Genesis and Ancient Histories at Princeton Seminary (1812–1851)

By William VanDoodewaard

[William VanDoodewaard is Professor of Church History at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI. A draft of this article was delivered as part of the Religious Studies Forum lecture series at Queen’s University Belfast in October 2016.]

ABSTRACT

Nineteenth-century challenges to the doctrine of Scripture among Presbyterians have often been framed within the lens of the relationship between the interpretation of Genesis and the development of modern science. Substantial scholarship has been devoted to this field and continues to grow. New vantages on challenges to a Protestant doctrine of Scripture, and adjustments and accommodation in Protestant belief in relation to science continue to be engaged. Yet, despite the predominant historical focus on narratives of interaction between Protestant thought and modern scientific theory, the latter was and is only one area of challenge to Protestant understanding of Scripture. Equally historically significant is the challenge found in ancient histories whose narratives conflicted with received biblical understanding among Protestants.

Early Princeton Seminary (1812–1851) provides an intriguing case study of continuities and discontinuities in the understanding of Genesis in relation to ancient histories. This article examines unpublished lectures and published materials by Archibald Alexander, Samuel Miller, Charles Hodge, and Joseph Addison Alexander on the doctrine of Scripture, the book of Genesis, and biblical chronology in relation to the rapidly expanding growth of awareness of other ancient histories from the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Each man displayed keen interest in archaeological, literary, and cultural discoveries relevant to ancient histories, seeking to assess them in light of the biblical text. As time progressed, methodological differences between the professors led to a clear diversification, if not conflict, of approaches to Genesis and ancient histories at Princeton.

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Nineteenth-century challenges to the doctrine of Scripture among Presbyterians have often been framed within the lens of the relationship between the interpretation of Genesis and the development of modern science. Substantial scholarship has been devoted to this field and continues to grow. New vantages on challenges to a Protestant doctrine of Scripture, and adjustments and accommodation in Protestant belief in relation to science continue to be engaged.[1] Yet, despite the predominant historical focus on narratives of interaction between Protestant thought and modern scientific theory, the latter was and is only one area of challenge to Protestant understanding of Scripture. Equally historically significant is the challenge found in ancient histories whose narratives conflicted with received biblical understanding among Protestants.[2]

From the Reformation through the mid nineteenth century, the main challenge to and critique of the dominant Protestant interpretation of Genesis, including both its account of origins and narrative of history, was neither old earth geology nor evolutionary biology. Long-held Genesis interpretation was not first challenged by Lyell and Darwin. Their engagements with Genesis also had a long lineage of religious and philosophical precursors. The challenge of the competition of ancient histories with OT history already existed in the post-Reformation and early modern era, and intensified through the following centuries. The flow of these competing streams of thought into the life and teaching of Princeton Theological Seminary in the nineteenth century provides insight into shifts in engagement of divine revelation in relation to ancient histories, and reveals an intriguing story of institutional change.[3]

I. Divine Revelation and Ancient Histories in Post-Reformation Europe

Between the early Reformation era and the dawn of the nineteenth century, Western awareness of the world and its histories grew exponentially. This did not negate earlier awareness: to some degree, increasing knowledge among post-Reformation Europeans and their colonial offspring was simply re-acquaintance with the once known.

As far back as the ancient Romans, Europeans had evidenced awareness of and connection with cultures as distant as East Asia; a Roman delegation reached the Chinese imperial court in AD 161. The North African theologian Augustine, who penned The City of God as the Roman Empire slowly died, engaged diverse cultures and histories both within and beyond the Empire’s center in the Mediterranean world. In the medieval era, as Viking explorations east and west began to wane, Crusades reignited interest in the Near East. The Polo family’s travels through the Mongol Empire into East Asia brought riveting accounts of distant lands and cultures to Europe; trade routes crept deep into China.

The European Renaissance created a rediscovery of neglected texts, including ancient histories with narratives relevant to biblical accounts of history. Ptolemy’s Geographia was translated into Latin, as were other seminal works, including Lucretius’s De rerum natura. Each in their own way expanded and challenged European thought on the world and its history. The collapse of the Byzantine Empire intensified a race to find alternate routes to the goods of the East. Portuguese and Spanish explorations were quickly emulated by the British, Dutch, and French.

In a rapidly expanding, post-Reformation world, merchants, missionaries, adventurers, and philosophers travelled, mused, and recorded their experiences for eager audiences back home. As European presences became more established in distant places, depth of European exploration and discovery increased. Sketch maps and cursory reports were superseded as knowledge grew and detail intensified. Studies of linguistics, culture, geography, history, and religions soared to new heights. Initial and increasing discoveries brought challenges not only to long accepted understandings of world history, but also to a predominantly Christian Europe.

Breaking away from Roman Catholicism during the Reformation and post-Reformation era, Protestants strongly reasserted the primacy of the divinely inspired Scriptures, the Bible, in European life. By Protestant formulations, everything else—creeds, confessions, catechisms, and church councils—either declared scriptural truth with derivative authority and content, or deviated from it. With Scripture as the ultimate authority for human knowledge, it was only natural that exegetical theology was exalted as queen of the sciences. At the same time, European views on Scripture’s place in understanding the world were far from monolithic.

