John Colenso and some interesting notes in 1862

---John Colenso was an Anglican missionary to Africa near the place where I grew up.

---He went to Africa during British involvement in Africa. To find the precise words to speak of their projects in Africa is not easy. Pragmatically, they were building beautiful buildings and brought to Africa that which was not there, for millennia maybe…highly developed civilization.

---No archaeology in Africa has revealed a past civilization like the Incas in South America. Nothing.

---So Colenso had a mission station near Pietermaritzburg in Kwazulu Natal.

---There are eight black cultural groups in South Africa or slightly more, each with their own heritage. But only the Zulus were in Natal. Not the others.

---So some young black men quickly became students of Colenso.

---So he learned Zulu and wrote a Dictionary and Grammar of their language.

---His students in turn learned English. Fluently. That was shortly before 1862.

---He quickly went on a trip to England in 1862.

---His commentary on Romans was published in 1863.

---Because of the commentary and what he said in it, he was branded as the hero of civil right fighter for the blacks in South Africa.

---Because of his commentary.

---He was branded a heretic and a number of courtcases followed.

---Civil rights fighter for the blacks?

---Until I opened a gift book from my uncle to me….a Greek Bible.

---My uncle was asked around 1994 to rebuild or reconstruct the foundations of the church at the mission station of Colenso.

---As they cleaned out the garbage and threw it on the side he saw the Greek Bible and said: “Ah. My cousin would like this”.

---So opening it up after many years preserved by my father and taken to my house later, I realized it is the actual Greek study Bible of Colenso with his notes in the margins.

---What I learned is that he did not say anything about civil rights. 99.9% nothingness.

---These notes were written in 1862 one year before the publication of the Commentary on Romans.

---My opinion is that the civil rights statements in the Commentary on Romans that was published were inserted by his black students.

---Let me suggest that he may have asked them to edit the commentary manuscript while he left for England for a number of months, especially August until October of 1862. It is written in the Notes of the Greek Bible.

---Is it his handwriting? Undoubtedly. I am 100% sure.

---So let us look at some of his comments that are noteworthy for me as an Adventist in his notes.

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---In Romans 7:5-6 he contrasted Spirit vs Literal Obedience.

---In Romans 7:7 he wrote “Fault lies not in the law, but in the perversity of the human will”.

---Some sources that Colenso consulted are: Lightfoot for Galatians 1-2, C. Vaughan at 2 Peter 1-20. He used Pliny’s Letters at Revelation 13:18 on the 666.

---At 1 Timothy 4:1 he wrote that asceticism mentioned in the verse cannot refer to the Roman Catholics “because they cannot be apostate”.

---We find a very unique comment of doubt or agony or fatigue in 1 Timothy 6:2 where he says in a midrash on “slavery” that Christianity cannot totally give up slavery but that it may “die away in degrees”.

---He discussed the offices of Elders in 1 Timothy 3:1 and Revelation 2:1.

---He mentioned the temple in Revelation 8:3.

---“The Word of God must be digested in word” he said in Revelation 11:9.

---Colenso said that the seventh angel is “final consummation of all things” Revelation 11:15.

---The four empires he listed as Chaldeans, Medo-Persians, Greece and Rome.

---He says in Revelation 13:3 that Christianity wounded heathen Rome.

---He said that not to worship the beast will lead to persecution (Revelation 13:8).

---At the end of Revelation 14 he said that the end of this chapter describes the end of all things. See Revelation 14:20 for his note.

---His comment on the 1000 years in Revelation 20 is interesting. He said that it is either before the Second Coming or between the Second Coming and the Hell event.

---These notes are not published yet except for one article so far that my wife and I wrote on his comments in Revelation.

End.