William Henry Bennett

Bennett, William Henry (1855–1920), Congregational minister and biblical scholar, was born on 22 May 1855 at 1 Conduit Street, Paddington, London, the son of William Emmanuel Bennett, draper, and his wife, Emily Brice. He was educated at the City of London School under E. A. Abbott, and proceeded to Lancashire Independent college, Manchester, in 1873. Although a near contemporary at the college, J. P. Kingsland, recalled Bennett's kindly disposition, he also remarked upon ‘the extreme difficulty he experienced in writing a sermon for Sermon Class. I have often wondered whether he succeeded later in writing a passable sermon!’ (Kingsland, 176). There was clearly some improvement, for at his death Bennett was remembered by a friend as one who spoke ‘home to the conscience and to the heart’, though another noted that ‘his pulpit style was not what the ordinary congregation regarded as popular’ (Manchester Guardian, 28 Aug 1920). While in Manchester, Bennett graduated from the University of London with second-class honours in mathematics in 1875 and an MA in that subject in 1876. From 1878 to 1882 he was at St John's College, Cambridge, on leave from Lancashire College. He gained his Cambridge BA with first-class honours in the theological tripos in 1882, and proceeded MA in 1885. He won a number of prizes and was elected a fellow of his college, the first Free Churchman to be thus honoured in Cambridge. In 1902 he became LittD of Cambridge as well as DD at the University of Aberdeen, where the ceremony was somewhat disturbed by younger graduands.

Meanwhile, in 1884, Bennett had been appointed professor of Hebrew, church history and New Testament at Rotherham Independent college, and on 31 March 1885 he married Annie, daughter of R. J. Wibley, grocer, of Market Hill and Hurst, Cambridge, at Victoria Road Congregational Church, Cambridge. They had two daughters. While at Rotherham, Bennett lectured in Hebrew at Firth College, the predecessor of the University of Sheffield, and from 1888 to 1913 he was professor of Old Testament exegesis at Hackney College, London, assuming in addition the identical role at New College, London, from 1891. Recalling his own appointment to New College, A. E. Garvie described Bennett as ‘the soul of magnanimity in welcoming and working with me as Principal for some years’, remarking that ‘on the Senate of London University he surprised many as a “man of affairs”’ (Garvie, 230–31). Bennett served as dean of the faculty of theology, and as examiner to the universities of London, Wales, Manchester, and Bristol. Garvie further considered that the demands of the principalship of Lancashire Independent college, which, on the retirement of Walter F. Adeney, Bennett accepted in 1913, probably shortened his life; certainly the management of the college during the First World War imposed added burdens upon him.

Bennett enjoyed excellent relations with colleagues and students alike, though he never courted popularity and could be self-deprecating. When it was suggested to him that he might consider becoming principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, he replied, ‘They need a popular preacher and a man of the world, and I am neither’ (British Weekly, 9 Sept 1920, 443). Modest himself, he knew how to prick the pretensions of the pompous.

While at Hackney and at New colleges, Bennett collaborated with Adeney on The Bible Story Re-Told for Young People (1897), A Biblical Introduction (1899), and The Bible and Criticism (1912). An example of Bennett's wry humour occurs in his introduction to the 1912 volume. In the wake of the ‘Downgrade’ controversy which was orchestrated by the Baptist C. H. Spurgeon, Bennett wrote, ‘“Higher Criticism” forms and expresses judgments as to the date, authorship, and mode of composition of a book. When Mr. Spurgeon expressed such judgments he was a “Higher Critic”’ (p. viii). In 1887, when the controversy was at its height, and in response to the British Weekly's question, ‘Are Nonconformists departing from the faith?’, Bennett suggested that there were changes of terminology rather than of substance, and that for the most part nonconformists remained evangelical in doctrine.