Even among those falling under the Protestant label, acceptance and application of Scripture’s authority varied. Some leaned to viewing Scripture’s relevance as bounded by the spiritual realm. The Roman Catholic Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) protested the domination of particular conceptions of divine revelation over the pursuit of human knowledge of creation, stating that the Holy Spirit’s intent was to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go. Similar views appeared among Protestants. Thomas Harriot (1560–1621) and Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) held that Native American histories indicated that human history substantially predated that of the biblical record.[4] By contrast, there were also many Protestants, who, like Lambert Daneau (1535–1590), a protégé of John Calvin at the Academy of Geneva, believed that the knowledge of natural philosophy and history was to be comprehensively shaped, directed, and informed by “the sacred Word of God.”[5]

The seventeenth century saw a widening of the debate, as pre-Adamite thought gained currency, particularly in Protestant regions of Europe. Isaac La Peyrere’s Men Before Adam (1655) gave credence to the ancient narratives of history and origins of non-Christians, positing that humanity must have existed at least as far back as fifty thousand years before Christ. This was in stark contrast to the contemporary exegetical precisionism of James Ussher’s Annals of the World (1658): “From the evening ushering in the first day of the world, to the midnight which began the Christian era, there were 4003 years, seventy days, and six temporary hours.”[6] La Peyrere contended that only the Jews were the descendants of Adam; Scripture only intended to tell their story. Ussher held that Scripture was the supreme account of the history of all humanity, beginning with six days of creation, and that a specially created Adam and Eve were the origin of all humanity.

The Ussherian effort to establish a biblical chronology of history reflected not only a particular hermeneutical approach to the Genesis text, but also a tenacious commitment to a Protestant orthodox doctrine of Scripture.[7] This fidelity to the “infallible truth and divine authority” of “the Word of God” had been reaffirmed by English Puritans and Scottish Presbyterians just a decade earlier in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647).[8] Protestants on the continent shared the allegiance in other creedal and confessional forms. Despite the evident latitude of views among nominal Protestants, the high view of Scripture characteristic of the stream of Reformation and post-Reformation Protestant orthodoxy brought with it an apparently monolithic commitment to a creation of a mature universe within the span of six days of ordinary duration, and an ensuing earth and human history measured at around six thousand years.[9]

At the same time, the increasing zeal in Reformed and Presbyterian orthodoxy to develop a holistic, global chronology reflected a process that might be viewed as “history as science,” but with theology as the queen of this science. For the orthodox Protestant, Scripture was essential, authoritative, and definitive for the task. The task itself of collating and comparing ancient records toward the formation of a cohesive historical narrative, from origins to their present, intrigued a wide range of individuals—from Protestant orthodox to nominal skeptics. How it was to be done reflected divergent religious and philosophical commitments, but that “chronologizing” was to be done appeared a commitment shared by all.

II. The Discovery of Ancient Worlds in the Nineteenth Century

European exploration and discovery continued to grow in breadth and depth at the turn of the nineteenth century.[10] The 1799 discovery of the Rosetta Stone in the Nile Delta opened up previously locked histories of ancient Egypt. The Behistun Inscription, discovered in 1835 in Persia, opened the way for the translation of other ancient Near Eastern languages. Other discoveries through the nineteenth century included historical narratives from the account of ancient origins in the Enuma Elish to the military and royal records of the Cyrus Cylinder. Vast increases in awareness of Asian, African, and Native American histories occurred concurrently.

Like their forebears, historians, archaeologists, philosophers, and theologians of the nineteenth century continued to take up the challenge of the pursuit of ancient histories, usually with a view of contribution to a more global history of humanity. The endeavor was pursued not only in universities and academic societies, but also in the newly emerging seminaries of the nineteenth century. Among them stood the fledgling Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey.

III. Princeton Engagements with Ancient Histories

During the early years of the nineteenth century, leading figures within the Presbyterian Church raised concerns that Princeton College was providing an inadequate preparation for men towards sacred ministry, in part due to the faculty’s failure to robustly uphold the faith they had inherited. The General Assembly responded by moving to establish a new institution of higher learning, Princeton Theological Seminary, to take up this focused task. They called Archibald Alexander (1772–1851) to serve as the inaugural professor and principal. A devout Presbyterian, Alexander had experience in a range of capacities, boosting his attractiveness for the position: he had been an itinerant preacher, missionary, and pastor, as well as a professor at and president of Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. As the initial, sole instructor at Princeton Theological Seminary, Alexander took up a wide-ranging teaching load, including OT studies.

Alexander’s inaugural address in 1812 reflected his eagerness to engage the ever increasing world of discoveries connected to the Scriptures. Not only were linguistic and textual considerations necessary fields of study, but so too were ancient histories, chronologies, geography, and other sciences:

In all writings, and especially such as contain historical facts, there are frequent allusions to the existing customs of the country, and to the prevailing opinions of the people, where the book was written.… The same is found to be the case with the Scriptures.… As scriptural history frequently refers to the condition, character, and transactions of contemporaneous nations, it is important for us to be well acquainted with [ancient Near Eastern] history, as delivered to us by profane authors.… Chronology and geography are also requisite helps, to enable us to understand many parts of Scripture.[11]

Even “modern travels have been turned, by some learned men, to a very important account, in explaining the Scriptures.”[12] Exactly how this comparative, interpretive endeavor would be carried out was clear as Alexander concluded, “There is scarcely any science or branch of knowledge, which may not be made subservient to theology.”[13] Theology was to retain the interpretive priority.

