Those who have read my blog posts here note that I am quite enamored
of Professor James Kugel. I have quoted
from his book, How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now (Free
Press 2007 ed.). That book was about
modern scholarship and traditional interpretations (including Christian
interpretations) of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible / Old Testament; in this post I
will call it the Hebrew Bible). The book
rocked my boat when I first read it (still does), bringing to the task of reading
my past in the Christian tradition.
I was surprised that Professor Kugel opened the book
(Chapter 1, titled "Rise of Modern Biblical Scholarship") with a picture of
Professor Charles Augustus Briggs. I had never heard of Briggs before but I
turned the page anyway and quickly found out.
Briggs’ Wikipedia page starts off by saying that he was “American
Presbyterian (and later Episcopalian) scholar and theologian.” Kugel’s bookends the opening and closing of
Chapter 1 with Briggs' story. As a professor at Union Theological Seminary
in New York City, Briggs gave a speech on his specialty, the Hebrew Bible / Old
Testament, laying out the best scholarship on the Hebrew Bible at the time (the
1890s). For that, the Presbyterian Church
excommunicated Briggs for heresy (although his scholarship in the speech has stood the test of time). The excommunication came after
a long and well-publicized trial in Washington D.C. How many knew that the Presbyterians
excommunicated? I have asked a few Presbyterians and few knew about the episode. I always thought excommunication was a Catholic thing. (When I first read
the book, I was a Baptist and, as such, just suspected that the Presbyterians had hung onto that vestige of Catholicism.)
I offer below the opening and closing related of Chapter 1 excerpts related to Charles
Augustus Briggs (I put page numbers in brackets) (and for those wanting to know
what is between the opening and closing (it’s great), please email me jack@tjtaxlaw.com. I omit footnotes (mostly scholarly) and bold-face certain parts that might be of particular interest to WPC members:
[2]
On a warm
May afternoon in 1893, a man stood on trial for heresy in Washington, D.C. This
circumstance might in itself appear surprising. The defendant was being tried
by the Presbyterian Church, which had always prided itself on its tradition of
intellectualism and an educated clergy. While disagreements about church
teachings were not rare in the denomination, going as far as putting a man on
trial for his beliefs was certainly an extreme step. n1 Such a trial might also
appear ill-suited to the end of the nineteenth century, a time of great
openness to new ideas. Darwin's Origin of Species had been published a full
three decades earlier, and Einstein's first writings on the theory of
relativity were only twelve years away. America itself was a country of
electric-powered machines and newfangled telephones, a rising economic and
political center with its own burgeoning literary and intellectual avant-garde.
Across the Atlantic, Sigmund Freud was working out his ideas on sexuality and
the unconscious; Pablo Picasso was twelve years old, James Joyce was eleven,
and D. H. Lawrence was eight. Heresy?
Still more
surprising was the man in the dock; Charles Augustus Briggs hardly seemed
fitted to the role of heretic. In his youth, he had been an altogether
traditional Presbyterian, distinguished only by the fervor of his belief. In
his sophomore year at the University of Virginia, he presented himself for
formal membership at the First Presbyterian Church of Charlottesville, and
thereafter he became a committed evangelical Christian. n2 The tone of his
faith in those early years is well captured by a letter he wrote to his sister
Millie:
I trust you feel that you are a sinner. I trust that you
know that Christ is your Savior, and I want to entreat you to go to him in
prayer. I know by experience that Christ is precious, and that I would not give
him up for the world... . Do you want to be separated from your brother and
sister when they shall be with Jesus? Are you willing to be with the Devil in
torment? You can decide the question in a moment. n3
So great
was Briggs's sense of calling that he soon abandoned plans to go into his
father's highly prosperous business—Alanson Briggs, known as the "barrel
king," owned and operated the largest barrel factory in the United
States—in order to devote himself entirely to a life of Christian preaching and
teaching.
[3]
Briggs
proved to be a gifted student of biblical Hebrew and ancient history, and he
was soon ordained a Presbyterian minister. After having served as pastor to a
small congregation in New Jersey for a time, he accepted a teaching post at one
of the mainline seminaries of his day, the Union Theological Seminary in New
York, where he lectured on Hebrew grammar and various biblical themes. He
became, by all accounts, a highly respected scholar, acclaimed at a relatively
young age as already belonging to "the foremost rank among the scholars of
his day." n4 Today, a century
later, one of Briggs's books is still in print (a rare feat among academics!),
a dictionary of biblical Hebrew that he coauthored with Francis Brown and S. R.
Driver in 1906. Indeed, "BDB," as this dictionary is commonly known
(for the initials of its three authors' last names), is still a required
purchase for any graduate student undertaking serious work on the Hebrew Bible.
What, then,
was this son of the Establishment, an expert in Hebrew lexicography and
biblical theology, doing on trial? It all had to do with a speech he had made
two years earlier, on the occasion of his being named to a prestigious new
chair at Union Seminary. Briggs's inaugural address, delivered on the evening
of January 20, 1891, went on for well more than an hour. It began innocently
enough; as required of all such appointees at Presbyterian seminaries, he
opened with a public declaration of his faith in the Bible and the church's system
of governance:
