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5

Bishop Colenso, Zulu Ethnography and the Higher Criticism

Making Sense of Ancient Wisdom"It seems probable," the novelist Henry James once wrote, "that if we were never bewildered, therewould never be a story to tell about us." Indeed, we owe much to this element of bewilderment for thefact that records of non-Western peoples began to be available to Europeans in the 19th century. Grey inhis reading of the Maori literature1felt that there was much that was "puerile" in native traditions. MaxMller declared parts of The Sacred Books of the East2 to be "silly". Even so, they were sufficiently

perplexed to see some value in the close and careful reading of these texts. If we take their statementsabout the silly childishness of native traditions at face value, we, in turn, can only be puzzled about whythey should have devoted significant portions of their lives to its study. If the earliest scholars of ancientwisdom believed that these texts should be transparent--yeilding meaning without tension or effort--thenMuller, Grey and Colenso, among others of their generation, discovered their intractability to "ordinary"interpretation. Through their difficulties with interpretation they bequeathed later scholars a gift ofirony, for their perplexity was real, and it was profound.

In l846, Grey was beginning to discover the depths of the meaning in Maori oral literature that he wouldeventually seek to plumb. At almost the same time, there were others who had also begun to confrontthe problem of the meaningfulness of religious and intellectual traditions. Karl Marx, for instance waswriting "On the Jewish Question3", and with Friedrich Engels, pondered over the German ideology.Thomas Carlyle wrote about the symbolic nature of Man in Sartor Resartus4 and composed "AnOccasional Discourse on the Negro Question."5 Though radically different in many ways, both wereconcerned, like Grey, Colenso and Bleek, with problems of the meaningfulness of identity and traditionsin ways which--it seems to us now--were entirely new but with grave portends for the future.

In May of 1846, the rector of the rural parish of Forncett St. Mary's, John William Colenso, addressed hisfirst paper to the Depwade Clerical society, a gathering of rural clerics in Norfolk County, England 6. Hespoke on his perplexity over the pastoral epistle of Timothy II. How could it be, he asked his brotherclerics, "that the blessed truth of God's loving purpose for the salvation of all men, [is] to be received in

juxtaposition, however mysterious, with that of the persisting condition of the Heathens."7

In that year a young German came to England to look for copies of manuscripts of the ancient religiousbooks of India in the archives of the East India Company in London. Through the Prussian Ambassadorin London, Baron von Bunsen, this young scholar, Friedrich Max Mller, began his career as one of thecentury's most eminent Sankritists. In that year, too, Wilhelm Bleek entered the University of Bonn tostudy for a doctorate in Theology, but was eventually led astray by his curiosity about the apparentirrationality of gender in languages, and later, by an even deeper puzzlement over some recently obtainedvocabularies from Mozambique and Southern Africa.

For these men, their initial puzzlement led them towards a deeper and ever more penetrating study oflanguages and cultures that were foreign to them. Their perplexity, however, was not allayed. It

1 . George Grey, Ko Nga Mahinga a nga tupuna Maori [The Mythology and Tradition of the New Zealanders],London, G. Willis, 1854.

2

. Friedrich Max Mller,"Introduction" to Volume I, Sacred Books of the East.

3 . K. Marx, "ber den Jude Fage" [on the Jewish Question], 1849.

4 . Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.

5 . Carlyle, Thomas "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question". Frazer's Magazine 40:670-690, Dec. 1849.

6 . The Depwade Clerical Society journals are the earliest record that I have been able to find of Colenso'sdeveloping interest in Africa and mission work. The are kept in the Norwich Public Library. Jeff Guy mentionstheir existence ( p.33 ofThe Heretic), but makes little use of them in his study of Colenso.

7 . Journal of the Depwade Clerical Society, 12 May, 1846; Norwich public Library, MS Room.

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deepened as their knowledge grew. In the beginning they scarcely had any idea of what it was theywould be pursuing when they began their studies. Max Mller, for example, remembered that among thesome of the men to whom he had been introduced in the year following his arrival in England, includingthe historians Connop Thirlwall and Julius Hare, the archaeologists Henry Rawlinson and Layard, the

politicians Gladstone and Monckton, and the theologian Frederick Dennison Maurice, that there had been"some vague impression that I had discovered a very old religion, older than the Jewish and the Christian,which contained the key to many of the mysteries that had puzzled the ancients, nay even the modern

world." 8 But eventually, as his knowledge of the ancient texts grew, Muller apparently felt that he mustapologize for what he took to be the failure of the ancient texts to live up to the expectations of theEuropean audience. In the first pages of his preface to the series of translations of oriental sacred andlegal manuscripts that came out under his general editorship between 1879 and 1894, Mller declaredthat

readers who have been led to believe that the Vedas of the ancient Brahmans, theAvesta of the Zoroastrians, the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, (etc) . . are full of primevalwisdom and religious enthusiasm, or at least of sound and simple moral teachings, willbe disappointed on consulting these volumes. 9

While it was possible to see in these early texts the "dawn of religious consciousness of man," accordingto Max Mller, it was a dawn that could chill as well as warm and enlighten us with its "dark clouds, itschilling colds, its noxious vapours."10 It was certainly true that these works had been, and for many stillwere sacred, but Mller had discovered that even in these sacred and ancient works there was a great dealthat did not make sense to him.

From the perspective of our critical view over a century later, we are not surprised that Mller mightcondemn the oriental texts as "silly", or "noxious", and that he would fail to understand them completely.What is remarkable, however, is that Mller himself fully expected that they would make sense, and thatthey would make sense to him. He expected that the translation would make the meaning transparent,that is, that the texts were simply what they appeared to be, that their meaning was internal to them, andthat it was independent of its historical and cultural context. He shared with many others of this time afaith in an absolute and transcendent truth. Thus, he wrote,

I confess it has been for many years a problem for me. ... how the Sacred Books of theEast should, by the side of so much that is fresh, natural, simple, beautiful, and true,contain so much that is not only unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous andrepellent. This is a fact, and it must be accounted for in some way or other.11

Mller was honestly and sincerely puzzled, but he carried on in a workman-like way in his labour ofmeticulous translation. His work led him to affirm more and more strongly his faith in the Christiandoctrines that were--or that he believed were-- embodied in the Christian Bible. Colenso, on the otherhand, in traversing much the same path, applied the same critical methods to the Bible. His work was, ina sense, the other side of the coin from that of Max Mller. Colenso sought to translate the sacred booksof the West into the language of the Zulu. Where Mller had noted the apparent lack of logic andtriviality of some of the Vedic scriptures, Colenso discovered the incoherencies of the Christian Bible.Their struggle was with the perplexing un-meaningfulness of language. The two of them suddenly sawwhile in the act of translation that the silly and the hideous lurked among the grand truths in the templesof their sacred texts.

This discovery of the meaningless among the meaningful, occasioned in their cases by their close andcritical confrontation of texts completely foreign to them, did not lead them towards satisfyingconclusions about the social or cultural nature of the texts themselves. The critic Matthew Arnold, in an

important essay on Colenso's criticism of the Bible was quick to point out that Colenso's work did not"edify", that is, it did not lead one out of the perplexity about meaning that it had occasioned. 12 Therecognition by Colenso and Max Mller that something was seriously wrong with their concepts ofmeaning and of texts, did pave the way for the more successful attempts of E.B. Tylor and James Frazer

8 . F. Max Mller, My Autobiography: A Fragment. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1901. p.213.

9 . Mller, F.M. The Sacred Books of the East, vol.1 (1879), p. xvi.

10 . Mller,1879.

11 . Mller, 1879: vol.1, p. xii.

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to come to grips with the apparent silliness of the received traditions of aboriginal peoples. Moreimportantly, the limits of their understanding of themselves and of their own traditions began to beapparent.

