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Moses Stuart and the Unintentional Secularization of American Biblical Studies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2023
Abstract
Building off recent work investigating the development of modern biblical criticism, this essay argues that the broadly conservative scholar Moses Stuart (1780–1852) should be seen as playing a key but unintentional role in the secularization of biblical studies in nineteenth-century America. Stuart played this role in several ways. Hermeneutically, he imbibed and popularized naturalistic assumptions summed up in the maxim that the Bible should be interpreted like any other book. Educationally, when arguing for the curricular importance of Hebrew studies, he justified the Bible’s importance not via its role as Scripture, but primarily via its place as excellent classical literature. Stuart’s example thereby suggests that, in studying the demise of Scripture’s sacred status in the modern era, scholars must pay attention not only to the attacks of the Bible’s liberal critics but also to the methods and assumptions of its conservative defenders.
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- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College
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1 Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Cf. Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
2 Shalom Goldman, God’s Sacred Tongue: Hebrew and the American Imagination (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004) 142.
3 This is the basic thesis of several recent works, most notably those by Michael Legaspi (see n. 1) and Michael Lee, The Erosion of Biblical Certainty: Battles Over Authority and Interpretation in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Lee focuses on how the process documented here was in fact well underway already in 18th-cent. America, while Legaspi focuses on German scholar J. D. Michaelis and how, in his scholarship, he came to view Israel as one classical civilization among others. The contribution of this essay, then, is to show the ways in which Stuart contributed to the process of the demise of Scripture’s sacred status in the American context.
4 Unitarianism was a charge repeatedly leveled at Stuart in his own day. See Moses Stuart, “Letter to the Editor, On the Study of the German Language,” Christian Review 6 (1841) 446–71, at 451–52, 455–57.
5 Edwards A. Park, A Discourse Delivered at the Funeral of Professor Moses Stuart (Boston: Tappan & Whittemore, 1852); William Adams, A Discourse on the Life and Services of Professor Moses Stuart (New York: John F. Trow, 1852).
6 Charles Hodge, a contemporary, notably viewed Stuart in this way, founding the Biblical Repertory to combat what he saw as the “New Theology” of Stuart and others. See Roy A. Harrisville, Pandora’s Box Opened: An Examination and Defense of the Historical-Critical Method and Its Master Practitioners (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014) 162.
7 Harrisville, Pandora’s Box, 148–61.
8 Goldman, God’s Sacred Tongue, 142.
9 Jerry Wayne Brown, The Rise of Biblical Criticism in America, 1800–1870: The New England Scholars (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1969) 45.
10 E. Brooks Holifield notes that “Edwardeans,” the inheritors of the theology of Jonathan Edwards, divided into three distinct schools at this time: the “New England theology” associated with Andover Theological Seminary, the “New Haven theology” of Yale University, and the “Oberlin theology” of the Ohio River valley. See E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) 341–44. Stuart became known for his opposition to the Unitarianism of William Ellery Channing, concerning which, see Jeffrey A. Wilcox, “ ‘A More Thorough Trinitarian’: Moses Stuart, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and the Trinitarian Debate in Antebellum New England,” in Schleiermacher’s Influences on American Thought and Religious Life (ed. Jeffrey A. Wilcox, Terrence N. Tice, and Catherine L. Kelsey; 2 vols.; Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2013) 1:159–89.
11 Leonard Woods, History of the Andover Theological Seminary (Boston: James R. Osgood and Co., 1885) 257. Professors further had to pledge, “I will maintain and inculcate the Christian faith, as expressed in the [seminary’s] Creed … and in opposition, not only to Atheists and Infidels, but to Jews, Papists, Mahometans, Arians, Pelagians, Antinomians, Arminians, Socinians, Sabellians, Unitarians, and Universalists; and to all heresies and errors, antient [sic] or modern, which may be opposed to the Gospel of CHRIST, or hazardous to the souls of men.” See the “Associate Statutes” of Andover Seminary, found in idem, 255–69, at 260.