Bennett was the sole author of The Mishna as Illustrating the Gospels (1884), and A Primer of the Bible (1897). He contributed the volumes on Chronicles (1894) and Jeremiah 21–52 (1895) to the Expositor's Bible, those on Genesis and Exodus to the Century Bible, and Joshua, a new translation, illustrated and ‘with colours exhibiting the composite structure of the book’, to The Polychrome Bible (1899). This was followed by Joshua and the Conquest of Palestine (1904). In 1907 his Religion of the Post-Exilic Prophets appeared. Here Bennett introduced the prophets in chronological order and then expounded their teaching in relation to the standard themes of dogmatics. While he admitted that a new reformation of theological thought, comparable with that of the sixteenth-century Reformation, was required, he considered that the scholarship of the time, both biblical and scientific, was too much in a state of flux for any such enterprise to succeed. In 1909 his Old Testament History appeared, followed by The Moabite Stone (1911), The Historical Value of the Old Testament (1911), The Value of the Old Testament for To-Day (1914), and (for young people) The Bible: its Place in the Christian Life (1918).

Though pre-eminently concerned with the Old Testament (he was the first president of the Society for Old Testament Study, from 1917 to 1920), Bennett also published The Life of Christ According to St Mark (1907), in which he sought to reproduce the impression of Christ which would be gained by a reader who had no other source of knowledge of Jesus than this gospel. Bennett also contributed the volume on the general epistles, James, Peter, John, and Jude, to the Century Bible, and published a pamphlet on The Congregational Churches (1910). Among his other writings are articles in Encyclopaedia biblica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, the Expositor's Bible, and chapters in Faith and Criticism (1893) and Christianity and Civilization (1910). Bennett died aged sixty-five on 27 August 1920 at Lancashire College, and was survived by his wife.

Bennett was a ‘believing critic’: P. T. Forsyth described him as one who taught the Old Testament in the spirit of the New. Over and above his careful if not earth-shaking studies of biblical texts and themes, his contribution lay in keeping his head and helping others to find their feet in the wake of the ‘higher criticism’. It is not wildly speculative to surmise that but for the work of scholars such as Bennett and his Manchester colleagues, the Wesleyan J. H. Moulton and the Primitive Methodist A. S. Peake, the reaction against biblical criticism and towards fundamentalist literalism would have been much stronger than it proved to be in Britain. The words with which Bennett and Adeney concluded the preface to their Biblical Introduction epitomized their work as a whole:

The authors of this volume trust that it may help its readers to a truer understanding of the sacred Scriptures, and to a fuller appreciation of their unique importance; and may confirm them in the evangelical recognition of the supreme authority of the Bible as interpreted and applied by the Holy Spirit for the spiritual life. (Bennett and Adeney, Biblical Introduction, vii)

Alan P. F. Sell

Sources Venn, Alum. Cant. · Congregational Year Book (1921), 102 · St John Cam., Sandys Tutorial Admissions MSS · The Times (2 Sept 1920) · Manchester Guardian (28 Aug 1920) · British Weekly (2 Sept 1920) · British Weekly (9 Sept 1920) · Cambridge Independent Press (4 April 1885) · Aberdeen Daily Journal (1 April 1902) · J. P. Kingsland, ‘Lancashire College sixty-five years ago’, Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, 14 (1940–44), 173–80 · A. E. Garvie, Memories and meanings of my life (1938) · W. B. Glover, Evangelical nonconformists and higher criticism in the nineteenth century (1954) · J. W. Rogerson, The Society for Old Testament Study: a short history, 1917–1992 (1992) · W. H. Bennett and W. F. Adeney, The Bible and criticism (1912) · W. H. Bennett and W. F. Adeney, A biblical introduction (1899) · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1920)

Likenesses James Russell & Sons, photograph, pubd 1907–9, NPG [see illus.] · photograph, repro. in Congregational Year Book, following p. 102

Wealth at death £3477 15s. 4d.: probate, 15 Nov 1920, CGPLA Eng. & Wales

Source: Alan P. F. Sell, ‘Bennett, William Henry (1855–1920)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2010 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/41210, accessed 22 July 2013]