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“Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies”: Archaeology and the Popularization of Old Testament Criticism in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Barbara Zink Machaffie
Barbara Zink Machaffie
Affiliation:
Ms. MacHaffie is assistant professor of religious studies in Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio.
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Abstract

Historians of the development of biblical criticism in the nineteenth century have normally treated this aspect of intellectual history as a preserve of the university don and the ambitious cleric. However, further study points to a movement of considerable magnitude and momentum beginning in the last decades of that century which aimed at popularizing the methods and results of the higher criticism of the Old Testament. Widespread popular recognition of a critical approach to the Old Testament and its implications began in the 1860s in response to the work of J. W. Colenso and the contributors to Essays and Reviews.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 316 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1981

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References

1. For the development of Old and New Testament criticism in nineteenth-century Britain, see Owen, Chadwick, The Victorian Church, 2 vols. (London, 1970), 2: 60–75,Google Scholar and Willis, B. Glover, Evangelical Nonconformists and Higher Criticism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1954), pp. 25–35.Google Scholar

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19. Ibid., p.22 .

20. Sayce, , Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, By-Paths of Bible Knowledge, 2d ed. (London, 1884).Google Scholar

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22. Ibid., p.273.

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27. Ibid., p.v.

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