Alexander’s address indicates that his engagement with ancient worlds was directed by presuppositions standing in continuity with Reformation and post-Reformation confessional formulations of the inspiration, infallibility, and authority of Scripture. This was true even when he moved to more tentative assessments. Holding that linguistics indicated a common origin for written language, Alexander believed that this “was no invention of man, but a revelation from God.”[14] Embracing his role as professor of polemical theology, he further stated that with respect to ancient writings, “I know of none which can bear any competition with the Pentateuch.”[15] While some had

supposed that some part of the Vedas of the Brahmins, was written before the books of Moses … there is no historical evidence on which we can depend in support of this position.… We are too well acquainted with the fraudulent pretensions of the Hindoos to antiquity, to place any confidence in their assertions.[16]

Alexander’s forthright commitment to the primacy of the Scriptures over all other writings left him convinced that they were “the oldest of any in the world.”[17] It also meant that he believed that there was a spiritual dimension to developing an accurate understanding of Scripture and the world: “A help, which though put in the last place, in this discourse, is of more real importance than all the rest; and that is the illumination and assistance of the Holy Spirit.”[18]

Alexander’s confessional Presbyterian understanding of human nature apart from grace had already been evident in his sharp criticism of Hindu assertions in this inaugural lecture. Now it was reiterated from another vantage: “A proud and sufficient person, however endowed with acuteness of intellect, and furnished with stores of literature, is continually prone to fall into pernicious error, whilst the humble man occupies a station from which truth may be viewed to advantage.… Sincere and ardent love of truth disposes us to weigh the whole evidence.”[19] Understanding of Scripture, and thus the origin narratives, required that “the student of sacred literature should be possessed of sincere and ardent piety. He should be a man ‘taught of God,’ conscious of his own insufficiency.… He ought not to ‘lean unto his own understanding,’ but by continual and earnest prayer, should look unto the ‘Father of lights.’”[20] Having reflected on divine revelation, and the need for divine intervention for salvation, including intellectual illumination, Alexander concluded his address with a Reformation era quote:

I admonish you again and again, that you read the sacred Scriptures in a far different manner from that in which you read any other book: that you approach them with the highest reverence, and most intense application of your mind; not as the words of a man, nor of an angel, but as the words of the Divine majesty, the least of which should have the more weight with us, than the writings of the wisest and most learned men in the world.[21]

The nature of Scripture as divine revelation meant that it held a place of priority and authority over other sciences and branches of knowledge; at the same time, other sciences and branches could be a help in understanding the Scriptures.

It appears that Alexander steadily maintained these commitments through the course of his years of service at Princeton Seminary—undoubtedly, they had a profound influence in shaping the early years of the institution.[22] Alexander’s manuscript classroom lectures on polemic theology reveal that he saw himself standing in continuity with “the prophets of God [who] contended against the errors propagated by the Heathen and by false prophets.”[23] At the same time, in giving “rules for conducting controversy,” he warned against spiritual dangers accompanying the endeavor, emphasizing the need for sincere love of truth and others as the motive.[24]

Alexander’s lectures on polemic theology included reflection on “profane authors” of “antiquity.” He continued to show both a marked interest and appreciation where antiquities were helpful to scriptural understanding, and criticism where they stood contrary to Scripture. He also displayed substantial awareness of and critical engagement with earlier Protestant theologians who engaged in similar comparative reflection, including the sub-Reformation era chronologist Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540–1609). Alexander’s critical engagement with Scaliger, Porphyry’s chronology, and ancient Egyptian chronologies, showed a substantial acquaintance with developments in the contemporary field.[25] His conclusion regarding accounts of Egyptian history in relation to the origin narrative of Genesis was blunt: “If we were to listen to their pretensions to antiquity, they would lead us far above the creation.”[26] In his polemic lectures Alexander also critically engaged Hindu and Buddhist origin narratives.[27] Reflecting on more recent critiques of Mosaic history on the basis of ancient narratives, Alexander stated:

In more modern times attempts have been made to prove the scripture records false, especially with respect to the age of the world. The reality of a universal deluge, etc. And the authorities depended on to accomplish this object were the civil and natural history of the world. Voltaire was the leader of this attack.… As the history of the extension of populous countries in the East of Asia was but little known to Europeans, and especially as they claimed an antiquity most extravagantly remote, these enemies of the cross seized the circumstance as favorable to their views. They exaggerated and magnified the antiquity of these nations beyond all the bounds of probability. It was impossible at once to refute all the bold assertions of infidels upon these topics, but it was soon so ordered in the wise providence of God, that men of the most undoubted integrity and impartiality, and of erudition in Oriental literature, the most profound and extensive, had their attention directed to this subject.… The most careful examination and mature deliberation have pronounced that the scriptural history so far from being invalidated is greatly confirmed by the ancient books of the Orientals. Indeed, the blaze of evidence from this source has been so strong, that it has a positive effect in [confirming] many of the truths of Christianity, and the light still increases as the learned in that quarter extend their investigation. Sir William Jones himself, who perhaps as a scholar never had a superior, was skeptical in his religious opinions, but he declared to the society established by him … that he considered … that neither the Chinese nor Hindoos have any authentic history which reads farther back than the time of Moses or Abraham. They have an account of the deluge which corresponds as exactly with the Mosaic account, as two events now stated by two different historians.[28]

In each case, whether of ancient histories or modern critical proponents of their origin narratives, among Alexander’s fundamental critiques was their failure to cohere with the writings, and chronology, of Moses. His applause came where there was potential coherence.