12 A description of the extensive duties of the professor of “Sacred Literature” is given in the original “Constitution of the Theological Seminary,” found in Woods, History of the Andover Theological Seminary, 235.
13 While my interpretation differs in some respects, a concise overview of Stuart’s hermeneutics can be found in John Giltner, Moses Stuart: The Father of Biblical Science in America (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988) 45–55.
14 Giltner, Moses Stuart, 8–11.
15 Johann August Ernesti, Institutio Interpretis Novi Testamenti (Leipzig, 1761), translated as Moses Stuart, Elements of Interpretation: Translated from the Latin of J. A. Ernesti and Accompanied by Notes, with an Appendix Containing Extracts from Morus, Beck and Keil (Andover, MA: Flagg and Gould, 1822). Stuart’s translation went through numerous reprints. Stuart begins his preface by noting his reasons for publishing the book: “The publication of the following work, in its present form, originated from the want of a text-book, in our country, on the science of interpretation” (iii). Cf. Moses Stuart, “Are the Same Principles of Interpretation to Be Applied to the Scriptures as to Other Books?” The Biblical Repository 2 (1832) 124–37, at 124. On Ernesti and his apologetic aims, with a brief glance at his reception in Stuart, see John Sailhamer, “Johann August Ernesti: The Role of History in Biblical Interpretation,” JETS 44 (2001) 193–206.
16 “Et quoniam haec omnia communia sunt libris divinis et humanis; patet, non alio modo vel quaeri vel reperiri sensum verborum in libris sacris, quoad humana opera intercedit, quam quo in humanis vel solet vel debet”; Johann August Ernesti, Institutio Interpretis Novi Testamenti (5th ed.; Leipzig, 1809) 27. I have cited this edition, as it is the one Stuart translated from in 1822. See Stuart, Elements of Interpretation, iii.
17 Stuart, Elements of Interpretation, 15.
18 Stuart, “Are the Same Principles,” 130.
19 “Nearly all treatises on hermeneutics, which have been written since the days of Ernesti, have laid it down as a maxim which cannot be controverted, that the Bible is to be interpreted in the same manner, i.e. by the same principles, as all other books. Writers are not wanting, previously to the period in which Ernesti lived, who have maintained the same thing”; Moses Stuart, “Are the Same Principles,” 124.
20 Helpful here are H. J. M. Nellen, “Growing Tension between Church Doctrines and Critical Exegesis of the Old Testament,” in The Nineteenth Century (ed. Magne Sæbø; vol. 3.1. of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013) 802–26; Steven Nadler, “The Bible Hermeneutics of Baruch de Spinoza,” in ibid., 827–36. It is noteworthy, however, that earlier thinkers such as Grotius still believed that Scripture possessed deeper meanings beyond solely a literal-historical sense, something which Stuart adamantly denied. See Nellen, “Growing Tension,” 812–14; Stuart, “Are the Same Principles.”
21 Moberly traces the wording to Jean Turretini’s De Sacrae Scripturae interpretandae methodo tractatus bipartitus (Trajecti Thuviorum, 1728); see R. W. L. Moberly, “ ‘Interpret the Bible Like Any Other Book’? Requiem for an Axiom,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 4 (2010) 91–110, at 93.
22 “Ernesti’s work was one of the first respectable efforts, to reduce the principles of interpretation to a science”; Stuart, Elements of Interpretation, v (italics in original).
23 See Lee, The Erosion of Biblical Certainty, 173–84; Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) esp. 162–89.
24 Moses Stuart, “Lectures on Hermeneutics, 1 and 2,” Moses Stuart Papers, Andover Newton Theological School Library, as quoted in Lee, The Erosion of Biblical Certainty, 174.