Zulu Religion and the Search for Truth

John William Colenso was born in 1814 in St. Austell, Cornwall. His father was a mining agent whose

fortunes appear to have failed soon after John William was born. He showed exceptional abilities in hisschool-work, however, and was accepted as an assistant in a school in Dartmouth. From there, he went toSt. John's College, Cambridge under a fellowship from the college, in 1833. He studied mathematics atSt. John's and some four years later was elected a Fellow of that college. For a few years he served as amaster at Harrow School, but after a fire that destroyed most of the house over which he had had charge,Colenso returned to St. John's and began there to write mathematical texts for use in schools. Betweenhis tenure as master at Harrow, and his ordination as Bishop of Natal in 1853, Colenso wrote and

published three texts for elementary school mathematics, The Elements of Algebra, (1844), GeometricalProblems, As given in the edition of Euclid's Geometry(1846), and Plane Trigonometry (1851). Evenafter his departure for Natal, and his subsequent involvement first in Zulu linguistics, then in Biblicalcriticism, and finally, in the defense of Zulu political rights, he continued to revise and publish neweditions. Simplified volumes such as The Shilling Arithmetic and "Keys" to the Algebra andTrigonometry texts also continued to appear. Indeed, his mathematical works continued to be used in theschools of Britain and in South Africa until the turn of the century.

The income that he derived from these textbooks was significant in that it allowed him a considerablefreedom to act on principle13. Although his attack on the authenticity and coherence of the Biblical textswas ascribed by many of his critics to his "mathematical" turn of mind, as though logic wereinappropriate to a man of the cloth, his relative financial freedom made possible his unusualachievements. Moreover, his achievements in the fields of mathematics, missionary work, Zululinguistics, critical theology, and political action, all overlapped and sustained each other. His mind wastruly eclectic, and bridged the sub-cultures of academic disciplines, between Church and University, aswell as between the cultures of England, the Natal Colony, and the Zulu and other Nguni peoples of

Natal.

In the first months of 1846 Colenso married and resigned his fellowship at St. John's College. He wasappointed Rector of Forncett St. Mary's parish near Norwich, and moved there with his bride. Here he

began to concern himself with theology, and Biblical interpretation.

He was elected to the membership of a new society of local clerics who met monthly in each other'sparishes to discuss questions of theology and Biblical criticism. They called themselves the DepwadeClerical Society. Their by-laws stipulated that each member was to prepare a paper for presentation,either oral or written, to the other members of the society. The meetings began at 11 AM sharp, and afine of 6 pence was levied for every 15 minutes that an offender was late, up to a total of 2 s. 6 p. They

began with a prayer of the standard Anglican liturgy, after which each member presented his paper on thebook or chapter of the Bible which had been selected at the previous meeting. The secretary was re-sponsible for preparing an abstract of each paper and entering it into the journal. Abstracts were readduring the subsequent meeting and approved by the members. It was legislated in the by-laws, too, "Thata cold luncheon shall be taken at 2 o'clock; and the Meeting resumed at 3 o'clock".

On May 12, 1846, Colenso delivered to this society a significant statement about his views on God'srelation to man and society. It is all the more significant, because in this, the earliest written statementon his religious views that I have encountered, his concerns with an "Intelligent Creation", "the condition

of the Heathen", the freedom to seek the truth in the face of a necessary acknowledgement of uncertainty,and with the "awful responsibility" that these concepts entail, is already evident. In politecircumspection, the secretary of the society noted in their Journal, that Colenso's thesis had "given rise to

12 . Arnold, Matthew, " The Bishop and the Philosopher" [on Colenso and Spinoza], Macmillan's Magazine.January, 1863. Colenso is also mentioned in a similarly unfavourable light in Chapter VI, "Our LiberalPractitioners" in Culture and Anarchy, (first published 1869), edited by J. Dover Wilson, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1932 (reprinted 1979).

13 . See J. Guy's discussion of Colenso's financial difficulties, and their resolution, in The Hereticpp. 3-13 and 29-34.

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considerable discussion". The secretary devoted considerably more space than was usual to his abstractof the Colenso paper, perhaps for this reason.

It is clear, too, that there was considerable disagreement between the members of the society over thethreat to the Anglican Church posed by the Roman Catholic Church, especially as this was exerted by theMembers of the Oxford Movement and the Tractarians. John Henry Newman, and those who felt thatutilitarian and positivistic thought were irreconcilable with a truly religious life and mental outlook,

sought in the traditional forms of Medieval Roman Catholicism a transcendent religion which wasimmune to these intellectual threats. Those of the Anglican Church who were true to the spirit of HenryVIII's original protest, felt that while a "Fall" into "heathenism" in the form of utilitarian or positivistic

philosophies was deplorable, the turn to the "Romish Church" was tantamount to treason.