Through his career at Princeton, Alexander lectured and wrote prolifically. Biblical criticism, the canon of Scripture, OT history, and much else fell within his purview. Aside from monographs, he published numerous articles in the Princeton Review, edited by his colleague Charles Hodge, on topics ranging from an “Early History of Pelagianism” (1830) to “Indian Affairs” (1838) and “Chalmer’s Mental and Moral Philosophy” (1848).[29] Several of his reviews and articles reflected his keen interest in discoveries in ancient history with relevance to the book of Genesis, along with his determination to defend “the Mosaic history.”[30] Perhaps most fascinating among them was Alexander’s review essay on “The Origin of the Aborigines of America,” an effort to synthesize the known histories of the native peoples of the Americas with the histories of other ancient civilizations—from Asian and Polynesian to Egyptian and Phoenician, and all within the postdiluvian parameters of a Genesis narrative.[31] Drawing from his wide-ranging reading and classroom teaching, Alexander published A Pocket Dictionary of the Holy Bible in 1831.[32] Despite its diminutive title, the work was substantial, again displaying a pattern of critical appreciation for the discoveries of ancient histories: criticism where ancient histories conflicted with the Genesis history, and appreciation where the two were potentially complementary.

Alexander’s focused writing on OT history provides further evidence of his approach to reconciling divine revelation and the discovery of ancient worlds. Published two decades into his teaching at Princeton, his History of the Patriarchs provided “a compendious history of the facts recorded in the book of Genesis.”[33] Chronology and origin narratives were once again key themes. Alexander opened his volume with the familiar statement:

All reasonable men agree in believing the human race had a beginning; but of their origin we find no satisfactory account, anywhere but in the Bible.… The earliest of the Pagan writers, are deserving of very little credit, when they undertake to give the history of people who lived more than a thousand years before their times. Without any satisfactory evidence of what they relate, these historians pretend that their respective nations commenced their existence at a period long before the world was created, according to the history in Genesis. The claims of the Egyptians and Chaldeans shrink to nothing, when compared with the pretensions of the Hindoos and Chinese. According to these, the age of the human family, instead of being only five or six thousand years, is not less than many millions of years.[34]

As to those in American and European society who gave credence to the origin narratives of the Hindus and Chinese, Alexander’s assessment was that

these extravagant pretensions to antiquity furnished much occasion of seeming triumph to the enemies of divine revelation, for a while; but as soon as opportunity was afforded of instituting scrutiny into these high claims, it was found, that they rested on no solid ground of historical evidence. Neither of these nations is in possession of regular annals which reach as far back as to be within many hundred years of the deluge, according to the Mosaic account.[35]

As to Hindu tables of ancient eclipses positing hundreds of thousands of years of history, which Alexander saw as “the only thing creating any perplexity,” his response was that “a very slight knowledge of astronomy is sufficient to teach us, that eclipses occur at regular periods; and that anyone … can readily calculate the time when eclipses must have occurred, not only up to the beginning of the world, but as long before as he may choose to extend his calculation.”[36] Alexander’s view was that Hindu scholars read a pattern of eclipses as indicating antiquity of time, where they were rather a reflection of a creation made mature and complete at its inception.[37]

While polemical, Alexander’s engagement with the text of Genesis in his history of the patriarchs also displayed a pattern of positive appreciation for discoveries in history, archaeology, and geography, which he viewed as supportive of or helpful in understanding the textual narrative.[38] This was evident in his discussion of the geographical location of Eden, which he viewed “as well known when Moses wrote,” but, surveying recent thought in “sacred geography,” concluded that now “great obscurity rests upon the whole subject.”[39] In regard to the end of the flood, which he understood as a universal deluge, Alexander suggested that the ark must have travelled a significant distance, as there was “no intimation in sacred history that Mount Ararat was situated anywhere near the place of the erection of this vessel”; he posited that traditions of the ark coming to rest on Mount Ararat in Armenia were perhaps the best solution.[40] Divine revelation’s role in determining accurate discovery of ancient history was further evident as Alexander reflected on the “table of nations” of Gen 10. “The children of Japhet … spread themselves through Asia Minor … and became the founders of all the nations of Greece, and of the nations in Europe and Asia north of the 40th degree of latitude.… The Russians, Prussians, Poles, Finns, Danes, Swedes, Germans, Swiss, Belgians, Dutch, Grecians, Italians, French, Scotch, English, Irish, are, for the most part, the posterity of Noah’s oldest son.”[41] Shem’s descendants “migrated eastward.… Among them we must reckon the Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Persians, Hindus, Burmese, Chinese, and Japanese, and most of the islanders in the Southern and Western Ocean.”[42] Alexander saw the origin of every existing people group explained in Gen 10, implying that Scripture was essential to an accurate historical narrative for every civilization and culture. The genealogies of Genesis, meanwhile, furnished Alexander a count of years, by which he could calculate a historical chronology, much as James Ussher had.[43]

