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Granville Sharp

Granville Sharp (10 November 1735 - 6 July 1813) was a British campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade, and a classicist.

Life

Granville Sharp was the 20th of the 31 children of Thomas Sharp (1693-1758), a prolific theological writer and biographer of his father, John Sharp, archbishop of York. Granville, was born at Durham in 1735, and was educated at Durham School. He was apprenticed to a London draper, but got a job in the government ordnance department in 1758. Sharp's tastes were scholarly; he managed to acquire knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and before 1770 he had published more than one treatise on biblical criticism. He also had a keen musical interest, being able to play two flutes simultaneously and taking part in the family’s well-known musical ensembles. In reference to this, he often signed his name as G #.

He died on 6 July 1813, and a memorial of him was erected in Westminster Abbey. Sharp lived in Fulham, London, and is buried in the churchyard of All Saints Church, Fulham.

Abolitionism and other activism

His fame rests mainly on his untiring efforts for the abolition of slavery. In 1767, he had become involved in litigation with the owner of an enslaved African called Jonathan Strong, in which it was decided that a slave remained in law the chattel of his master even on English soil. Sharp devoted himself to fighting this judgment both with his pen and in the courts of law. Finally in the case of James Somersett it was laid down that a slave becomes free the moment he sets foot on English territory. The Zong incident of 1781 allowed the re-examination of how inhumane slavery was.

Sharp ardently sympathized with the revolt of the American colonists. He also advocated parliamentary reform and the legislative independence of Ireland, and agitated against the impressment of sailors for the Navy.

It was through his efforts that bishops for the United States of America were consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1787. In the same year, he was the means of founding a society for the abolition of slavery, and a settlement for emancipated slaves at Sierra Leone. Through this society, Granville came into contact with Thomas Peters, a former American slave who fought with the British during revolution in return for freedom. Sharp was instrumental in helping Peters receive a land grant in what is now Sierra Leone Sharp was also one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society and of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews.

Classical grammarian

One of Granville's letters written in 1778 (published in 1798), propounded what has come to be known as The Granville Sharp Rule (in actuality only the first of six principles involving the article that Sharp articulated):

“When the copulative kai connects two nouns of the same case, if the article ho, or any of its cases, precedes the first of the said nouns or participles, and is not repeated before the second noun or participle, the latter always relates to the same person that is expressed or described by the first noun or participle ...”

Daniel B. Wallace says about Sharp:

“His strong belief in Christ’s deity led him to study the Scriptures in the original in order to defend more ably that precious truth ... As he studied the Scriptures in the original, he noticed a certain pattern, namely, when the construction article-noun-και-noun involved personal nouns which were singular and not proper names, they always referred to the same person. He noticed further that this rule applied in several texts to the deity of Jesus Christ.”

But Wallace claims that this rule is often too broadly applied. “Sharp’s rule Number 1” does not always work with plural forms of personal titles. Instead, a phrase that follows the form article-noun-“and”-noun, when the nouns involved are plurals, can involve two entirely distinct groups, two overlapping groups, two groups of which is one a subset of the other, or two identical groups (Wallace, page 72-78). In other words, it is not always evident that anything significant for the meaning of the words happens merely by being joined by “and” and dropping the second article.

Of Granville Sharp's most successful critic, Calvin Winstanley, Wallace says:

"Winstanley conceded 'There are, you say, no exceptions, in the New Testament, to your rule; that is, I suppose, unless these particular texts [i.e. the ones Sharp used to adduce Christ's deity] be such ... it is nothing surprising to find all these particular texts in question appearing as the exceptions to your rule, and the sole exceptions ... in the New Testament' (39-40)--an obvious concession that he could find no exceptions save for the ones he supposed exist in the christologically pregnant texts.

What Wallace neglects by use of ellipses (...) is the flow of Winstanley's argument as well as the character of his theology. Winstanley's quote argued that one could not apply Sharp's rule to the possible exceptions unless it could be shown that extra-biblical literature also followed Sharp's rule. Through multiple examples Winstanley showed that in classical Greek and in patristic Greek - all the literature surrounding the New Testament, the rule simply did not apply consistently. Wallace's quote comes from the end of Winstanley's argument in which he clearly is not conceding the point. To complete Winstanley's argument:

"There are, you say, no exceptions, in the New Testament, to your rule; that is, I suppose, unless these particular texts be such; which you think utterly improbable. You would argue, then, that if these texts were exceptions, there would be more. I do not perceive any great weight in this hypothetical reasoning. But, however plausible it may appear, the reply is at hand. There are no other words so likely to yield exceptions; because there are no other words, between which the insertion of the copulative, would effect so remarkable a deviation from the established form of constructing them to express one person; and of course, would so pointedly suggest a difference of signification.

Winstanley was a trinitarian Christian, but cautioned that a rule that held true only in the New Testament in all but the disputed cases was too flimsy a ground on which to try to prove the divinity of Christ to the Socinians (Unitarians). Instead he said, "[I think] there are much more cogent arguments in reserve, when [Sharp's] rule of interpretation shall be abandoned. His biggest criticisms of Sharp's rule rest in the fact that 1) the early church fathers do not follow it and 2) the early church father's never invoked this rule to prove the divinity of Christ (though it would have been an obvious tool against such heresy). He concludes, "Hence it may be presumed that the doctrine then rested on other grounds.

While it is affirmed by Wallace and other Biblical scholars that there is more and more confirmation of this rule, there are trinitarian scholars who continue to believe Winstanley's refutation sufficient.

It was this rule’s bearing on Unitarian doctrine, that led to a ‘celebrated controversy’, in which many leading divines took part, including Christopher Wordsworth.

References

Jerome Nadelhaft, "The Somersett Case and Slavery: Myth, Reality, and Repercussions" in Journal of Negro History, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Jul., 1966), pp. 193-208
Lascelles, Edward Charles Ponsonby, Granville Sharp and the Freedom of the Slaves in England (London: 1928)
Pollard, Albert Frederick, "Granville Sharp" in The Dictionary of National Biography, XVII, pp. 1339-1342
Wise, Steven M., Though The Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led To The End Of Human Slavery (2005)