25 Benjamin Jowett, “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in Essays and Reviews (London: John W. Parker and Son, 1860) 330–433. Jowett is used most famously in David Steinmetz’s article “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” ThTo 37 (1980) 27–38. A more recent work, building off Steinmetz, that uses Jowett as a launching point is Keith Stanglin, The Letter and Spirit of Biblical Interpretation: From the Early Church to Modern Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018) 172–74. While not explicitly citing Steinmetz or Jowett, Craig Carter begins the first page of his Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018) by deconstructing the statement “We should interpret the Bible like any other book” (ix). A constructive biblical-theological rebuttal to this idea that notes its prehistory in Ernesti, but neglects the role of Stuart, is offered in Moberly, “ ‘Interpret the Bible Like Any Other Book’?”
26 Stuart’s Elements of Interpretation went through second (London, 1822), third (Andover, 1838), and fourth (Andover and New York, 1842) editions.
27 Stuart, “Are the Same Principles,” 126.
28 Moses Stuart, “On the Alleged Obscurity of Prophecy,” The Biblical Repository 2 (1832) 217–45, at 222; cf. Stuart, “Are the Same Principles,” 125–26, 129.
29 Moses Stuart, Hints on the Interpretation of Prophecy (Andover, MA: Allen, Morrill, & Wardwell, 1842) 9.
30 Telling here are two statements by Stuart: “To the question which is the test by which different principles of hermeneutics are to be tried, I answer without hesitation, Reason”; Moses Stuart, “Lecture on Hermeneutics” Lecture 1, cited in Mark Granquist, “The Role of ‘Common Sense’ in the Hermeneutics of Moses Stuart,” HTR 83 (1999) 305–19, at 312. Also, “[Reason cannot act as the] interpreter of revelation, and not in any case as a legislator. Reason can only judge of the appropriate laws of exegesis, and direct them in order to discover simply what the sacred writers meant to assert”; Stuart, “Letters to Dr. Channing on the Trinity,” Letter 1, pp. 10–11, quoted in Granquist, “Common Sense,” 313 (italics in original).
31 Stuart, “Are the Same Principles,” 124–26.
32 Mark Granquist shows the decisive influence of Common Sense Realism on Stuart in Granquist, “Common Sense.” For the role of Common Sense reasoning more broadly in this period, see Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) 93–113.
33 Moses Stuart, “Remarks on Jahn’s Definition of Interpretation,” The Biblical Repository 1 (1831), quoted in Granquist, “Common Sense,” 314 (italics in original).
34 Stuart, “Are the Same Principles,” 135.
35 For this, see esp. Granquist, “Common Sense,” 315–16.
36 Moses Stuart, “Hints Respecting Commentaries upon the Scriptures,” The Biblical Repository 3 (1833) 130–85, at 172.
37 For this, see also Harrisville, Pandora’s Box, 150–58, who offers further examples of Stuart’s attacks on Hengstenberg’s views.
38 The prime work of Hengstenberg’s that Stuart referred to in this regard was Ernst Hengstenberg, Christologie des Alten Testaments (Berlin: L. Oehmigke, 1829). Cf. Giltner, Moses Stuart, 51–52. For Hengstenberg, see Rudolf Smend, “A Conservative Approach in Opposition to a Historical-Critical Interpretation: E. W. Hengstenberg and Franz Delitzsch,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (ed. Sæbø), 3.1:494–520; M. A. Deuschle, Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg. Ein Beitrag zur Erforschung des kirchlichen Konservatismus im Preußen des 19. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
39 Ernst Hengstenberg, “On the Nature of Prophecy,” The Biblical Repository 2 (trans. James F. Warner; 1832) 138–73 (see esp. 166–73).
40 For Hengstenberg on the single sense of prophecy, see ibid., 162–63.
41 Stuart, “Alleged Obscurity,” 219.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., 229.
44 Moses Stuart, Hints on the Interpretation of Prophecy, esp. the section “Is Prophecy Unintelligible?” on pp. 47–66. Two editions were published in 1842, with a third, enlarged edition appearing in 1851. Stuart’s views on the intelligibility of prophecy did not change between the editions.