Thus, the first speaker on May 12, 1846, a Mr. Bevan, spoke on the first Epistle to Timothy. In thisletter, attributed to Paul, to Timothy, Bishop of the early Christian church, Paul treats the duty ofChristians to the Roman state 14 Mr. Bevan declared that "today our rulers are defenders of the Faith"against Rome. He urged that, while he "deprecated" heresy and schism in the Anglican Church, he felteven more strongly that the "the revival of ancient superstition is to be prayed against [since] Dissent isas [turbulent15] as Romish superstition is domineering". It may have been in response to a question fromColenso on the position of "heathen" with respect to both State and Church that Mr Bevan concluded,"Perhaps, also, the early Christians overlooked the case of the heathen".

One of the effects of Newman's very influential "tractarianism" was to sensitise all clergy, in whatever

camp they stood, to the political implications of specific religious professions, and to the social andintellectual effects of the forms of ritual and "superstition". It was these relationships that intrigued thenew Rector of Forncett St. Mary's. It seems likely that his perception of the political currents of powerand schism in the Christian church influenced his understanding of Zulu religion, and of his position as amediator between Zulu belief and practice and that of the Christian church.

In the following week's session, Colenso addressed himself to II Timothy, chapters 3 and 4, in which theauthor warns Timothy, his bishop, against men who are "lovers of self", who hold the "form of religion[but deny] the power of it" (II Tim. 3:5), and who wilfully "turn away from listening to the truth andwander into myths" (II Tim. 4:4). In his interpretation of these chapters of scriptures we see verystrongly the mark of Colenso's mentor, Frederick Dennison Maurice, a leading liberal AnglicanTheologian and originator of the concept of "Christian socialism", in which social conscience is stressed,and the power of human will, guided by Spirit rather than Law, is given a significant place in the work ofsocial change. Like Maurice, Colenso speaks of all men, or "mankind in the aggregate", not of a

"Church" or a "Nation" as his colleague had done earlier in their meeting.We all have received life from Him, the second Adam, as we received death from the

first. We have all strength, if we will but use it: the sin of the redeemed man is now sinagainst the Spirit, holding the truth in unrighteousness, thro' wilful folly and sensuality.There are those among the Heathen guided by the Inward Light, in more or less

sincerely, "seeking for glory and honour and immortality, who shall be saved"; whileothers "contentious, obey'd not the truth", are reserved for wrath at the last day. Thelove of God towards his entire Intelligent Creation is confirmed by Analogy to Nature:the rain from Heaven and fruitful seasons given not in mockery to doomed sinners, butin mercy to a ransomed race. The same Providence in temporal things and spiritualextends to all. It encourages us in the ministry to regard men as not altogether dead in

spirit, but as beings whom God has loved . . . The term "salvation" implies deliverancefrom the power as well as the penalty of sin, daily progressing, according as our life is[? tied16] more and more, with Xty in God. We work out this salvation with fear andtrembling; our position is not one of absolute safety and security; but one of glorious

14 . The text of this passage reads: "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions andthanksgivings be made for all men, for kings, and all who are in high positions. . . . This is good . . . in the sightof God our Saviour, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. " I Timothy, 2:1-4

15 . I was not able to read this word accurately in the manuscript; this word is my best guess.

16 . Another doubtful reading.

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hope and awful responsibility . . . It is not enough for us to live as pious Heathen ordevout Jews.17

Colenso's point of view and his expression have all the hallmarks of what L. Furst has called Romanticirony.18 All ironic views pay particular attention to ambiguity, doubt, and paradoxes, as Colenso doeshere in speaking of the "fear and trembling"19 as well as the social responsibility that his ironicuncertainty occasions, or that the paradoxical condition of the heathen with respect to Christian salvation

that he points up. But Furst suggests that the Romantic irony of the early 19th century differs from the"ordinary" in its "tendency to formulate theories about irony, to systematise itself self-consciously," andin the prominence it gives to "ambiguities and paradoxes". This prominence is such that it can not becontrolled, or will not be controlled, by the artist, and is not confined to the limits of his art, the textitself, and so draws its creator into the destructive vortex of existential doubt. It was this, according toFurst's view, that is the "final irony about Romantic irony". For, Romantic irony was conceived as anassertion of the artist's, and of Man's, freedom from and transcendence of the ordinary.

