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Alexander Nicoll and the Study of German Biblical Criticism in Early Nineteenth-Century Oxford
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
History has not been kind to Alexander Nicoll, a brilliant oriental scholar who is now a forgotten figure, partly because he died before he could achieve the fame he deserved, and partly because his work in the 1820s was soon to be overshadowed by the turmoil of the Oxford Movement of the 1830s and 1840s. Even Dr E. B. Pusey, a pupil of Nicoll's, and his successor as Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, seems to have forgotten the quiet but scholarly way in which Nicholl had worked to combat the liberalism of the German biblical critics. Furthermore, much of what Nicoll said about written Aramaic sources underlying the Synoptic Gospels would be considered by many present day New Testament scholars to have been mistaken; most modern biblical scholars favour the view that Mark's Gospel was written first and used as a source by Matthew and Luke, although there is still considerable disagreement about the explanation of those passages which occur in both Matthew and Luke but not Mark. Even though he may have been mistaken, however, Nicoll was an important figure in the Oxford of the 1820s in so far as he was grappling with the problems posed by the biblical critics at a time when hardly anyone in Oxford—even the Oriel Noetics like Whately and Davison—was doing so, and it is perhaps time to question the commonly held assumption that the Oriel Noetics, together with Newman, Keble and Pusey, held the monopoly of the best theological scholarship in the Oxford of the early nineteenth century.
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References
1 Liddon, H. P., Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, 4th edn, London 1894, i. 72.Google Scholar
2 The letter is preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Top. Oxon. c. 326, fos. 50-O.
3 Two sources have been made use of for biographical details of Nicoll. The first is the Rev J. Parsons's biographical note in Nicoll, Alexander, D.C.L., F.R.S., Sermons, Oxford 1830, pp. ix–xlii.Google Scholar The second is the ‘Obituary of the Rev Dr Nicoll’ from St James's Chronicle, 1828,Google Scholar annotated by Dr Bliss (Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. Misc. e. 8, fos. 12-13).
4 St James's Chronicle gives the age as fifteen, but both Parsons and Bliss agree in saying that it was fourteen. The entry in the University register confirms this: ‘Alexander Nicoll, Joannis de Mony Musk in com. Aberdeen gen. aet. 14 matr. Balliol. Dec. 7, 1807’.
5 , Nicoll, Sermons, pp. xiii–xiv.Google Scholar
6 Books in Armenian occur in the catalogue of the books in Dr Nicoll's library, auctioned at Sotheby's in 1829. Nicoll's knowledge of ‘Syriac’ and ‘Chaldaean’ is demonstrated in his Sermons, 106ff.
7 Obituary in St James's Chronicle.
8 , Nicoll, Sermons, pp. xxvii–xxviii.Google Scholar
1 Ibid., pp. xxx-xxxi.
10 Bliss's note on fo. 13 of Bodleian MS Eng. Misc. e. 8.
11 Bliss's note on fo. 12 of Bodleian MS Eng. Misc. e. 8.
12 , Nicoll, Sermons, pp. xxxvii–xl.Google Scholar
13 Berrian, William, The Posthumous Works of the late Right Reverend John Henry Hobart, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York, New York 1833, i. 289–91.Google Scholar
14 Ibid., i. 309.
15 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Top. Oxon. c. 326, fo. 50.
16 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Lat. Th. c. 1.
17 The St James's Chronicle obituary gives the date as 24 September, but 25 September, as given by Parsons in , Nicoll, Sermons, p. xli,Google Scholar is more likely to be correct.
18 , Nicoll, Sermons, 117f.Google Scholar
19 Ibid., 106.
20 Ibid., 111.
21 Ibid., 112.
22 Ibid., 115.
23 Ibid., 115.
24 Ibid., 118f.
25 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Top. Oxon. c. 326, fo. 51. Italics mine.
26 , Nicoll, Sermons, 124ff.Google Scholar Nicoll gave the ‘Syriac’ and ‘Chaldaean’ quotations in Hebrew characters; these have been transliterated in this paper.
27 Ibid., 124.