William Warburton: An 18th Century Anglican Bishop Fallen Among Post‐Structuralists — II

Extract

Warburton’s theological opponent. Robert Lowth, later Bishop of London, published (in Latin) in 1758 his seminal Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews. It is evidence of the staggering lack of interest of English theology today in historical enquiry that there exists no study of this work, described by Meinecke as one of the prime sources for later historicism, and by E. S. Shaffer as vital for the development of biblical criticism. After its reprinting a few years later at Gottingen it exercised a great influence in Germany, but it is interesting to note that while Herder praised Lowth for attempting to isolate the cultural peculiarities of the Hebrews, he thought that his enquiry was too technical, failing to penetrate the spirit of an age. It is Lowth’s strictly formal attempt to position Hebrew poetry vis-a-vis the categories of classical rhetoric and poetics rather than a romantic trust in empathy or pure subjectivity which leads him to a new depth of cultural analysis. The Lectures thus represent a moment in the history of ideas that was quickly forgotten.

For another reason also, it is hard to categorize Lowth. His formal, aesthetic treatment of the Old Testament opened up the possibility of accounting for it (without recourse to the wilder absurdities of deist slander) in purely human terms. However Hans W. Frei is, I think, wrong to conclude that because Lowth is not concerned to expound the truth of the scriptures, nor to establish their factual veracity, the work is theologically neutral.