This is entirely consistent with Colenso's approach to the Zulu ethnography, and to his entire religiousand political experience in Natal. His use of Kierkegaard's now famous phrase "fear and trembling",emphasises his sensitivity to his existential agony over the potential for meaninglessness that his searchfor meaning entailed.

For the Romantic, the artist was a superior being . . . His irony was to be theexpression of his superiority; it signified his spiritual ability to fly . . . And irony was to

be the means of his transcendence, the path of progression to the higher realmfollowing the supposed annihilation of the finite. . . . Its realization was quiteother, . . . for it lead not to transcendence and progression, but to reduction anddishevelment.20

This spirit of transcendence through recognition of uncertainty, together with its assertion of universalrelevance and of Man's ability and duty to will his own future and salvation, are the essences of Colenso'stheological position. It is truly the "final irony" that it was these leading ideas that brought him to writehis critical dissertation on the Pentateuch. While he ever maintained that he was faithful to the Spirit ofChristianity, as he saw it, his view led to his dismissal as Bishop and to his castigation by one of the mosteminent critics of his day, Matthew Arnold.

Occasionally the uncritical spirit of our race [the German Romantic, Goethe, hadwritten that the English were uncritical ] determines to perform a great public act of

self-humiliation. Such an act has just been accomplished. It has just sent forth as its

scapegoat into the wilderness, amidst a titter from educated Europe, the Bishop ofNatal.21

In understanding Colenso's approach to the Zulu, and to the value of other cultures in general, we mustlook with equal care to the philosophy of universalism that he espoused, and to his willingness to apply toone realm of thought analogies or evidence from another. While his criticism of the Bible was certainlyderived from his familiarity with Zulu mythology, and with the scepticism of his Zulu converts, he wasalso very much aware of the findings of geology that the earth was more ancient that the Bible appearedto indicate. He was defended most forcefully on this point by Sir Charles Lyell himself in Lyall's "FirstAnnual Address to the Geological Society" in 1863.

Colenso's "Analogy with Nature" was consistent with Bishop Whateley's Rhetoric, a standard referencefor Christian apologetics at the time, but as science took as its domain more and more of "Nature", sucharguments were uncommon in theology. Finally, we note that Colenso uses the phrases "pious Jews" and

17 . Secretary's abstract of Colenso's paper in the Depwade Clerical Society Journal, 12 May, 1846. Norwich PublicLibrary, Norwich, England.

18 . Lilian Furst, Contours of European Romantic Irony, London: MacMillan, 1979.

19 . This phrase is borrowed from Soren Kierkegaard's book of the same title, published in 1843. Kierkegaard'sphilosophical position gave rise ultimately to what was called "Existentialist philosophy", which held that eachman exists alone, as an individual, in a universe devoid of meaning against which he must struggle

20 . L.Furst, 1979, p. 36.

21 . M.Arnold,1863, op cit, p. 41.

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"devout Heathen" in a generic sense. In his next paper delivered before the Depwade Society, we seewhat he meant.

On July 7, 1846, he spoke again to his Society on the topic of I Timothy, 4.22 He again emphasised thefreedom of Spirit in contrast to the limits of traditional Law (signified by "pious Jews") and ignorance of"The Truth" ("devout Heathen").

One great end of the restrictions ordained by the Jewish oeconomy was to keep the Jew

in constant recollection of the Divine Presence. . . . To us they teach this lesson: Thatit is not enough that things of this earth are God's creation, . . . they are not good for usexcept they be sanctified. [God has given us this freedom] and delivered us from thebondage of Ceremonies into the liberty of the Gospel.23

Christian Socialism

With characteristic paradox, but in a spirit that was true to F. D. Maurice's principles of a "ChristianSocialism", he argued here that the Christian did not need this reminder, for this was the function of theSpirit. Therefore, the function of traditional law, for both the Heathen and the Jew, was automatic, a kindof "bondage of Ceremony". The man imbued with Spirit, and the sense of responsibility that thisimposed, could, by contrast, shape his own reality. Aspects of Colenso's message derived from F.D.Maurice, and from the Noetic School of Bishop Whateley, both of whom he revered. His emphasis onthe freedom of the individual to act in changing his own environment is strongly Romantic. He was

certainly familiar with the works of Goethe and Schiller, but his views were reasonably widespreadamong a small elite of religious and social critics and writers, including Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle'simportantSartor Resartus may have contributed to Colenso's emerging concept of symbolic behaviour,for in this work, curiously titled "The Tailor Retailored", Carlyle convincingly represent Man as homo

symbolicus24. Colenso wished to test these ideas, however, and through a combination of circumstances,came to see South Africa as a likely proving-ground.

