[‘The Pentateuch [...] is throughout a mere fiction’. John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal, puts the case that will result in excommunication.] Long and substantial Autograph Letter Signed (‘J. W. Natal.’) to ‘Scudamore’, explaining his position.

Colenso’s enormous significance in the history of Victorian theology and ideas is reflected by a long entry by Peter Hinchcliff in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Prominent among Colenso’s critics was Matthew Arnold, who mocked him as ‘that favourite pontiff of the Philistines’.) The present item is of great importance in understanding his position: it was written as Colenso was about to publish the work which would shortly result in his trial for heresy and formal excommunication (‘the Colenso case’), the first volume of his Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua Critically Examined (1862). This book, as Hinchcliff explains, ‘gave great offence, alienating even F. D. Maurice and E. H. Browne, who had both previously been his friends’. In this unpublished letter, to the brother of Rev. H. C. Scudamore (for whom see Lear’s 1876 life of Gray and Henry Rowley’s ‘Story of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa’, 1866), Colenso describes the composition of the work, and the conclusion to which he has been led: ‘that the Pentateuch was not only not written in any part by Moses, but is throughout a mere fiction - at the most, legendary’. He is in no doubt as to the significance of what he is about to publish: the questions involved are of ‘vital consequence not to the Church only, but to the whole community’, and since the book ‘may have the effect of painfully rending the peace of the Church, & I may say even of Society’, he begs Scudamore to examine his work and provide arguments which ‘prove my reasoning to be utterly invalid, & dissipate my whole book into thin air’. 6pp, 12mo. 113 lines of text on bifolium and loose leaf. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice. Headed ‘Private & Confidential’. He was ‘rejoiced’ to receive Scudamore’s letter, but asks him to ‘drop the “Lord” Bishop in writing to me in future’. He is ‘now going to impose a severe task’ on his friendship, ‘if you feel youself at liberty to comply with my wishes’. He assumes that he is aware that he is ‘likely to have some trouble from my Metrop [i.e. Bishop Robert Gray of Cape Town] because of my Book on the Romans. He writes to me implying that “future proceedings” will be taken, unless I withdraw it from circulation. This I certainly shall not do: but I am [in] truth quite indifferent to the result in this case.’ Colenso explains that he wishes to consult Scudamore ‘& a few of my dearest friends’ regarding a ‘much more serious matter’: ‘Circumstances, directly arising from my missionary labours, in the instruction of intelligent natives & translation of the Bible have led me to a close citial exam[inatio]n. of the Pentateuch’. He explains that he has been ‘employed upon the work I may say day & night for the last year & a half’, and lists the books ‘in defence of the orthodox view’ he has read on the subject: ‘Hengstenberg, Kurtz, Bleek, & even Davidson, in his Introd. to the O. T. vol. 1, just published - the “Aids to Faith” - &c - while on the other side I have read only Ewald, from whom I almost entirely dissent, &, with all admiration for his genius acquirements, conisder him to be one of the most rash and unsound of critics.’ He has recently ‘met with a most able book by Kuenen, Prof. of Divinity at Leyden - but this last I had not seen, when I had already privately printed my own views upon the Pentateuch, for the purpose of communicating them to a few of my friends, competent to discuss such questions, & willing to do so.’ He now asks Scudamore (‘my dear friend & brother’) to ‘go into the matter’ with him, privately & confidentially, of course, until I have taken some public step’. He believes that ‘the most vital questions are involved in the result to which I have arrived - and without a doubt in my own mind at present, as to the grounds at which I have arrived at is - viz. that the Pentateuch was not only not written in any part by Moses, but is throughout a mere fiction - at the most, legendary - but the product of the age of Samuel, who wrote the first sketch of this story, (about 1/6 of the present Pentateuch & Book of Joshua, & of later ages in which the narrative, with all the directions, was filled up’. He cannot give ‘even a brief summary of the course of argument which leads to this conclusion - I can only say that it is quite different from any you cd. probably imagine - it does not in any way depend on reasoning against miraculous or supernatural accnts which do not trouble me - nor upon mere numbers &c, or on the Creation & the Deluge - But it is to me convincing: & I believe it will be to any open & honest mind, as it has proved hitherto to every one to which I have submitted it, including two pious & honest men, one of the High Church & the other of the Evang. School.’ The matter is ‘of vital consequence not to the Church only, but to the whole community’, and the measure he is about to take ‘may have the effect of painfully rending the peace of the Church, & I may say even of Society’. He ends by repeating that he wishes to ‘consult a few true-hearted men, who have courage to look the Truth in the face, & courage also to confess the Truth which their eyes beheld’. He would ‘rejoice unfeignedly’ if Scudamore ‘could prove my reasoning to be utterly invalid, & dissipate my whole book into thin air’. The sixth and final page carries a long postscript, in which Colenso explains that he is coming up to town (‘at the Norwich Union Office’) the following week, but that he can send a copy of the book once he receives a reply from Scudamore stating that he will ‘deliberately go into the question’. The final paragraph refers to ‘the recent tidings from the Z<?>’ and an encounter with Scudamore’s brother ‘at the Cape’.