During the early years of Princeton Seminary, Alexander was not alone in his engagement of the relationship between divine revelation and the discovery of ancient worlds. Samuel Miller (1769–1850), who had been awarded a doctorate in divinity from the University of Pennsylvania in 1804 and served as the minister of First Presbyterian Church in New York City, was inaugurated as the first professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government at Princeton Seminary in 1813.[44] As the second faculty member, arriving just a year after Alexander, Miller made the immense task of seminary education somewhat more manageable. The two men, substantially different in character, were close friends.[45] While Miller is primarily remembered for his publications on Presbyterianism, the office of elder, church education, and the value of creeds and confessions, his teaching assignments included lecturing on biblical history, geography, and chronology; the latter became a distinct subject of study at this time.

Miller’s surviving lecture notes reveal that he, much like Alexander, was attentive to the ongoing discovery of ancient histories. Convinced of the value of studying ancient Near Eastern geography in relation to Scripture, Miller’s teaching reflected a blend of contemporary geographical awareness, geographical descriptions found in ancient histories, and an effort to synthesize this with biblical geography.[46] His “Biblical History,” however, most extensively displayed Miller’s effort to honor divine revelation as such while also engaging with the rapidly increasing discoveries of ancient narratives with relevance to Genesis.[47] Miller’s lectures, in good Presbyterian form, came in a series of questions and answers. His starting point was the beginning:

Q. How long ago was the world created? 

A. About 5814 years ago.[48]

Miller’s commitment to the traditional Protestant parameters of chronology was evident. He stated that “the only authentic account of that event [creation]” was found in the Bible, “the only perfectly authentic account of history extant.”[49]

Aware of critical questions asking how it was possible for Moses to have had an accurate awareness of events from millennia prior, Miller stated that this was due to his access to ancient oral tradition, the “monuments and records of the Egyptians,” and above all, “the inspiration of God, which imparted to him the requisite knowledge, which he did not otherwise possess, and kept him from all mistakes.”[50] For Miller, the doctrine of Scripture as divine and thus inerrant revelation meant a qualitative superiority over all other historical sources. Beginning with the six days of creation, scriptural history outlined the lives of Adam and Eve and their descendants. This was the beginning of human history. The vast lifespans of the antediluvians were no obstacle: “We can assign no adequate cause of this event, but that such was the will of God.”[51] He mused that perhaps it was that way so that oral histories of God’s creation and dealings with humanity might be better preserved till the time of a written record. He also answered the perennial question of what degree of “literature and science” existed prior to the great flood. Miller’s view that this was no longer ascertainable was further affirmed by his answer to the question whether there was “any profane history of the antediluvian world extant, which is entitled to credit?”[52] His reply: “No, none; all accounts of times preceding the flood, excepting those contained in the Bible, are to be considered as conjecture or false.”[53]

The flood’s destruction of all existing humanity, apart from Noah and his family, was unquestionably the testimony of Scripture. Affirming its universality he stated, “Yes, and there are traditions of it in all nations, and in some cases, remarkably similar to the Mosaic account; and the bowels of the earth in all countries contain striking evidence of the same fact.”[54] This was one of the few times that Miller stepped beyond engagement with ancient origin narratives to engage with geological theory—in this case likely a form of Abraham Gottlob Werner’s (1749–1814) theory of an ancient universal ocean.[55] As to the differing time spans for the antediluvian era given by the Samaritan Pentateuch, Septuagint, and Hebrew Bible, Miller held that the latter was the accurate text, where the others were derivative and had incorporated errors.[56]

Like Alexander’s, Miller’s desire for a precise biblical chronology was global in its vision. He cited with interest theories that Noah’s ark may have landed on a mountain as far distant from the ancient Near East as India or China.[57] Along with dating the dispersion of peoples at Babel to about 100 years after the flood, Miller sought to trace the table of nations into the current nations and civilizations of the known world. He engaged what was known of ancient Egyptian history, seeking to hypothesize its connection to the table of nations, and even noted the suggestion of one scholar that Noah may have founded the first Chinese dynasty.[58] Not only his lectures on biblical history but also Miller’s separate “Lectures on Chronology” indicated that through his tenure chronology was no hobby, but an essential part of ministerial training. Miller also viewed it as an area requiring the highest scholarship: the best accuracy in chronology involved not merely a knowledge of the text of Genesis and the rest of Scripture, but also careful awareness of ancient calendar systems, including Jewish, Egyptian, Chaldean, Indian, Greek, and Roman, along with an understanding of solar and lunar cycles.[59] The goal was history through the eyes of faith, with scientific accuracy.

