Further Antedating of "Biblical"

[Laurence Horn]

On Oct 15, 2011, at 10:35 PM, Shapiro, Fred wrote:

> Here's a still earlier antedating:
> 
> biblical (OED 1790)
> 
> 1652 Anthony Burgess _Spiritual Refining_ 527 (Early English Books Online)  It will be very impertinent to give you a Theological, and Biblical use of the word _Spirit_, which is of a great latitude in its signification.
> 
> 

I suspect the OED dismissed this as a potential antedate on the assumption that this was written by *our* Anthony Burgess (1917-1993), novelist, philologist, and author of _A Clockwork Orange_ as well as the less famous _The Doctor is Sick_, which features a linguistics professor as protagonist.  Based on my reading of him, Burgess is a man who I wouldn't put time-traveling past.  Other quotes from Burgess bearing on this:

"The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch."

"Every dogma has its day."  [To be sure, others may have come up with this one.]

and especially 

"All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else."

--clearly authored by the same pen as the 1652 one above, although Burgess must have decided to be more circumspect while dwelling in the 17th century.

(I also like his observation that “The downtrodden...are the great creators of slang", but that's of less theological relevance for current purposes.)

LH 

> 
> ________________________________________
> From: Shapiro, Fred
> Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2011 4:40 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Antedating of "Biblical"
> 
> Here's an interesting antedating.  Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but the OED first use for _biblical_ is so late that it almost seems like the editors lost a batch of slips.  It's one of the few antedatings I ever found that made me feel that way (another one was _literary_, which the original OED dated 1749 although Francis Bacon had used it in 1605 and Samuel Johnson had used it frequently beginning in 1734).
> 
> biblical (OED 1790)
> 
> 1684 John Lightfoot _The works of the Reverend and learned John Lightfoot D. D._ Preface (Early English Books Online)  This is very precarious, and such an Ellipsis ... as seems contrary to the Genius of the Biblical _Hebrew_.
> 
> Fred Shapiro
> 
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