It seems likely that his views were a little difficult to accept, or doubtless even to understand, for theother members of the Depwade Clerical Society. There is, unfortunately, no other entry in the Minutesof a paper by Colenso in the rest of the first volume of the Minutes that runs up to the end of 1850. In1851, the Society began a second volume of minutes, but no longer included abstracts of the papers of itsmembers.

By the early 1850's, however, interest in the original text of the Bible, stimulated by the stronginsurgence of German critical thought, had increased to the point where a reading of Hebrew was thoughtto be necessary, and was conducted during the first hour of the Society's meetings. In April of 185l, themembers held a discussion on urgent "subjects suitable for preaching at this time". Chief among these,and the only one entered into Minutes, was whether it was "necessary at this time to set forth particularlythe errors of the Church of Rome". It was noted that "two lines of opinion seemed to prevail": one, thatthis was indeed the most important issue to be aired in the pulpit, and the other that "no such particularattack was called for". A show of hands revealed that Colenso was of the latter opinion.

In 1853 Colenso again scandalised his group of colleagues, which had now grown to 16 members fromthe original five in 1846, with a treatise on "Polygyny among converts to Christianity". This is ofconsiderable significance, because it was precisely on this issue that Colenso first locked horns withmembers of his congregation in Natal two years later. Ultimately, it was this different view of thechurch's doctrine that led to his conflict with the Bishop of Cape Town and his excommunication fromthe Church.

The Society's discussion for that day focused on verses 5:27-6:8 of Matthew from "The Sermon on theMount", in which Christ says, in apparent contradiction of the Jewish law, that everyone who divorcedhis wife "made of her an adulteress" (Matt. 5:32). The secretary wrote that they had discussed

22 . The text of this Biblical passage is : [some will heed ] liars . . . who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence fromfood which God has created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. Foreverything created by God is good . . . (Timothy 4:1-4).

23 . Minutes, Depwade Clerical Society, 7 July, 1846.

24 . Morse Pekham, Beyond the Tragic Vision; the Quest for Identity in the 19th Century , New York: Braziller,1962, p.182.

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How missionaries were to proceed in the case of converts, who had, and by their ownlaws were allowed to have, a plurality of wives? Were they to insist upon them puttingthem all away save one? Or were they to allow them to retain them, and not put uponthem at first a yoke which they might not be able to bear?

The fact that three visitors from outside the society participated in the discussion suggest that Colenso, atleast, felt that the topic merited more than usual attention of his colleagues in the rural parish. The

visitors included Mr Austen Henry Layard, the archaeologist and traveller whose discovery andexcavation of the ancient Mesopotamian cities of Nimrod and Nineveh, and whose travels in Anatoliaand Syria, became extremely well-known 25 and important in establishing the historical basis of someBiblical texts. Also present was Henry Venn, Secretary of the Church Missionary Society and son of theJohn Venn, the Rector of Clapham and a member of the Clapham Sect with William Wilberforce, HenryThornton, and James Stephen. Their presence shows, too, that Colenso was beginnings to be seen as animportant figure in Christian thought and mission activity, even at this time, and testifies to the widerange of friends and acquaintances that Colenso maintained.

During this session, Colenso argued for the first time what he was to argue again in Natal a decade later,that a man who had more than one wife before his conversion to Christianity should be allowed, evenrequired, to maintain all of his wives and their children after his conversion. While the church certainlycould not contemplate polygyny among those who had already accepted the moral teachings of thechurch he argued that it was a far greater social evil to require them to "put away" all but one wife. His

paper at the Depwade meeting is his first statement of a policy that he attempted to implement in hisNatal Diocese. He was opposed in this by the Metropolitan Bishop of the Cape, Robert Gray, and by theConsul General of Natal, Theophilus Shepstone. His position was entirely consistent with hisinterpretation of II Timothy, discussed above, since it was in the spirit of a humane and responsibleChristianity, as he saw it, even though it flouted the laws of the Church as these were derived from theBible. Although there is no mention of the ire it must have provoked in the now-abbreviated minutes ofthe Society, when he published his position in Natal in 1855 as "Remarks on the proper treatment ofcases of polygyny as found already existing in converts from Heathenism"26, and again, in 1862 as a"Letter to his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury"27, he attracted bitter criticism.