Much as in his previous lectures on biblical history, Miller’s “Lectures on Chronology” engaged contemporary geological theories of ancient earth history, albeit more extensively, revealing substantial awareness of the arguments current in his day. His aim was to defend the scriptural chronology of the traditional Protestant interpretation of Genesis. Miller repeatedly cited Richard Kirwan, along with scriptural geologists, whom he viewed as having “confirmed the truth of revelation … having afforded proof that the earth in its present form cannot have existed longer than the Mosaic account.”[60]

Charles Hodge (1797–1878), the last of the triumvirate of initial professors at Princeton Seminary, followed a decade after Alexander and Miller had begun. Nearly thirty years junior to Archibald Alexander and Samuel Miller, Hodge studied under the men, graduating in 1819, subsequently serving as an assistant instructor in biblical languages. He was ordained, then inaugurated as professor of Oriental and biblical literature in 1822.[61] Along with languages, “Hodge was now responsible for teaching biblical criticism, hermeneutics and Jewish antiquities.”[62] Hodge proposed that biblical criticism, a new subject area, was necessary in order to meet rising challenges to the Scriptures, particularly from German scholarship. It included the careful comparative study of Hebrew texts of the OT, including literary and linguistic aspects.[63] Desiring to pursue greater scholarship, Hodge devoted himself to learning German, and not long afterwards took a two-year study leave (1826–1828) to Germany. The result was a substantial acquaintance with the current state of German biblical critical scholarship; appreciation for some aspects mingled with deep concern over the “deadly poison” evident in Protestant theology in Europe. Hodge’s initial interest and enthusiasm for European theological scholarship was now tempered by an awareness of troubling aspects in the thought of even the most conservative confessional biblical scholars in Germany.[64]

While he served for a time as a professor in the field of OT studies, as Margaret Taylor notes, “gradually his interests and energies turned away from Old Testament studies to other things.”[65] The shift may have been in part due to the addition of yet one more colleague, Joseph Addison Alexander (1809–1860), a brilliant linguist and OT scholar—Archibald Alexander’s son. Hodge would later return to engage the OT, publicly criticizing the traditional biblical chronology of Genesis on the basis of ancient earth geological theory; however, this would not take place until after the deaths of Archibald Alexander and Samuel Miller, events which by 1851 marked the close of the foundational period of Princeton Seminary.[66]

Joseph Addison Alexander was the final addition to OT scholarship at Princeton Seminary during its early years. Appointed professor of Oriental and biblical literature in 1835, in 1851 he took up the role of professor of biblical and ecclesiastical history, receiving a new title, professor of Hellenistic and New Testament literature in 1859, the year prior to his death.

J. A. Alexander’s engagement with biblical criticism reflected much of the same patterns as his father: an effort to integrate that which was compatible with a high view of Scripture, and criticism of that which he saw as contradictory to the Scriptures. At the same time, he differed from his father in numerous ways. His scholarship was perhaps at a higher level, but he also tended far more to descriptive lectures. His “Lectures and Notes on Biblical Criticism, History and Antiquities,” given in the decade prior to the deaths of his father and Samuel Miller, reflected a strong commitment to the historicity of the Genesis account and its abiding priority, albeit with a substantially less polemical edge than those who had lectured in the field prior to him at Princeton Seminary.

IV. Old Paths and New Ideas

Following Archibald Alexander’s death in 1851, Charles Hodge was appointed president, opening a new era for the seminary.[67] The period of Hodge’s leadership was marked by numerous transitions, primarily through the arrival of new professors. With the deaths of the founders, Princeton Seminary explicitly moved away from the Genesis hermeneutic and biblical chronology commonly held during the seminary’s first forty years. The same month as Alexander’s death, October 1851, the Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, edited by Hodge, published a critical review of Eleazer Lord’s critique of old earth geology and defense of a recent creation—indicating in print a marked departure from Miller and Alexander’s earlier teaching.[68]

In 1854, Hodge became professor of exegetical, didactic, and polemic theology. His focus had by this point shifted significantly towards systematic theology. The Princeton transition on Genesis and ancient history was perhaps most comprehensively summed up in Hodges’s Systematic Theology, published between 1871–1883. The work displayed significant reliance on Francis Turretin’s systematic theology, which had been in use to this point; a key difference was Hodge’s divergence from Turretin in the area of biblical chronology. Hodge’s move was not precipitated by ancient histories of human civilizations, but rather the narrative of natural history propounded by nineteenth-century geologists:

According to the commonly received chronology, our globe has existed only a few thousand years. According to geologists, it must have existed for countless ages. And again, according to the generally received interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, the process of creation was completed in six days; where geology teaches us that it must have been in progress through periods of time which cannot be computed. Admitting the facts to be as geologists would have us to believe, two methods of reconciling the Mosaic account with those facts have been adopted. First, some understand the first verse to refer to the original creation of the matter of the universe in the indefinite past, and what follows to refer to the last reorganizing change in the state of our earth to fit it for the habitation of man. Second, the word day as used throughout the chapter is understood of geological periods of indefinite duration. In favour of the latter view it is urged … if the word ‘day’ be taken in the sense of ‘an indefinite period of time,’ a sense which it undoubtedly has in other parts of Scripture, there is not only no discrepancy between the Mosaic account of creation and the assumed facts of geology, but there is a most marvelous coincidence between them.[69]

