THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
sometimes play upon and mold the text of sacred books for a long period before they take their final form. Pierson, Loman, Van Manen, and Naber with others constitute what is called the " Holland School." Bruno Bauer had anticipated some of their conclusions. But Bauer's work started from philosophical premises. The " Holland School," on the contrary, starts from sound historical premises. Old Testament methods and achievements have inspired the attempt to explain the Paul of the Pauline Letters as even more a literary than a real personality (like the Moses of the Pentateuch). The prestige of Old Testament study gives the attempt its justification. Parallel study in the field of Homeric criticism and other ancient literatures increases that prestige. The " Holland School " therefore is an important phenomenon for the interpreter of the New Testament. He must not yield to the temptation to sit in the seat of the scornful, but must show by deeper study of the Apostolic Age that the methods which are at home in the Old Testament are to be used with extreme caution in the New Testament field.
The intellectual leadership of England in the first part of the eighteenth century, the work of high promise in the field of text-criticism, gave reason to expect that the same sequence of thought
which brought the higher criticism
7. English close on the heels of text-criticism in
Exegesis. Germany would operate here. But
there was no constructive philosophical movement in England to endow the religious reason with confidence. Instead, a great revival of religion (see Methodists) grappled the Bible, as the traditional theory of inspiration presented it, to the heart of England. Criticism, in breaking through the crust of tradition, had an extremely hard task. A typical exegete, the product of this religious revival, was Thomas Scott (1747-1821). His Holy Bible (4 vols., London, 1788-92; see Bibles, Annotated, II., § 8), running through many editions, was the representative English commentary down to Alford's Greek Testament. Sir James Stephen called it " the greatest theological performance of our age and country." This opinion is a good standard by which to estimate the state of interpretation in England. Scott's Bible had great value as a devotional and dogmatic commentary along the lines of Evangelical feeling, but no historical insight. It is sometimes mistakenly said that the critical movement in England broke ground through Edward Evanson (1731-1805), who published The Dissonance of the Four generally Received Evangelists (Ipswich, 1792). But Evanson was not a critic. He was an antidogmatic dogmatist. More solid ground was taken by Herbert Marsh (1757-1839), bishop of Peterborough. He issued a translation of Michaelis' Einleitung in die Schriften des Neuen Bundes as Introduction to the New Testament (4 vols., Cambridge, 1793-1801). In his own work, along the lines of Michaelis, he deserves high credit for the first inquiry in English into the origin of the canonical books. While, however, he provoked wholesale attack, his work had no appreciable results. When the strain of the Napoleonic
wars was over and the revival of historical studies began, the Oxford movement turned the entire energy of the Church of England into the channels of ecclesiastical restoration and debate. Charles Lloyd (1788-1829), dreading the effect upon England of the kind of Bible-study that was carrying the day in Germany, urged on his pupil E. B.Pusey (1800-82) the advisability of a course of study in German universities. Pusey was in Germany in 1825 and again in 1826-27. His acquaintance with German scholarship, his labors as a Hebraist and the subordination of all his scholarship to his vast influence as a churchman made him the most representative man in the English Church. F. D. Maurice (1805-72) brought to the study of the Scriptures an ennobling mysticism and a liberating mind. But as an interpreter he wholly lacked the historical spirit and method. The best preliminary work in Great Britain was done by Samuel Davidson (1806-99), professor at Belfast and Manchester. Frankly acknowledging his debt to Germany, devoting all his energy to Bible-work, he manifested both the initiative and the conservatism proper to a scholar doing a pioneer's work in a difficult field. It is characteristic of the situation that the critical movement should have cleared its main line of approach through the demand for a revised translation. Gathering volume from the middle of the century, and reaching its goal in 1881, it led to the monumental text-work of Tregelles and Westcott and Hort, and threw open the entire field of Bible-study. Essays and Reviews (q.v., London, 1860) raised a storm of controversy regarding the established views on inspiration. J. W Colenso (1814-83), bishop of Natal, through his Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua critically Examined (7 parts, London, 1862-79), forced the Pentateuchal question to the front. The notable book by Sir John Robert Seeley, Ecce Homo (London, 1865), fixed attention on the humanity of Christ and thus, like the similar work of Scholten in Holland, helped to make the critical study of the Gospels inevitable. Henry Afford (1810-71) published a Greek Testament (4 vols., London, 1849-61) which rendered high service to a generation of English and American students, and signalized the immense advance of English interpretation since Scott's Bible. J. B. Lightfoot (1828- 1889), bishop of Durham, published commentaries on the Pauline Epistles which combined in an extraordinary degree historical knowledge, exegetical insight, and literary charm. B. F. Westcott (1825-1901), bishop of Durham, in his commentaries on the Fourth Gospel, I John, and Hebrews, combined deep patristic learning with the historical method and spiritual charm. But while, through these and other scholars, Great Britain had created a body of work possessing high interpretational value, it presented an almost unbroken conservative front to the fundamental critical questions. Not until the last quarter of the century did the critical movement invade Great Britain with power. Here, as on the Continent, the Old Testament field was in many ways the proving-ground. The names of W Robertson Smith (1846-94) and of T. K- Cheyne are distinguished. The publishing of the