The Bishop of Natal

In 1853, Colenso left his parish in Norfolk county to become Bishop of Natal. A discussion was held,and entered into Minutes, whether the inscription on the salver which they intended to present to him onhis departure for Natal should be in Latin or in English. It was decided that Latin was the moreappropriate in view of the recipient's learning, high office in the Church, and interest in languages.

By this time, Colenso had become closely associated with the Church Missionary Society and itsprojects. He had undertaken to edit the journal of the Church Missionary Society in 1850, and at the endof 1852 published a series of articles on the new diocese in the Southern Hemisphere that had beenfounded in 1847 through a bequest from Miss Burdett Coutts. These included the diocese of Adelaide inAustralia, of Natal, of British Kaffraria (Eastern Cape Province , with its seat at Grahamstown), of theSouth African Sovereignty (later the Orange Free State), of the island of St. Helena, and of the CapeColony with its seat at Cape Town. In the articles relating to South Africa28, Colenso cites populationfigures, and gives brief but well researched synopses of ethnology, history, economy, and geography ofthe Cape Colony and Natal. Colenso followed this essay with edited entries from Bishop Robert Gray's

journal from 24 August - 21 December, 1848, written during Bishop Gray's first tour of the new CapeProvince Diocese, and from 1 April-24 December, 1850, written during his second tour of the Province.

25 . Austen Henry Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853. The huge winged bull, whichis yet today a major fixture of the British Museum, was excavated by Layard.

26 . J. W. Colenso, "Remarks . . . ", Pietermaritzburg, 1855.

27 . J. W. Colenso, " A letter to His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in Reply to a review of Village Sermon inthe Record Newspaper of November, 10, 1853" London: Bell, 1853. 39pp.

28 . "The Diocese of Natal", The Monthly Record of the Society of the Propagation of Gospel in Foreign Parts,Vol. 4, Nov., 1853, pp241-264; "The Diocese of Graham's Town", The Monthly Record, December, 1853,

pp265-284.

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Colenso's treatment of the indigenous language is detailed and strongly sympathetic. It is clear that hehad access to, and had probably read carefully, Appleyard's The Kafir Language 29, or other early studiesof South African languages, and had begun to appreciate the way in which the class prefixes of the"Kafir", "Zulu" and "Sechuana" languages operated "so as to produce a curious kind of alliteration."30

He cited numerous examples from the "Kafir" and the "Bechuana to illustrate his point. 31 Theselanguages were credited with "great power, simplicity and elegance." Calling all of these "alliterative"languages "Kafir", a term which he linked to the Arabic word meaning 'infidels' (but without mentioning

his source for this link), Colenso wrote that,

It is spoken (with dialectic variations) by all the races of the same great family,extending over a vast extent of Central Africa, from the Congo Negroes, on the West, tothe Gallas on the East, and from the Equator downwards, except along the West sidewhere the Hottentot races are found. . .

The Kafirs most probably belong to the Negro race, though from some of theirpractices, especially that of circumcision, they have been thought to be of Arab descent.

32

Colenso's summary of the ethnological history is of interest as well, since it lends credence to the ideathat the Hottentots were related to North African peoples. Although Robert Moffat had suggested this

possibility in his Missionary Life and Labours33, this theory had only been worked out through detailedlinguistic comparisons by Wilhelm H. Bleek, in his doctoral dissertation of 1851 at the University of

Bonn.34

Bleek had been in correspondence with Secretary Henry Venn of the Church Missionary Society,and possibly with Colenso himself (as editor of the journal Monthly Record) in his effort to obtain copiesof the grammars of southern African languages, including that of Appleyard upon which much of hisdissertation had been based. Colenso's use of Bleek's findings, almost certainly without Bleek'sknowledge in this case, mark the first appearance of Bleek's ethnological views in Britain.

