GEDDES, Alexander (1737-1802), a learned theologian, biblical critic, and miscellaneous writer, was born at the farm of Arradoul, in the parish of Rathven, Banffshire, Scotland, on the 14th of September 1737. At the age of fourteen he entered the small Roman Catholic seminary at Scalan in a remote glen of the Banffshire highlands, where he remained till October 1758, when he was sent to the Scottish College in Paris for the further prosecution of his studies. Here to considerable acquirements in biblical philology and school divinity he succeeded in adding a good knowledge of most of the literary languages of Europe. Returniug to Scotland after an absence of six years, he for a short time officiated as a priest in Dundee, but in May 1765 received and accepted an invitation to become resident in the family of the earl of Traquair, where, with abundance of leisure and the free use of an adequate library, he made further progress in his favourite biblical studies. After a second visit to Paris which extended over some months, and which was employed by him in reading and making extracts from rare books and manuscripts in the public libraries, he in 1769 was appointed to the charge of the Catholic congregation of Auchinhalrig in his native county. During the period of a ten years’ incumbency there he displayed a liberality of spirit which caused considerable scandal to his stricter brethren; and the freedom with which he fraternized with his Protestant neighbours once and again called forth the rebuke of his bishop (Hay). Ultimately, on account of his occasional attendance at the parish church of Cullen, where his friend Buchanan was minister, he was deprived of his charge and forbidden the exercise of ecclesiastical functions within the diocese. This happened in 1779; and ...in 1780 he went with his friend Lord Traquair to London, where he spent the rest of his life, with the exception of a few weeks devoted to travel on the Continent. Before leaving Scotland he had received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the university of Aberdeen, a compliment seldom before paid to any Catholic, and had been made an honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries, in the institution of which he had taken a very active part. Shortly after his arrival in London Geddes received an appointment in connexion with the chapel of the imperial ambassador, which he held until the chaplaincy was suppressed some years afterwards. Having been introduced to Lord Petre, to whom he broached his long-cherished scheme for the publication of a new Catholic version of the Scriptures on the basis of the Vulgate, he met with every encouragement from that nobleman, who assigned to him an annual salary of £200, and, moreover, undertook to provide the needful books. Supported also by such scholars as Kennicott and Lowth, Geddes in 1786 published & Prospectus of a new Translation of the Holy Bible, from corrected Texts of the Originals, compared with the ancient Versions, with various Headings, explanatory Notes, and critical Observations, a considerable quarto volume, in which the defects of previous translations were fully pointed out, and the means were indicated by which these might be removed. It attracted considerable notice of a favourable kind, and led to the publication in 1788 of Proposals for Printing, with a specimen, and in 1790 of a General Answer to Queries, Counsels, and Criticisms. The first volume of the translation itself, which was entitled The Holy Bible; or the Books accounted sacred by Jews and Christians; otherwise called the Books of the Old and New Covenants; faithfully translated from corrected Texts of the Originals, with various Readings, explanatory Notes, and critical Remarks, appeared in 1792, and was the signal for a storm of hostility on the part of both Catholics and Protestants. It was obvious enough—no small offence inthe eyes of some—that as a critic Geddes had identified himself with Houbigant, Kennicott, and Michaelis; but others did not hesitate to stigmatize him as the would-be “corrector of the Holy Ghost.” Three of the vicars-apostolic almost immediately warned all the faithful against the “use and reception” of his translation, on the ostensible ground that it had not been examined and approved by due ecclesiastical authority; and by his own bishop (Douglas) he was in 1793 suspended from the exercise of his orders in the London district. The second volume of the translation, completing the historical books, published in 1797, found no more friendly reception; but this circumstance did not discourage him from giving forth in 1800 the volume of Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures, corresponding with a New Translation of the Bible, containing the Pentateuch, of which it is enough to say that, while fully saturated with all the best learning of its time, it presented in a somewhat brusque and injudicious manner the then novel and startling views of Eichhorn and his school on the primitive history and early records of mankind. Dr Geddes was engaged on a critical translation of the Psalms, which he had completed down to the 118th, when he was seized with a lingering and painful illness which ultimately proved fatal on the 26 th of February 1802. Although for many years he had been under ecclesiastical censures, he had never for a moment swerved from a consistent profession of faith as a Catholic; and on his death-bed he duly received the last rites of his communion. It would appear, however, that the report which gained currency that before his death he had made recantation of his “errors” was entirely destitute of foundation in fact. In his lifetime he enjoyed the friendship of several eminent Continental scholars, and his death was noticed as being a loss to science in the Gelehrte Zeitung of Gotha and in other foreign journals.
Besides pamphlets on the Catholic and slavery questions, as well as several fugitive jeux desprit, and a number of unsigned articles in the Analytical Review, Geddes also published a metrical translation and adaptation of Select Satires of Horace (1779), and a verbal rendering of the First Book of the Iliad of Homer (1792). The Memoirs of his life and writings by his friend Dr Mason Good appeared in 1803, and his unfinished work on the Psalms in 1807.
[1,049 words — estimated reading time: 6 minutes]