45 For an overview of this debate, see Giltner, Moses Stuart, 66–74.
46 Ibid., 70 (emphasis added). The works in question are Benjamin Silliman, “The Consistency of Geology with Sacred History,” in Robert Bakewell, An Introduction to Geology (ed. Benjamin Silliman; 2nd US ed.; New Haven: H. Howe, 1833) 389–466; Edward Hitchcock, “The Connection between Geology and the Mosaic History of the Creation,” The Biblical Repository and Quarterly Observer 6 (1835) 261–332.
47 Moses Stuart, cited in Giltner, Moses Stuart, 69.
48 Moses Stuart, “A Critical Examination of Some Passages in Gen. 1; with Remarks on Difficulties that Attend Some of the Present Modes of Geological Reasoning,” The Biblical Repository and Quarterly Observer 7 (1836) 46–107, at 103, cited in Giltner, Moses Stuart, 73.
49 Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 157; Westminster Confession of Faith I.vi–vii.
50 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (ed. John T. McNeill; trans. Ford Lewis Battles; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006) II.ii.21.
51 Stuart, “Are the Same Principles,” 130.
52 Hengstenberg is again an instructive counterpoint here. His position is aptly characterized by his pithy remark, “Es sollen eben nicht alle die Schrift verstehen”; E. W. Hengstenberg, Christologie des Alten Testaments und Commentar über die messianischen Weissagungen (4 parts in 3 vols.; 2nd ed.; Berlin, 1854–57) 3.2:131.
53 Calvin, Institutes, IV.viii.9.
54 Stuart, “Alleged Obscurity,” 224, 228–29. Stuart later wrote, “The inspired man ascends an intellectual and moral eminence so high, that his prospect widens almost without bounds, and what is altogether hidden from ordinary men is more or less distinctly within his view”; A Commentary on the Apocalypse (2 vols.; Andover, MA: Allen, Morill & Wardwell, 1845) 1:168. In comparing these quotations of Calvin to Stuart, I do not intend thereby to hold up Calvin as the inviolable standard of the Reformed tradition. Rather, I merely use him as a shorthand for designating a general consensus that theologians of this tradition held to. Furthermore, because Stuart himself identified as a “Calvinist” and lauds Calvin not infrequently, the comparison seems apt. For one such instance of Stuart praising Calvin, see Stuart, “Hints Respecting Commentaries,” 147–48.
55 The quotes come, respectively, from Stuart, “Alleged Obscurity,” 229, and Stuart, “Are the Same Principles,” 129.
56 Giltner, Moses Stuart, 45–55; Harrisville, Pandora’s Box, 150–58.
57 Goldman, Hebrew and the Bible, xvii, xxi.
58 “When I began to teach the Hebrew language at this Seminary, there was only one Institution in the country where it was taught; which was Dr. Mason’s Divinity School in the city of New York. There were neither lexicons, nor grammars, nor any other parts of a Hebrew apparatus, to be had”; Moses Stuart, Letter to the Editor of the North American Review, On Hebrew Grammar (Andover, MA: William H. Wardwell, 1847) 5. Fascinating remarks about the state of Hebrew studies during this period can also be found in Charles C. Torrey, “The Beginnings of Oriental Study at Andover,” AJSL 13 (1897) 249–66; Goldman, God’s Sacred Tongue, 139–40.
59 The comment of Goldman summarizes the situation nicely: “The Hebraism of liberal Harvard and of more conservative Yale had waned by the first decade of the nineteenth century. Classicism thrived; Hebraism declined.” Goldman, God’s Sacred Tongue, 140.
60 Ibid., 142; John Sandys-Wunsch, What Have They Done to the Bible? A History of Modern Biblical Interpretation (Collegeville, MN: Glazier, 2005) 292–97; John Ray, The Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).
61 For a brief overview of this history, see James Findlay, “The Congregationalists and American Education,” History of Education Quarterly 17 (1977) 449–54. The fullest analysis is given in Natalie Naylor, “Raising a Learned Ministry: The American Education Society, 1815–1860” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1971).