Hodge’s acceptance of an alternative chronology to that “commonly received” would have a marked impact at Princeton, and through Princeton into the life of the Presbyterian Church and beyond.[70] The shift in engagement with Genesis, due to Hodge’s acceptance of a geological narrative of an ancient history, opened the way for further adjustments in Genesis interpretation in relation to other narratives of history, including the non-Christian civilizational narratives increasingly promoted by historians and archaeologists through the nineteenth century. Seemingly lost in transition was the awareness that these same non-Christian civilizational narratives were a key impetus behind the new natural histories of an ancient earth.[71] By 1890, Professor William Henry Green published his case affirming and expanding the shift in Genesis interpretation, with a view to reconciling biblical chronology with Egyptian narratives of history.[72]

It seemed that at Princeton the articulate commitments of previous Presbyterian generations regarding divine revelation and the discovery of ancient worlds—and their fruit in the pursuit of a comprehensive biblical chronology—were now abandoned. Yet the changes under Hodge did not mark the end of the “commonly received” understanding of the chronology of Genesis at Princeton. Renewed faculty support at Princeton Seminary appeared a little over a decade after Hodge’s death, just two years after Green’s publication. Under B. B. Warfield’s leadership, the biblical theologian Geerhardus Vos took up a professorship at Princeton.[73] While some of the wider latitudes of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European chronological discussion were now found within Princeton Seminary, the traditional understanding of Genesis chronology and ancient histories would also remain a commitment amongst some faculty through the latter half of the nineteenth century, into the twentieth. What was lost at Princeton, and among Presbyterians, was the long-held unity of understanding of Genesis and a passionate pursuit of a global chronology of history cohering with it.[74]

