 (1811): 107.
Panoplist printed an announcement for the publication of Griesbach’s New Testament. They knew that the text was coming, but they may not have been aware of its significance. “Griesbach’s Greek Testament,” Panoplist 3 (1808): 422–24.
“A Brief Review of the Principal Controversies amongst Protestants,” Panoplist 3 (1808): 164–71.
Benjamin Kennicott, a Hebrew scholar, published Vetus Testamentum hebraicum cum variis lectionibus (1776–1780) and The State of the Printed Hebrew Text of the Old Testament Considered (1753, 1759). He sought to combat the then current ideas as to the “absolute integrity” of the received Hebrew text. Eichhorn in discussed in Chapter 5.
For Bentley, see J. Rixey Ruffin, A Paradise of Reason: William Bentley and Enlightenment Christianity in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Henry A. Pochmann, German Culture in America, Philosophical and Literary Influences, 1600–1900 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1957), 51–57; and Harold S. Jantz, “German Thought and Literature in New England, 1620–1820,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 41, no. 1 (1942): 35–45. In his will, dated May 8, 1819, Bentley left “all my classical and theological books, dictionaries, lexicons, and Bibles” to Allegheny College. The rest went to the American Antiquarian Society. The 1823 Allegheny College catalogue lists 740 books from Bentley. Griesbach was not listed in the collection. Timothy Alden, Catalogus Bibliothecæ Collegii Alleghaniensis (Meadville, PA: Thomas Atkinson & Society, 1823), 66–88. In 1962, Edwin Wolf, then librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia, was commissioned by Allegheny College to make a survey of library collection of 1823. His observations are recorded in Edwin Wolf, “Observations on the Winthrop, Bentley, Thomas and ‘Ex Dono’ Collections of the Original Library of Allegheny College, 1819–1823,” 1962, Special Collections, Pelletier Library, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA. 94. For example, he knew Moses Stuart, Edward Everett, and George Ticknor. 95. [James Winthrop], Catalogus Librorum in Bibliotheca Cantabrigiensi Selectus, Frequentiorem in Usum Harvardinatum, [A Select Catalogue of Books in the College Library of Cambridge for the More Frequent Use of the Undergraduates] (Boston: Typis Edes & Gill, 1773). Other relevant authors included in the select catalogue are Jeremiah Jones, Hugo Grotius, Nathaniel Lardner, and Moses Lowman. 96. Sylvester, “Griesbach’s Greek Testament,” City Gazette, September 22, 1797, 2. 97. “Review of Griesbach’s New Testament, with Select Various Readings,” Panoplist 3 (1811): 503. 98. Ibid., 503. 99. Ibid., 507.
Buckminster, “Defence of the Accuracy and Fidelity of Griesbach,” 99.
Buckminster, “Defence of the Accuracy and Fidelity of Griesbach.”
Thomas Belsham, The New Testament, an Improved Version upon the Basis of Archbishop Newcome’s New Translation with a Corrected Text and Notes (London: Richard Taylor & Co., 1808); P. Marion Simms, The Bible in America: Versions That Have Played Their Part in the Making of the Republic (New York: WilsonErickson, 1936), 255–58; Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England, and America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 338, 339.
Philalethes, “Plain Scripture Reading,” Panoplist 9, (1813): 15–18, 58–62, 121–26, 164–74; Philalethes, “Notice of Publication in the Panoplist,” General Repository 4 (1813): 194–223; “Editorial Remarks,” Panoplist 9 (1813): 175–81.
Samuel Cooper Thacher, “Review of Dr. Porter’s Sermon,” Monthly Anthology 9 (1810): 279–80.
“Review of Griesbach,” Panoplist 3 (1811): 503.
Brown, Biblical Criticism, 24; Buckminster, “Sources of Infidelity,” 145.
Edward Robinson, “Philology and Lexicography of the New Testament,” The Biblical Repository 4, no. 13 (1834): 160.
Buckminster, “Sermon Eighth” in Sermons, 106–16.
Chapter 5
Thomas Albert Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 37; J. W. Rogerson, “Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried (1752–1827),” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, ed. John H. Hayes (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999), 324; H. Boers, “Gabler, Johann Philipp (1753–1826),” in ibid., 425–26; O. Merk, “Bauer, Georg Lorenz (1755–1806)” in ibid., 109–10.