Thus, Colenso wrote that

It is generally agreed, that the [Hottentots] are the aboriginal inhabitants of theCountry, who have been gradually driven further towards the South from their formerhaunts, by the pressure from behind, and the advance of the more warlike Kafir tribes.The Hottentots are supposed to be allied to the Copts whom they strongly resemble.They are mostly of small stature and little muscular strength . . . The miserable

Bosjemen, or Bushmen, are considered to be merely the refuse of the Hottentotpopulation--left behind in patches here and there, as the mass moved onwards towards

the South, and increased by others, who have been oppressed, and driven out of theColony by Dutch cruelty. Separated thus from the rest of their kind, each little knot of

Bushmen has grown up into a feeble tribe or family--so distinct from every other, thatfrequently upon the opposite sides of a river or ridge of hills, they cannot understandone another. They speak, however, only different dialects of the same commonlanguage, akin to that of the Hottentots, but variously corrupted and debased. . . . [It]

29 . J. W. Appleyard, The Kafir Language: comprising a sketch of its history, etc., and a grammar . KingWilliams's Town, 1850.

30 . Colenso, "The Diocese of Natal", op. cit., 1852 p.245.

31 . Appleyard, in drawing attention to the grammatical significance and orderliness of the prefixes was the first to

call this "Alliteration". In fact, he classified all of the South African languages, with the exception of Hottentotand Bushman, as the "Alliterative Languages". Bleek built on this base when he renamed them the "Ba-ntulanguages."

32 . Colenso, op. cit. 1852, p.246

33 . Robert Moffat,Missionary Life and Labours, 1848.

34 . Wilhelm Hendrik Immanuel Bleek, De Nominum Generibus Linguarum Africae Australis, Copticae,Semiticarum aliarumque sexualium. Bonn, A. Marcus, 1851. In the Grey Collection, South African Library,G.10.c.16(1). I have made a translation of this and intend to publish it with other of Bleek's original work still inmanuscript, or otherwise inaccessible.

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is painful to notice their quick, hurried movements, and timid glances which betray tooplainly the anxious nature of their lives. . . . Often they were hunted down for slaves.35

While the discussion of linguistic affiliation is derived from Bleek and Appleyard, the antipathy to the"Dutch", and the description of the Bushmen and Hottentots bears the mark of Robert Moffat's and DavidLivingstone's early letters to the popular newspapers and missionary journals.

A few months after the publication of his articles on South Africa in The Monthly Record, Colenso wasordained Bishop of Natal at Lambeth House, and sailed for that Colony only 15 days later on the 15th ofDecember, 1853. On board his ship bound for Cape town he studied Zulu diligently, and read HarrietBeecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. In March he toured Natal with Theophilus Shepstone,Commissioner of the Province, and interviewed the Zulu about their beliefs.

In particular he was concerned to discover the name that the Zulu used to refer to God. His inquiriesrevealed that there were a number of different terms that could be used in different contexts. Althoughhe could find no unitary conception of God, or even a single name, he became convinced that the name

Nkulunkulu was "the nearest equivalent to God".

Colenso observed Zulu rituals and became aware, through noticing variations in ritual and linguisticpractice, that the African population of Natal was ethnically heterogenous. Since their religioustraditions were oral traditions, and since Colenso seems to have accepted, even then, the idea expressed

by the German Biblical critic David Strauss in his landmarkLeben Jesu36[Life of Jesus] that the Biblical

writings had also been oral traditions before they were written down, Colenso's experience with the Zulubegan to provide him with an image of how the Biblical traditions might once have been created andtransmitted. Having noticed that the Zulu names for God appeared to derive from different sub-traditions, or even different ethnic sources that had become part of the Zulu" tradition, the criticaldiscernment of at least two different "authors" of the Pentateuch--one usingJahweh, the other using thewordElohim for the name of God--became plausible to him. This was an important foundation, builtupon his first direct experience of Zulu culture, for his controversial critical study of the Pentateuch.

35 . Colenso, "Diocese of Natal", 1852, p. 243

36 . [Life of Jesus]. A translation was available as The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined , edited by P.C.Hodgson, transl. by George Eliot. Reprinted 1973 Philadelphia, Fortress Press.