Monday, July 25, 2016

F. J. A. Hort Was A Racist

F. J. A. Hort
          Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892) was, as you may already know, one of the two British scholars responsible for the 1881 compilation of the Greek text of the New Testament that replaced the King James Version’s base-text, the Textus Receptus.  Although the compilation of Westcott and Hort was used, in general, as the basis for the Revised Version, and for the 1901 American Standard Version, many objections were raised against the Westcott-Hort revision.  
         For a collection of those objections, one can consult the works of John Burgon, such as The Revision Revised , The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospelsand Causes of Corruption (in which, among other things, Burgon described the orthodox corruption of Scripture, preceding Bart Ehrman’s similarly-titled book by over a century).  Mathematician and textual researcher George Salmon also composed a gentle protest against some aspects of the Westcott-Hort compilation and the theories on which it was grounded.          
          Burgon did not oppose the idea of revising the Greek text of the New Testament.  He once wrote, “That some corrections of the Text were necessary, we are well aware.”  But he was firmly convinced that no scholars of his generation were adequately equipped for the task of a thorough and definitive revision of the New Testament text.  Burgon’s opposition to Hort’s compilation was seasoned by a somewhat bombastic literary style – a feature which Burgon acknowledged, and regarding which he insisted, “For everything there is a season.”  Perhaps The 1897 Oxford Debate on New Testament Textual Criticism is the best single resource for obtaining objectively phrased information about the reasons why Hort’s theories about the transmission of the text of the New Testament were either embraced, or rejected, by his contemporaries.  However, one can read through those works without noticing objections against something which nowadays would make it highly unlikely that Hort’s work would receive wide acclaim:  his racism.
          Perhaps you thought that I was going to say “his interest in the occult.”  Some writers – particularly some KJV-Onlyists – have accused Hort of being an occultist.  Westcott and Hort were both members of a society, or club, called The Ghostlie Guild, which (as anyone can see by reading pages 117-120 of the first volume of The Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hort) was formed to collect accounts of paranormal (or “spirit-world”) phenomena – not to endorse the premises of spiritualism.  Hort did indeed attend a séance:  he mentioned it in a letter to his wife, written on October 23, 1864.  “We worked till near dinner,” he wrote, “when we had a very nice little party, the two De Morgans, H. M. Butler, Farrar, Bradby and his mother, and H. W. Watson.  Mrs. Bradby, whom I had never seen, and who was well worth seeing, came in the evening.  We tried to turn tables, but the creatures wouldn’t stir.”    
An illustration from Sophia De Morgan's
book about seances and spiritualism,
picturing a "good spirit" and a "bad spirit."
          The reference to table-turning in the final sentence alludes to something done at séances.  The two De Morgans mentioned by Hort were the mathematician Augustus De Morgan and his wife Sophia, whose 1863 book From Matter to Spirit:  The Result of Ten Years of Experience in Spirit Manifestations, includes, in its opening chapter, instructions about how to conduct a table-tipping session, at which “the table will appear to throb or vibrate under the hands as if charged with a kind of electricity,” following which “The table perhaps will move in a circuitous direction,” followed by “communications” in which the table tips as the medium recites the alphabet.  The second chapter is also about “Rapping and Table-Moving.”      
          Hort, however, seems to have attended only one such session, and that may have been out of a sense of courtesy to a colleague’s idiosyncratic wife.  Hort’s limited and brief interest in séances and similar paranormal phenomena seems to have been motivated by scientific curiosity, rather than by any desire to promote the beliefs or practices of spiritualism.     
            Now about Hort’s racism.  In the preface to The Life and Letters of F. J. A. Hort, published in 1896, Arthur Hort states about his father:  “In all that he wrote his real self is shown, and nowhere more than in his letters.”  So it is with some consternation that one finds the following statements in a letter written by Hort on September 25, 1862, discussing the American Civil War:  [NOTE:  I have redacted an offensive term in this excerpt.]
            “I do not for a moment forget what slavery is, or the frightful effects which Olmsted has shown it to be producing on white society in the South; but I hate it much more for its influence on the whites than on the n****rs themselves.
            “The refusal of education to them is abominable; how far they are capable of being ennobled by it is not so clear.  As yet everywhere (not in slavery only) they have surely shown themselves only as an immeasurably inferior race, just human and no more, their religion frothy and sensuous, their highest virtues those of a good Newfoundland dog.  If enjoyment and comparative freedom from sorrow and care make up happiness, probably no set of men in Europe (unless it be the Irish) are so happy.  Their real and most unquestionable degradation, if altered by slavery, is hardly aggravated; the sin of slavery to them is rather negative in hindering advance, yet what advance has there really been in the West Indies or Northern states?  Nevertheless the thing is accursed most positively from its corrupting power over the dominant race.
            “But, while agreeing with the advocates of the North that slavery is at the bottom of the whole conflict of South and North, as the chief though not sole cause of disunion, and also that the South separated simply because Lincoln’s election was a signal that the North had decided not to allow Southern policy any longer to hold the helm of the whole Union, I hold that the South had a perfect right to separate themselves and go their own way . . . . I hold, therefore, that the war is at once entirely a war of independence, and not at all for and against slavery, though it sometimes suits the North (and still more its English supporters) to represent it as such.  While the war lasts, therefore, I fully sympathize with the South.  So much for the mutual rights and wrongs of the two contending parties.  But that is only one part of the matter.  I care more for England and for Europe than for America, how much more than for all the n****rs in the world!  And I contend that the highest morality requires me to do so.”

