"[191]
This action was regarded by every skeptical sympathizer as a great
triumph, and we may therefore expect the Rationalistic school to engage
in still more important enterprises than any to which they have
addressed themselves.
The most outspoken and violent attacks of critical Rationalism in
England are contained in the exegetical publications of Dr. John William
Colenso, who, in 1853, was consecrated Bishop of Natal, South Eastern
Africa. He had previously issued a series of mathematical works which
obtained a wide circulation; but his first book of scriptural criticism
was the _Epistle to the Romans, newly translated and explained from a
Missionary Point of View_. Having completed the New Testament and
several parts of the Old, he was laboring assiduously on a translation
of the Bible into the Zulu tongue, when his former doubts concerning the
unhistorical character of the Pentateuch revived with increased force.
The intelligent native who was assisting him in his literary work asked,
respecting the account of the flood, "Is all that true?" This, with
other inquiries propounded to him by the Zulus, led him to a careful
reexamination of the Mosaic record.
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