Both the deists and the German scholars threatened the American understanding of the Bible, which placed a heavy emphasis on historical accuracy. Hans Frei notes the Germans took the Bible to be a rich embodiment of religious truth even though they questioned its historical accuracy. Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974). The difference between textual criticism and higher criticism was first articulated by Eichhorn in Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1780–83).
Christian Hartlich and Walter Sachs, Der Ursprung des Mythosbegriffes in der modernen Bibelwissenschaft (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1952), 11–19, 21; William Baird, History of New Testament Research: From Deism to Tübingen, 3 vols., vol. 1(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 149.
Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc., 2001[1670]), 81–82.
Eichhorn interpreted Genesis 1–3 as myth in 1779 in an anonymous essay, “Urgemeinde: Ein Versuch,” Repertorium für Biblische und Morgenländische Litteratur, 4 (1779): 129–256, and discussed Peter’s jailbreak in “Versuch über die Engels-Erscheinungen in der Apostelgeschichete,” Allgemeine Bibliothek der Biblischen Litteratur 3 (1790): 381–408. See Baird, New Testament Research, 149.
Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, “Ernst Troeltsch: The Power of Historical Consciousness,” in The Bible in Modern Culture: Baruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002 [1995]), 146– 68; Eva Schaper, “Troeltsch, Ernst (1865–1923),” in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, 8 vols., vol. 8 (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 162–63; Jean Loup Seban, “Troeltsch, Ernst Peter Wilhelm (1865–1923),” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig, 10 vols., vol. 9 (New York: Routledge, 1998), 461–64. For the varieties of “historicism,” see Dwight E. Lee and Robert N. Beck, “The Meaning of ‘Historicism,’ ” The American Historical Review 59, no. 3 (1954): 568–77; Georg G. Iggers, “Historicism: The History and the Meaning of the Term,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56, no. 1 (1995): 129–52; and Donald Kelley “Historicism,” New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, ed. Maryanne Horowitz, 6 vols., vol. 3 (Detroit, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2005), 1000–2. For an account of the interactions of theology and historicism in Germany, see Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism.
In addition, Buckminster noted the influence of Bishop Beilby Porteus, Nathaniel Lardner, and Herbert Marsh. Marsh translated Michaelis into English and published his lectures. Buckminster also read Marsh’s Dissertation, in which he proposed that the first three Gospels were based on a common Hebrew source that was lost and Matthew’s Gospel was originally written in Hebrew and later translated into Greek. Buckminster wrote in a letter to Marsh that he hoped the English scholar would soon translate Eichhorn as he longed to read him in translation. Eliza Buckminster Lee, Memoirs of Rev. Joseph Buckminster, D.D., and of His Son, Rev. Joseph Stevens Buckminster (Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851), 243–53; Andrews Norton, “Marsh’s Lectures,” General Repository and Review 1 (1812): 216; Herbert Marsh, A Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of Our First Three Canonical Gospels (London: Rivington, 1801). For a review of the controversy regarding Marsh’s proposal, see “Marsh on the First Three Gospels,” Monthly Review 51 (1806): 247–55. For Michaelis and Lowth, see Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 252–53.
For a summary of the Ars Critica and its significance, see Anthony Grafton, What Was History? The Art of History in Early Modern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 2–20.
Quoted from Martin I. Klauber, “Between Protestants, Orthodoxy, and Rationalism: Fundamental Articles in the Early Career of Jean Le Clerc,” Journal of the History of Ideas 54, no. 4 (1993): 623, 631–32; J. H. Hayes, “Le Clerc (1657–1736),” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 51–52. For accommodation, see Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 184–209, and R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972), 118–37. See also Stephen D. Benin, The Footprints of God: Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993), 177–98.
Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 122.
Hans Frei, Eclipse, 83.
John Locke, “An Essay for the Understanding of St Paul’s Epistles by Consulting St Paul Himself,” in John Locke: Writings on Religion, ed. Victor Nuovo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 53–54, 59.
Nuovo, introduction to John Locke: Writings on Religion, xxxvix.
Harrisville and Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Baruch Spinoza to Brevard Childs, 30. For Erasmus’s methods of interpretation, see Jerry H. Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 173–93, and J. B. Payne, “Erasmus, Desiderius,” in Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters, ed. Donald K. McKim (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 184–90. Arthur W. Wainwright, “Introduction,” in Locke, A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul to the Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Ephesians, ed. Arthur W. Wainwright, 2 vols., vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 21.
Locke, “Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures,” in John Locke: Writings on Religion, ed. Victor Nuovo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 207.
Locke, “Understanding of St. Paul,” 64, 65, 32.
