Granville Sharp

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

He was the ninth of the fourteen children of Thomas Sharp (1693-1758), a prolific theological writer and biographer of his father, John Sharp, archbishop of York. Granville, who was born at Durham in 1735, was educated at Durham School, he was then apprenticed to a London draper, but obtained employment 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 musical well-known ensembles. In reference to this, he often signed his name as G #.

His fame rests, however, 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; and finally it was laid down in the case of James Somersett 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 was an ardent sympathizer with the revolted American colonists, and at home 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 that fought with the British during revolution. Sharp was instrumental in helping Peters receive a land grant in what is now Sierra Leone [1]. Granville Sharp was also one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and of the Society for the Conversion of the Jews.

One of his tracts, entitled Remarks on the Uses of the Definitive Article in the Greek Text of the New Testament, Containing Many New Proofs of the Divinity of Christ, from Passages Which Are Wrongly Translated in the Common English Version, published in 1798, propounded the rule known as Granville Sharp's Rule: "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 . . . ." (Sharp, Remarks on the Uses of the Definitive Article, 2).

Daniel B. Wallace, who accepts Sharp's rule as having some validity, has this to say about the man whose name it bears: "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" (Wallace, page 61).

Daniel Wallace however claims that this rule is often too broadly applied. "Sharp's rule Number 1" doesn't 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.

Granville Sharp's rule number one, concerning the SINGULAR nouns, is unique in its consistency. After a century of scrutiny, this rule remains without exception. Concerning his Rule Number One and the PLURAL nouns, Mr. Sharp, on page 13 of his book, in explanation of his Rule Number One, also states that: "there are not wanting examples, even of PLURAL nouns, which are expressed exactly agreeable to this rule."

On account of this rule's bearing on Unitarian doctrine, it led to a 'celebrated controversy', in which many leading divines took part, including Christopher Wordsworth.

He died on 6th July 1813, and a memorial of him was erected in Westminster Abbey.

[edit] References

Jerome Nadelhaft, "The Somersett Case and Slavery: Myth, Reality, and Repercussions" 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
Steven M. Wise "Though The Heavens May Fall: The Landmark Trial That Led To The End Of Human Slavery (2005)