62 Naylor, “Raising a Learned Ministry,” 224–25.
63 The “Andover Rule” of Stuart lasted for a decade, from 1827 to 1837. See Giltner, Moses Stuart, 22.
64 The three articles in view are Moses Stuart, “Letter on the Study of the Classics,” Quarterly Journal of the American Education Society 1 (1828) 85–98; idem, “Study of the Hebrew,” Quarterly Journal of the American Education Society 2 (1829) 193–204; idem, “Union of Classical and Sacred Studies,” Quarterly Journal of the American Education Society 3 (1831) 161–66.
65 A brief contextual look at these articles of Stuart’s can be found in Naylor, “Raising a Learned Ministry,” 261–64.
66 Stuart, “Letter on the Study of the Classics,” 88 (italics in original).
67 Ibid., esp. 92–93. Stuart gave many of the same reasons in his defense of the usefulness of Hebrew in Stuart, “Study of the Hebrew,” 194–95.
68 Stuart, “Letter on the Study of the Classics,” 95, 98. Notably, numerous students of Stuart went on to become Bible translators, with Adoniram Judson being the most well-known among them. For a full list, see Giltner, Moses Stuart, 27, and the sources cited there.
69 Stuart, “Letter on the Study of the Classics,” 96.
70 Stuart, “Study of the Hebrew.”
71 For the quote, see ibid., 213.
72 Ibid., 196.
73 Both quotations come from ibid., 197.
74 Robert Lowth, De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1753). An English translation was made by George Gregory in 1787. The work was first published in America in Boston in 1829 as Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews.
75 Stuart, “Study of the Hebrew,” 197–98. Stuart’s comments here are clearly influenced by the work of Lowth, though he does not explicitly acknowledge this. However, in his third letter to the Society, Stuart does expressly praise Lowth’s “immortal work on Hebrew poetry”; see Stuart, “Union of Classical and Sacred Studies,” 163. Stuart further praises Lowth in his Hebrew Chrestomathy: Designed as an Introduction to a Course of Hebrew Study (3rd ed.; Andover, MA: Gould & Newman, 1838) 165.
76 Stuart, “Study of the Hebrew,” 198.
77 Legaspi, The Death of Scripture, 33. This entire paragraph leans upon Legaspi’s work. Stuart’s familiarity with Michaelis is shown by his broad use of him; see, e.g., Moses Stuart, A Grammar of the Hebrew Language (Andover, MA: Flagg & Gould, 1828) vi; idem, A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1850) 18, 313, 460; idem, Critical History and Defense of the Old Testament Canon (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1849) 57, 59, 73, 102, 318.
78 For biblical education as state-building, see Legaspi, The Death of Scripture. For Stuart’s zeal for foreign missions and its impact upon his work as an educator, see Giltner, Moses Stuart, 27–28; Stuart, “Letter on the Study of the Classics,” 95–98.
79 Stuart, “Letter on the Study of the Classics,” 96 (italics in original).
80 Moses Stuart, Hebrew Chrestomathy: Designed as the First Volume of a Course of Hebrew Study (Andover, MA: Flagg & Gould, 1829).
81 The Chrestomathy later went through second (1832) and third (1838) editions. Stuart had published an elementary Hebrew grammar in 1813 and a more substantial grammar in 1821. The latter work went through numerous further editions and expansions. See Giltner, Moses Stuart, 137–38.
82 Stuart, Hebrew Chrestomathy, iii–viii.
83 Legaspi, The Death of Scripture, 159.
84 Magne Sæbø, “Introductory Remarks on Two Methodological Problems in Biblical Studies,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament (ed. Sæbø), 3.1:19–26, at 25.
85 Legaspi again: “[Michaelis’s classical Israel] was venerable enough to be a plausible part of religious scholarship, but too impoverished theologically to sustain an actual community of faith”; Legaspi, The Death of Scripture, 159.
86 This trend is traced from the 19th cent. to the present day in Jon Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism: Jews and Christians in Biblical Studies (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993) 106–26.