Sheila's reading Sisters of Sinai by Janet Soskice. More about her in an earlier post I did here. Part of the story of these two remarkable women brings them into contact with Professor William Robertson Smith, a young professor of biblical studies at the Free Church College, Aberdeen, in the 1870's. His critical approach to biblical studies (rejection of Moses' authoriship of Deuteronomy for example), led to his deposition in 1881 from his professorship, a tragedy that ranks high on the list of religious own goals in Scotland.
Smith eventually moved to Cambridge where he encountered these two sisters, pioneers in the discovery and transcription of important ancient biblical and extra-biblical manuscripts. Robertson Smith died relatively young (48 years) of tuberculosis. Once or twice I've visited his grave in the little graveyard in Keig, Aberdeenshire, a peaceful, shaded incline facing out across the shire. During his trial before the church courts he made a now famous affirmation of what he believed to be the nature and authority of Scripture. It didn't satisfy his examiners' and critics' much more conservative convictions on the nature and authority of the Bible, though what he says is deeply indebted to the Reformers' theology of the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit as the sine qua non of biblical interpretation. But his defence remains one of the most eloquent and sincere statements of believing criticism in which faith and thought are held in a legitimate tension of spiritual integrity and intellectual honesty.
"If I am asked why I receive Scripture as the Word of God and the only
perfect rule of faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant
Church, because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming love of God,
because in the Bible alone I find God drawing near to men in Christ Jesus and
declaring to us in Him His will for our salvation. And this record I know to be
true by the witness of His Spirit in my heart, whereby I am assured that none
other than God Himself is able to speak such words to my soul."
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You can find out more about Smith on this website devoted to him. It contains the full text of a recent Aberdeen PhD which was supervised by Prof. William Johnstone one of our leading authorities on Robertson Smith and editor of a fine collection of essays about him.
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