Buckminster began to read Michaelis in January 1804. Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 248–62. B. Seidel, “Michaelis, Johann David (1717–91),” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 153–54.
John David Michaelis, Introduction to the New Testament, trans. Herbert Marsh, 4th ed., 4 vols., vol. 1 (London: F. C. & J. Rivington, 1823), 124–25.
Cotton Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium (Boston: Thomas Hancock, 1726), 46–47.
Michaelis, Introduction to the New Testament, 1: 119, 120. It should be noted that modern scholars now know that the writers of the New Testament wrote in Koine Greek, which was the lingua franca of the Hellenistic world. This fact was not understood until the late nineteenth century.
Early church fathers used the principle of ceconomia or logical finesse and the Jews sought a hidden meaning according to the interpretive principles of the Midrash. Ibid., 204.
Buckminster Lee, Memoirs, 252. Lowth was elected professor of poetry at Oxford in 1741. He served for a total of ten years. In that time, he delivered a series of lectures on Hebrew poetry. His lectures were published in 1753, in Latin. Michaelis, who introduced the work of Lowth to Germany, added his own notes. In 1787 the English translations of his lectures were published. Scott Mandelbrote, “Lowth, Robert (1710–1787),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004, online ed., Jan 2008; and R. R. Mars, “Lowth, Robert (1710–1787),” Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 89–90.
Robert Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of Hebrews (Boston: Joseph T. Buckman, 1815), 31.
Turner, Philology, chapter 4. Maurice Olender notes Lowth’s emphasis on the cultural distance of the ancient Hebrews in Les langues du Paradis: Aryens et Sémites: un couple providentiel (Paris: Gallimard/Le Seuil, 1989), 49–50.
Lowth, Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, 71, 72–73.
For this traditional view of inspiration, see the introduction. See also Barbara E. Bowe, “Inspiration,” in Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, ed. David Noel Freedman (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), 641; Geoffrey Bromley “Inspiration, History of the Doctrine of,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: E-J, Geoffrey Bromley ed., 4 vols., vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 849–54.
Bentley’s copy of Spencer was previously owned by Andrew Eliot and his father John Eliot before him. It was originally owned by Joshua Gee, the Harvard librarian. Thus several generations had access to this book. Edwin Wolf, “Observations on the Winthrop, Bentley, Thomas and ‘Ex Dono’ Collections of the Original Library of Allegheny College, 1819–1823,” 1962, Special Collections, Pelletier Library, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA.
“Extract from Sunday News-Papers, and Also of Letters from London, Dated July 6,” Boston Post-Boy, August 29, 1774, 1.
[James Winthrop], Catalogus Librorum in Bibliotheca Cantabrigiensi Selectus, Frequentiorem in Usum Harvardinatum, [A Select Catalogue of Books in the Library of Cambridge More Frequently Used by Harvard Students] (Boston: Typis Edes & Gill, 1773).
See Chapter 3.
The American deists Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen briefly addressed the problems that the distance of history raises for the interpretation of the Bible. They asked how the meaning of revelation given in one language could be preserved over centuries of linguistic evolution. Most antideist writers did not respond to this point. Andrew Broaddeus, a self-taught Baptist in rural Virginia, countered that if language was truly mutable as Paine and Allen asserted, then the rational interpretation of any historical text would be impossible. He asserted that “the substance” of what was conveyed in one time or language could be “faithfully conveyed” in another. Andrews Norton would later address the problem of the mutability of language. Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man (Bennington, VT: Haswell & Russell, 1784), 426–28; Thomas Paine, Age of Reason (Boston: Thomas Hall, 1794), 63–68; and Andrew Broaddeus, Age of Reason and Revelation (Richmond, VA: Dixon, 1795), 24.
Buckminster, “Sermon XI: The History and Character of Paul and the Causes of Obscurity in His Writings,” in Sermons by the Late Rev. Joseph S. Buckminster with A Memoir of His Life and Character, 2nd ed. (Boston: Wells and Lilly, 1815 [1814]), 135–36.
Buckminster, “Philemon,” Sermons, 103–5; Brown, Biblical Criticism, 20.
“Sale of the Library of the Late Rev. Mr. Buckminster,” The General Repository and Review 2 (1812): 392–94; Catalogue of the Library of the Late Rev, J. S. Buckminster (Boston: John Eliot, 1812).
Andrews Norton, Introductory note to “The Defence of Liberal Christianity,” in Tracts Concerning Christianity (Cambridge: John Bartlett, 1852), 3–14; Norton, “Character of Rev. Joseph Stevens Buckminster,” The General Repository and Review 2 (1812): 306–14.
Norton has generally been a neglected figure. Historians usually look at him as the conservative opponent of Emerson and the Transcendentalists. There are some exceptions. See Lilian Handlin, “Babylon Est Delenda—the Young Andrews Norton,” in American Unitarianism: 1805–1865, edited by Conrad Edick Wright (Boston: The Massachusetts Historical Society and Northeastern University Press, 1989), 53–86; Robert D. Habich, “Emerson’s Reluctant Foe: Andrews Norton and the Transcendentalist Controversy,” The New England Quarterly, 65 no. 2 (1992): 208–37; Brown, Biblical Criticism, 10–26; and James Turner, “Language, Religion, and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America: The Curious Case of Andrews Norton” in Language, Religion, Knowledge: Past and Present (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 11–30.
For the polite tone of the Anthology and Unitarians in general, see Peter S. Fields, Crisis of the Standing Order: Clerical Intellectuals and Cultural Authority in Massachusetts, 1780–1833 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), and Fields, “The Birth of Secular High Culture: The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review and Its Critics,” Journal of the Early Republic 17, no. 4 (1997): 575–609.
The English biblical scholar Herbert Marsh was a particularly strong influence. He was one of the first English-language conduits of German biblical scholarship. Fortunately, his Lectures arrived in America just as Norton was about to begin his teaching career. Norton praised Marsh’s lectures as soon as they appeared in the United States. Norton, “Marsh’s Lectures,” 216. Norton’s works particularly illustrate the influence of Marsh’s Lectures II and III. See Herbert Marsh, A Course of Lectures, Containing a Description and Systematic Arrangement of the Several Branches of Divinity: Accompanied with an Account, Both of the Principal Authors, and of the Progress, Which Has Been Made at Different Periods in Theological Learning (Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1812– 19); Marsh, Lectures on the Criticism and Interpretation of the Bible (London: Rivington, 1838), 283–320.
Norton, “Defence of Liberal Christianity,” 54. 63. Norton, “Lectures, 3,” ANP.
Norton, “Defence of Liberal Christianity,” 51, 52, 40.
Andrews Norton, Internal Evidences of the Genuineness of Gospels (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856), 118, 114, 106.
Norton, “Extent and Relations of Theology,” 73, 62.
Norton, Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, 3 vols., vol. 1 (London: John Chapman, 1837), 5.
Norton, Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, vol. 1, 39.
Richard Claverhouse Jebb, Richard Bentley (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1899), 62–83.
Grafton, What Was History?, 2–20.
Robert D. Habich argues that Norton’s dispute with the Transcendentalists was based on his desire for authority. Miller argues they differed over the nature of man. Turner argues that Norton differed with the Transcendentalists over epistemology and the nature of language. Habich, “Emerson’s Reluctant Foe”; Turner, “Curious Case.” For an account of the miracle debate, see William R. Hutchison, The Transcendentalist Ministers: Church Reform in the New England Renaissance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), 52–97. Perry Miller collected the articles of the debate in The Transcendentalists: An Anthology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), 157–246. See his commentary on 157–60.
See Norton, “A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity,” in Tracts, 229– 68; Norton, “Remarks on the Modern German School of Infidelity” in Tracts, 269–368.
Turner points out that Norton believed that neither the Calvinists nor the Transcendentalists rooted their hermeneutics in history. Turner, “Curious Case.” For a similar argument, see also W. P. Trent, et al., The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, 18 vols., vol. 16 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1907–21), 31–32. Norton more explicitly argues against those who would base faith on intuitions rather than rigorous historical evidence in “On the Objection to Faith in Christianity as Resting on Historical Facts and Critical Learning” in Tracts, 369–92.
Norton, Inaugural Discourse, Delivered before the University in Cambridge, August 10, 1819 (Cambridge: Hillard and Metcalf, 1819), 15. My emphasis.
Norton, “Lectures, 1.”
Norton, Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, vol. 1, 100. My emphasis.
Ibid., 100, 101–2.
Brown, Biblical Criticism, 144.
Norton, Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, 25.
Norton, Inaugural Discourse, 23. My emphasis.
Norton, Internal Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, 66.
David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972 [1835]), 64–65; D. Lange, “Strauss, David Friedrich (1808–74)” in Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation, 507–8.
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Lee, M.J. (2013). Blindsided by Germany. In: The Erosion of Biblical Certainty. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137299666_6
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