            I highly doubt that very many Bible-believing Christians would say, “Let’s find the person who wrote that, and give him the job of compiling the Greek text upon which shall base our new English translations of the New Testament.”  Yet that is what our forefathers did.  F. G. Kenyon, in his book Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, described the work of Westcott and Hort as “the basis of all subsequent study.”  The New Testament base-texts of the NIV, ESV, NLT, and NRSV are descendants of, and very similar to, the 1881 Westcott-Hort compilation.  And at the website of the Nestle-Aland compilation, it is affirmed that the text of the first edition of the UBS Greek New Testament (published in 1966) “was established along the lines of Westcott and Hort.”
          I am not sure what, if anything, should be done in light of this information.  Perhaps textual critics who do not want to be associated with Hort might consider emphasizing, in their reviews of the history of the field, the work of other textual critics of the 1800’s, such as Samuel Tregelles.  Hort’s racism does not alter the quality of his research.  And it is not as if anything that Hort said that was factual was factual because Hort said it.  Yet it is saddening to learn that a researcher who was so instrumental in the compilation and promotion of the critical text (which is the basis for so many English translations) reflected the Holy Spirit’s presence so poorly in this regard.  I regret that our predecessors in the field, and in the church, did not detect, rebuke, and correct Hort’s racism.

  
              

7 comments:

Archepoimenfollower said...

James,
Wow, this is how you try to defend the majority text? Whatever witness you may have had has been demolished.
Attacking an individual, even if the individual was wrong as appears the case here from what you write, to promote your position, does not demonstrate 'brotherly love'. Of course, your whole article could be interpreted as a polemic against Hort being a believer!
I for one say adios to your writings.

Tim

Kennethos said...

One might ask how much a product of his time Mr. Hort was, since scholars today feel little compunction about critiqing him from a 21st century vantage point. That attitude was normal then. One can only hope that decades from now, people will look back on an era of unrestricted infanticide via abortion, and wonder at a culture so sensitive to race, and insensitive to life.

Kepha said...

We might also note that in another field, John Emmerich Dalberg Acton (the famous Lord Acton), one of the stalwarts of classical liberalism, also embraced the Southern cause in the American Civil War. I suspect that most people of European origin in the late 19th century tended to share similarly "racist" sentiments--except, perhaps, a few of the "dottier" sort of missionaries in the non-European fields.

As a conservative Presbyterian myself, I think Dabney splendid when he writes on any of the great loci of systematic theology, but utterly appalling in his view of black people.

James Snapp Jr said...

Tim/Archepoimenfollower,

This is how I present an interesting historical aspect of a major textual critic.

It is not an "attack," nor unloving, to report what Hort wrote -- any more than it would be to hide the facts about his character and beliefs.

<< I for one say adios to your writings. >>

Too bad some facts make you so uncomfortable. But there's not much I can do about that.
Adios, amigo!

Unknown said...

Hort was no racist--at least according to the prevailing viewpoint during his time. Painting him as such is inaccurate to say the least.

Practically all citizens (who were almost exclusively white) in the United States during the era in which Hort lived were what we would call racists today--including most of the anti-slavery supporters, who were almost as racist as their peers!

But Hort's quote demonstrates that he was not the racist that you seem to believe he was, but instead was rather progressive in comparison to the norm among the CHRISTIANS of his day and time.

One statement stands out, "The refusal of education to them is abominable; how far they are capable of being ennobled by it is not so clear."

Do you realize how positive that statement is???

It was ILLEGAL in most states--even in the Northern States--to educate black persons. Hort's statement was so contrary to the prevailing opinion during his time that I'm surprised he was not lynched for it.

From our modern viewpoint, Hort's racism was awful, because we've been taught to view many of the things which were normative during the 1800s as evil racism. Even most of those who wanted to abolish slavery thought blacks were less than human. Pastors preached on the topic from the pulpit in many churches, and good Christians thought nothing of using the term n****r in day-to-day life. They didn't even mean anything pejorative when they said it. It was just what black folks were called.

Hort was no racist, at least not within the context of his time. Portraying him a such is both inaccurate and fallacious.

The White Man said...

John, John, John. The definition of a racist does not change just because a culture shifts. Racism has been defined as "an institutionalized socioeconomic system or a pattern of behavior which divides people into groups identified by characteristics of origin or colour for the purpose of establishing and perpetuating, on the basis of those characteristics, the subordinate status and the denigration and exploitation of one group to the benefit of the other.”
Just because those with evident African ancestry are now afforded rights and privileges that were denied them in Hort's time and place, that doesn't make those who afford them now, or denied them earlier, any less racist. You make a lot of sweeping generalizations about racism among "white" Americans in the mid 19th century, without any support. Weighing them against Pastor Snapp's careful documentation, they come out as so much fluff.

John A. Hort said...

You front load you BS blog with the title "Racism." I do not care for your characterization of Hort at all. You seem like one of the many religious people that ran down his translations of the Greek Bible,because it ran contrary to the dogma you and the established church preach. ; "North had decided not to allow Southern policy any longer to hold the helm of the whole Union, I hold that the South had a perfect right to separate themselves and go their own way . . . . I hold, therefore, that the war is at once entirely a war of independence, and not at all for and against slavery, though it sometimes suits the North (and still more its English supporters) to represent it as such."
Hort's analysis seems pretty spot on to me. Hort had the wisdom to accurately assess the political situation, and as others have pointed out a degree of racism in expression was commonplace. It is very clear that Wescott and Hort were the two most qualified to perform the task of translation, which they did accurately. The established religious just couldn't handle the truth, and tried to attack the source. - John A. Hort SFC Ret USA arbyh@yahoo.com