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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
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’.
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
5 Cox, , Colenso, i, 235–237, 271.Google Scholar
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
8 His story is told in Davidson, A. J., The autobiography and diary of Samuel Davidson, Edinburgh 1899.Google Scholar
9 A detailed examination of this work can be found in Ellis, Ieuan, Seven against Christ, Leiden 1980.Google Scholar
10 Cheyne, T. K., Founders of Old Testament criticism, London 1893, 196.Google Scholar
11 Colenso, , Pentateuch, i, 39–40.Google Scholar
12 ibid. 57–60.
13 ibid. pp. xvii, xix.
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
15 Colenso, , Pentateuch, i, p. vii.Google Scholar
16 Westminster Review, n.s. xxiii, i (January 1863), 69. It has been tentatively suggested that Mark Pattison, one of the contributors to Essays and Reviews, was the author of this article. Wellesley index to Victorian periodicals, 1842–1900, ed. Houghton, Walter E., vol. iii, Toronto 1979, 643.Google Scholar
17 The Record compared Colenso unfavourably with Robinson Crusoe who was not reduced to doubt by the hard theological questions posed to him by his man Friday: 19 November 1862, 2. Cheyne, Founders, 199–200. ‘Colenso, John’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, vol. iii, 445.Google Scholar
18 Colenso, , Pentateuch, i, pp. vi–viii, xxi–xxii.Google Scholar
19 ibid. 9.
20 ibid. 149.
21 Colenso, J. W., St Paul's epistle to the Romans, Cambridge 1861, p. v.Google Scholar
22 Guardian, 9 April 1862, 353.
23 Cox, , Colenso, i, 135.Google Scholar
24 Hinchliff, Peter, John William Colenso, London 1964, 41–46.Google Scholar
25 Cox, , Colenso, i, 129–130.Google Scholar
26 Guy, Jeff, The heretic: a study of the life of John William Colenso, 1814–1883, Johannesburg 1983, 26–29.Google Scholar
27 Letter to the Secretary, S.P.G., 31 March 1856: Rees, Wyn, Colenso letters from Natal, Pietermaritzburg 1958, 58.Google Scholar
28 Colenso, , Pentateuch, i, 144.Google Scholar
29 Letter to Theophilus Shepstone, 29 December 1862: Cox, , Colenso, i, 234.Google Scholar
30 Record, 31 October 1862, 2.
31 Colenso, Pentateuch, i, chs viii and iv.
32 Record, 12 November 1862, 4; Guardian, 10 December 1862, 1170.
33 Colenso, , Pentateuch, iii, London 1863, p. xii.Google Scholar
34 Christian Witness, xx (1863), 54–8.
35 Guardian, 3 December 1862, 1149.
36 Guardian, 24 December 1862, 1218; Christian Observer, lx, ccc (December 1862), 930–1.
37 Colenso, , Pentateuch, i, 43–44.Google Scholar
38 Colenso, , Pentateuch, iii, p. xviiGoogle Scholar. He expressed similar sentiments in more formal language in a letter which was printed in The Times, 7 February 1863, 9.
39 Record, 21 November 1862, 4.
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
43 British Quarterly Review, xxxvii, Ixxiii (January 1863), 184.
44 Christian Remembrancer, xlv, cxix (January 1863), 245, 248–9.
45 British Quarterly Review, xxxvii, lxxiii (January 1863), 156–8.
46 Record, 1 December 1862, 4.
47 Letter dated 17 December 1862: Davidson, R. T., Life of Archibald Campbell Tait, London 1891, vol. i, 337.Google Scholar
48 Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, 11 February 1863, 1036.
49 Colenso, Pentateuch, i, pp. xxxv-xxxvi.
50 Guardian, 19 November 1862, 1098.
51 Record, 12 November 1862, 1.
52 Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, 19 May 1863, 1177–80.
53 Cox, , Colenso, i, 326Google Scholar. The trial, which was the work of Bishop Gray of Capetown, was not recognised as valid under English law and therefore Colenso retained the legal rights of a bishop.
54 Colenso published a long letter he had received which documented similar remarks made by respected figures from the Church Fathers to the present day: Colenso, , Pentateuch, iii, pp. xxxiii–xl.Google Scholar
55 Chronicle of Convocation, Lower House, 19 May 1863, 1181.
56 Record, 5 November 1862, 4.
57 Letter to J. Davies, 23 September 1862: Maurice, Frederick, The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, vol. ii, New York 1884, 423.Google Scholar
58 ibid. 424–35.
59 Letter from Mrs Colenso to Margaret Bell, 3 November 1863: Rees, , Colenso letters, 78.Google Scholar
60 Edinburgh Review, cxvii, ccxl (April 1863), 501. The Timesnever reviewed the book and avoided expressing its own view of the controversy. The Record noted with disapproval the favourable review in the Daily Telegraph, but was delighted with the negative review, in response to it, which appeared in the Morning Post shortly thereafter, taking Colenso's decision to attempt to answer some of its points in a letter to the Telegraphs proof of its force. Record, 10 November 1862, 3; 14 November 1862, 2.
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
62 For example, see Spectator, 25 October 1862, 1178.
63 Spectator, 8 November 1862, 1250–2.
64 Prothero, , Stanley, ii, 99–104.Google Scholar
65 Abbott, Evelyn and Campbell, Lewis, The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, vol. i, London 1897, 301.Google Scholar
66 Davidson, , Tait, i, 341–342.Google Scholar
67 Chronicle of Convocation, Upper House, 20 May 1863, 1205–6, 1208.
68 DNB, Connop Thirlwall (1792–1875). vol. xix, 618–621.Google Scholar
69 Thirlwall gave a charge to the clergy of his diocese triennially. These comments are taken from the one which he delivered in October 1863. Remains, literary and theological of Connop Thirlwall, ed. Perowne, J. J. S., vol. ii, London 1877, 62–65, 75.Google Scholar
70 Letters of Matthew Arnold 1848–1888, ed. Russell, G. W. E., vol. i, London 1895, 175–176.Google Scholar
71 Macmillan's Magazine, vii, xxxix (January 1863), 241–256.Google Scholar
72 For an example of criticism of Arnold's stance, see Westminster Review, n.s. xxiii, ii (April 1863), 503–16. Arnold wove his reply to his critics into his next review: Macmillan's Magazine, vii, xl (February 1863), 327–336.Google Scholar
73 Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, pt ii, London 1970, 91–92.Google Scholar
74 Guy, , Heretic, 183, see also 184–8.Google Scholar
75 ibid. 180.
76 The quotation comes from a letter to ‘a clergyman in South Africa’, 21 March 1865: Maurice, , Maurice, ii, 490.Google Scholar
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