Notes

1. David Livingstone provides a more recent example, examining these within particular contexts of region and locality, evaluating interplays of people, politics, and culture. David Livingstone, Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 1–280.
2. This is a challenge which continues through divergent approaches to the relationship between OT studies and ancient Near Eastern literature. Cf. Noel K. Weeks, “The Bible and the ‘Universal’ Ancient World: A Critique of John Walton,” WTJ 78 (2016): 1–28.
3. By examining the history of Genesis interpretation at Princeton in relation to the discovery of ancient worlds, this study offers a focused development of work begun by Marion Ann Taylor, The Old Testament in the Old Princeton School, 1812–1929 (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992), i–380.
4. Richard Popkin, “Pre-Adamite Theory in the Renaissance,” in Philosophy and Humanism: Renaissance Essays in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. Edward P. Mahoney (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 50–64.
5. Lambert Daneau, The Wonderfull Woorkmanship of the World Wherin Is Conteined an Excellent Discourse of Christian Naturall Philosophie, trans. Thomas Twyne (London, 1578), 7–8.
6. James Ussher, The Annals of the World Deduced from the Origin of Time (London, 1658), preface.
7. Ussher was not alone in his effort to delineate a biblical chronology for world history. Arguably, Christian efforts to trace a holistic narrative of history go back to at least St. Augustine in The City of God, undoubtedly because the Scriptures themselves present a holistic narrative of history.
8. “The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.4).
9. William VanDoodewaard, The Quest for the Historical Adam (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2015), 51–86.
10. John David Wortham, British Egyptology, 1549–1906 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 3–171.
11. Archibald Alexander, “An Inaugural Discourse, Delivered in the Church at Princeton, New Jersey, in the Presence of the Directors of the Theological Seminary, on the 12th of August, 1812,” in The Sermon Delivered at the Inauguration of the Rev. Archibald Alexander, D.D. As Professor of Didactic and Polemical Theology in the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, in the United States of America. To Which are added, the Professor’s Inaugural Address, and The Charge to the Professor and Students (New York: Whiting & Watson, 1812), 83.
12. Ibid., 84.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 60.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 61.
18. Ibid., 90.
19. Ibid., 91.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 104. See also Taylor, Old Testament, 13. The quotation, as Taylor notes, was from Luther’s colleague Heironymous Weller von Molsdorf.
22. Mark A. Noll, “The Princeton Theology,” in Reformed Theology in America: A History of Its Modern Development, ed. David F. Wells (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 13–31.
23. Archibald Alexander, “Lecture I: On Polemic Theology” (Box 13:9 in the Archibald Alexander Manuscript Collection, Princeton Theological Seminary Library).
24. Archibald Alexander, “Polemic Theology: Rules and Cautions” (Box 13:12, Archibald Alexander Manuscript Collection). Alexander’s warnings included that “the human intellect in consequence of its natural imbecility and moral depravity, is wonderfully liable to be carried away from the direction of truth, so as to embrace and defend error instead of truth.”
25. Archibald Alexander, “Profane Authors, Their Antiquity” (Box 13:44, Archibald Alexander Manuscript Collection). Alexander refers to Scaliger’s work multiple times in his lecture. See Joseph Justus Scaliger, Opus novum de emandatione temporum (Paris, 1583); Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); Carl Philipp Emanuel Nothaft, “A Sixteenth-Century Debate on the Jewish Calendar,” JQR 103 (2013): 47–73.
26. Alexander, “Profane Authors, Their Antiquity.”
27. Archibald Alexander, “Theology v. Hindus” (Box 13:33, Archibald Alexander Manuscript Collection); Alexander, “Religion of the Grand Lama” (Box 13:46, Archibald Alexander Manuscript Collection).
28. Archibald Alexander, “Infidels Against Christianity” (Box 14:31, Archibald Alexander Manuscript Collection). William Jones (1746–1794) was perhaps the leading philologist and scholar of ancient India to the end of the eighteenth century. In 1784 he founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta for the advance of scholarship in South Asian cultures and history.
29. Gary Steward, Princeton Seminary (1812–1929): Its Leaders’ Lives and Works (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2014), 67.
30. Archibald Alexander, “The Bible, a Key to the Phenomena of the Natural World,” Biblical Repertory: A Journal of Biblical Literature and Theological Science, Conducted by an Association of Gentlemen n.s. 5 (1821): 119–20. See also Alexander, “Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 10 (1838): 55–85.
31. Archibald Alexander, “Origin of the Aborigines of America,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 13 (1841): 54–80.
32. Archibald Alexander, A Pocket Dictionary of the Holy Bible (Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, 1831), 1–546.
33. Archibald Alexander, History of the Patriarchs (Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, 1833), v.
34. Ibid., iii.
35. Ibid., iii–iv.
36. Ibid., iv.
37. Alexander’s view of creation itself stood within the Protestant literal tradition of interpretation on Gen 1 and 2, holding the creative work of God to have spanned the space of six days. “The first information which the Bible gives us, is of the creation of all things out of nothing, in the space of six days. No other book gives us any satisfactory account of the creation of the world, or of the origin of the human race” (Archibald Alexander, A Brief Compendium of Bible Truth [Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1846], 57).
38. The same is evident in Alexander’s lecture notes. In “The Primeval State,” Alexander wrote that “the primeval state of man was a state of holiness and felicity, almost all theologians agree, and even the heathen retained some tradition of such a state, as appears by their mythology in which a golden age—an age of great innocence and happiness is placed first” (Box 9:41, Archibald Alexander Manuscript Collection).
39. Alexander, Brief Compendium, 10.
40. Ibid., 36.
41. Ibid., 43.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 29–30.
44. David B. Calhoun, Faith and Learning, vol. 1 of Princeton Seminary (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1994), 69–72.
45. Archibald Alexander is recorded by his son as placing little personal value in physical exercise and limiting it to the walk between his home and the seminary building, while Samuel Miller led a very active lifestyle. “Archibald Alexander,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, Index Volume (1825–1868): 42–67.
46. Samuel Miller, “Geography” (Box 8:7–8 in the Samuel Miller Manuscript Collection, Princeton Theological Seminary Library).
47. Samuel Miller, “Biblical History” (Box 8:13, Samuel Miller Manuscript Collection).
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid. Miller, as a minister prior to coming to Princeton Seminary, had addressed the great lifespans of the antediluvians in a sermon to his congregation, entitled “The Longevity of the Patriarchs: A Sermon on Genesis 5.27.” In 1819 Miller used the same sermon a second time, now as an address at the Princeton College Hall.
52. Miller, “Biblical History.”
53. Ibid. This of course begs the question of how Miller viewed the new geological theories of a far more ancient history, propounded by James Hutton around the turn of the nineteenth century, and subsequently by Charles Lyell.
54. Miller, “Biblical History.”
55. Abraham Gottlob Werner, A Treatise on the External Character of Minerals (Leicester Square: George Barclay, 1849–1850), 1–143; Robert Jameson, System of Minerology, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1816).
56. Miller, “Biblical History.”
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Samuel Miller, “Lectures on Chronology” (Box 8:1–6, Samuel Miller Manuscript Collection).
60. Ibid.
61. Steward, Princeton Seminary, 148.
62. Taylor, Old Testament, 55.
63. Ibid., 60–61.
64. Charles Hodge, “A Review of a Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity, by Andrews Norton,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 12 (1840): 69. See Taylor, Old Testament, 86–87.
65. Taylor, Old Testament, 87.
66. In this, however, Hodge did not hesitate to engage in criticism as well; he substantially preferred the arguments of James Dwight Dana to those of Charles Lyell.
67. He was succeeded as president in 1878 by his son, Archibald Alexander Hodge.
68. “Review of Eleazar Lord’s Epoch of Creation” in Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 23 (1851): 696–98.
69. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 1:570.
70. James Petigru Boyce (1827–1888), a Southern Baptist theologian and the first president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, studied under Charles Hodge at Princeton between 1849–1851. In his subsequent writings, Boyce adopted a view on Genesis and ancient chronology similar to that of Hodge.
71. VanDoodewaard, Quest for the Historical Adam, 87–91, 97–99, 102–7, 119–30.
72. William Henry Green, “Primeval Chronology,” BSac 47 (April 1890): 285–303.
73. See VanDoodewaard, Quest for the Historical Adam, 174–180, for further discussion of the teaching of Geerhardus Vos on Genesis and human history.
74. I am indebted to Princeton Theological Seminary for receiving me as a Visiting Scholar in the history of Old Testament interpretation and for facilitating archival research in this area. I am also deeply grateful for the gracious welcome and helpful engagement of David Livingstone, Crawford Gribben, Andrew Holmes, Peter J. Bowler, and other faculty in this field of research while I was a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast.