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Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > W > Brian Walton


BRIAN WALTON

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Biblical scholar, editor of Walton's Polyglot Bible, born at Seymour, or Seamer,
near York, in 1600; died in London, 29 November, 1661. He was educated at
Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1619-20, and M.A. in 1623. Ordained in the
Anglican Church, he became a curate and also schoolmaster in Suffolk; in 1628 he
was promoted to the rectorship of St. Martin's Orgar, London, to which was
added, in 1636, that of Sandon, Essex, and, perhaps, the title of chaplain to
the king with a prebend in St. Paul's. He took the degree of D.D. at the
University of Cambridge in 1639. Having become involved in the troubles of the
times, he was accused of "subtile tricks and popish innovations", deprived of
his two rectories, in 1641, and in the next year imprisoned. In no way
disheartened, he went, on receiving his freedom, to Oxford, then the capital of
Royalist England, and there planned the great Polyglot (see POLYGLOT BIBLES)
which was to render his name familiar to every student of the Scriptures. After
the surrender of Oxford in 1646, he betook himself to London, where, in 1652, he
issued his prospectus of the Polyglot. Subscriptions were put at £10 a set, and
in a short time the sum of £9000 was subscribed. Walton's Polyglot was the first
book published by subscription in England. To carry out his work successfully,
Walton secured the aid of nearly all the contemporary English scholars,
particularly Edmund Castell, Edward Pococke, Thomas Hyde, Dudley Loftus, Abraham
Weelocke, Thomas Greaves, and Samuel Clarke, but the editorship devolved upon
himself. While the Polyglot was in the press, he published as an aid to the
perusal thereof an "Introductio ad lectionem linguarum Orientalium" (London,
1655; Deventer, 1655, 1658).



This was a time when English theologians were much divided as to the extent of
the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures, some going so far as to adopt the
narrow view that even the vowel-points and accents of the Massoretic text "must
come under our consideration as being such from God" (Owen, "Works", XVI, 303).
John Owen had just prepared to that effect a tract on "The Divine Original
Authority and self-evidencing Light and Purity of the Scriptures", when he was
confronted by Walton's "Prolegomena", in which a much more liberal view was
held. He set out to refute it, and published to that purpose a new tract: "Of
the Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew Text of the Scriptures, with
Considerations of the Prolegomena and Appendix to the late Biblia Polyglotta"
(Oxford, 1659). Brian Walton, whose saner view of the subject was inspired by
deeper scholarship and was endorsed by "the chief Protestant Divines, and
greatest linguists that then were", was not long in repelling Owen's Quixotic
attack: to his opponent he addressed his "Considerator considered: or a brief
View of certain Considerations upon the Biblia Polyglotta, the Prolegomena and
the Appendix" (London, 1659), which should at once have ended the controversy,
were the weight of the arguments the only factor in ending controversies. But,
consoling himself with the thought that his work could not be expected to share
better than Origen's Hexapla, S. Jerome's Vulgate, the Complutensian Polyglot,
Erasmus's Greek Testament, and the Antwerp and Paris Polyglots, all of which had
met with opposition, he abandoned the controversy, leaving it to time to
vindicate him. The dawn of the day of vindication was not long delayed, for at
the Restoration he was made chaplain to the king, and soon after (2 December,
1660) consecrated Bishop of Chester in Westminster Abbey.




SOURCES

BRIGGS, General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture (Edinburgh, 1899),
222-25; TODD, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Brian Walton (London, 1821);
ELLIES DU PIN, Table universelle des auteurs heretiques du xvi et du xvii
siecles, IV (Paris, 1704); FELLER, Dictionnaire historique, XVIII (Paris, 1829);
REUSCH, Der Index der verbotenen Bucher, II (Bonn, 1885), 124, 125.


ABOUT THIS PAGE

APA citation. Souvay, C. (1912). Brian Walton. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New
York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15545c.htm

MLA citation. Souvay, Charles. "Brian Walton." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol.
15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15545c.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Michael T.
Barrett. Dedicated to all translators of Holy Scripture.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D.,
Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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