BISHOP COLENSO AND VERBAL INSPIRATION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 123, 12 June 1863, Page 3

BISHOP COLENSO AND VERBAL INSPIRATION.

[From the (London) Daily Telegraph.'] [_Co,ilini'ed from our last], Sucli a conviction will pain many, but principally those who have hitherto given their adhesion, but not their attention, to the Mosaic writing ami its commentators. Most men, as Bishop Colenso confesses himself to have done at ordination and consecration, satisfy themselves with the practical excellence of the Old Testament, and neglect any critical examination of it. Leisure, or turn of study, or such a residence in the East as is of itself a new light of the volumes which had their birth there, not unfrequently inclines the student to opinions that were not looked for nor desired. By the second and third of these impelling causes the Bishop of Natal was led to the work before us —his Zula translation, and the questionings of his semi-Oriental Zula flock, having forced his mind in its present direction. And the mind of the amiable prelate, be it observed, is a peculiar one. It has been cast in a mathematical mould; is dispassionate, impartial, and accustomed to the study of the exact sciences, his treatises upon which are at this day standard text-books in every school and college throughout England. To these qualifications for hard thought must be added a large erudition ; nor can Dr. Colenso be denied the credit of an ardent zeal for religion, evinced by nine years of patient labour in a vineyard where the day is hot and its burden heavy, and where the wage, after all, is not even that penny which idle loungers in the market-place at home pocket without a twinge of remorse. Such is the man who has taken on himself this solemn enquiry. We do not dwell upon his character because its weight is the real thing now thrown into the scales of faithful investigation. The position, the labours, and the virtues of Dr. Colenso, are the actual contributions here made to the cause of free consciences. The points of his critical exegesis are not new; most of them have been treated upon by previous critics ; all of them, with slight exceptions, had been at least noted by Biblical and Oriental scholars. Kurtz, Hengstenburg, and Havemick; Ewald, De Wette, Bleck, and Keunen, are a few among the Teutonic commentators only have scrutinised the Pentateuch as a history. And not to speak of the rich pictoral criticisms of Stanley, the acute labours of Newman, the able resumes of Davidson, scholars are well aware of one rare volum of hermenutics which occupies much of the ground gone over by the Bishop. Concealed from many by the veil of a dead language —a veil prudently and modestly dropped over it by its late accomplished author —Dr. Donaldson’s “Book of Jashar” has gone farther yet than even the farthest. In that remarkable book the apologues of the Temptation and the Fall are

expounded for those who have “ears to hear.” To others it is, perhaps, well that its conclusions should remain unimparted, till wider investigation and freer discussion have prepared their minds for any large knowledge of the subject which God has vouchsafed us, and the larger ignorance through which he has ordained that we should attain to and extend it. Such researches do not occupy the'yolume before us. Dr. Colenso wanders in a lower and safer region, where the most ordinary intellect may trace his footsteps, and arrive with him, or refuse to arrive, at his goal. His method is one of strict and equitable examination, comparing text with text and statement with statement. Those who object to the bare hypothesis, as impious, that Moses did not write the books which bear his name, are the very persons who may need to be reminded that the last chapter of Deuteronomy contains an account of his death. As it is not alleged that he contributed autobiographical sketches from his grave “in the land of Moab, over against Beth-Peor,” the most orthodox must admit that other interpolations may at least be looked for. The Bishop of Natal suspects he has found one in the old difficulty about the family of Judah fvide Gen. xlvi., 12.) The statement that sixty-six persons “out of the loins of Jacob” went down with him to Egypt is argued to be only possible if Judah, who was 42 years of age at the migration to Egypt, had at that time for great-grandchildren Hezron and Hamul. This being incredible, Kurtz and Hengstenhurg suggest that those “still in the loins” of their progenitors were included in the estimate: an ingenious escape, if only the daughters aud all the other descendants wore not capriciously omitted. Another objection is taken to the verse, “The assembly was gathered to the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation,” but with less force. Calling familiar mathematics to his aid, he calculates that the whole area of the court of the Tabernacle was but 1,692 square yards. This could at most have packed, he thinks, but 5,000 people, whereas the ablebodied only of the congregation ai*e set at 600,000. It seems to us that objection may be taken to the doctor’s assumption that “all” the congregation was to bo gathered, and that that gathering was to be “within” the court. Yet a fair examination of text and context renders it difficult to assert that any other meaning was intended. We pass over the contradictions and incompatibilities urged against tho general addresses of Moses and the duties of the Levites. On these points we think Dr. Colenso is again hypercritical, aud does not establish his thesis. He his stronger in the arguments which he marshals against the number ascribed to the children of Isarel at their exodus. Not to mention that the total of adult males, 603,550, is just the same at the first census as that held six months subsequently—such a number obliges us to set the whole nation at not less than 2,500,000 or, at the lowest, 2,000,000 souls. These must have carried 200,000 tents, requiring

50,000 oxen, as well as grain and forage enough for a month, since for that time they dwelt in the wilderness, and had no manna given them. We are told also that this great host marched out in a day; and the Hebrew adjective applied to it has been variously construed as “ harnessed,” or “ five in a rank.” It seems strange enough that a servile tribe should have been permitted by Pharaoh to leave the land in array of battle; while in files of five their column would have been sixty-eight miles long, taking at least three days to mass at Succoth, The difficulties deepen as we advance into the Mosaic statistics. We read that “ the firstborne males, from a month old and upwards were numbered, and found to be ” 22,273. As there must have been 900,000 males together in such a camp, and as these firstborn were “ matricis apertores,” i. e., eldestborn on the mothers’ side, there is only left the conclusion that each Hebrew mother, on an average, had forty-two sons. Dr. Colenso concedes that there might have been “ boys and girls”—an abnormal family party even then. Havernick takes refuge, indeed, with Michaelis in supposing a very general condition of polygamy; but this is properly rejected by Kurtz as unwarranted. Easier in faith, if less philosophical. Bishop Patrick gets over the difficulty by quietly supposing that “by the blessing of God the Hebrew women brought forth six children at a birth.” We are told, indeed, that at a certain interesting period the “Hebrew women were not like the Egyptian.” If anything of this sort were ordinary in an Israelitish household, there was a difference, indeed ; and not only between the Jewish women and their sisters of Misraim, but between them and any other women in the known world. Dr. Patrick should have plunged further into the mysteries of the nursery, and informed his opponents what provision was made for these “ sextets.” A difficulty at once arises in connection with the maternal function of lactation. Had the right rev. prelate in his mind’s eye a vision of Hebrew mothers with rows of mammae like those of Ashtaroth or the Indian Luxumee; or did he not care to pursue this theory to its issue, content to leave the little “ farrow ” where he had placed them, on the lap of the embarrassed parent ? That the figures of this part of the Pentateuch are hopeless is the conclusion of Dr. Colenso, which we were not called upon to accept or to reject. [To hs Continued !].