Conrad Busken Huet

Conrad Busken Huet (28 December 1826, The Hague – 1 May 1886, Paris) was a Dutch pastor, journalist and literary critic.

Biography

Busken Huet, son of a Hague civil servant, attended Gymnasium Haganum and studied theology at Leiden University, in Geneva and Lausanne. He was appointed pastor of the Walloon church in Haarlem in 1851.

A student of Prof. Johannes Henricus Scholten and friend of Prof. Abraham Kuenen, Busken Huet familiarized his parishioners with the insights of 'Modern Theology', e.g. with respect to the Bible. In 1857-1858 he created a scandal by publishing Brieven over den Bijbel ('Letters on the Bible'), in which he popularized the 'Modern' view on the origins and authority of the Bible:

"Just as all Christianity is purely devotional love after Christ’s example, the entire Bible is purely a human creation. Yes, a creation inspired by the personal faith of the prophets and apostles; brought forth by the national genius of the Hebrews, which genius both the apostles and the prophets represented; one that did not fall from the clouds like a meteor, but rose from the bosom of the Jewish people, as the goddess of beauty rose from the billows whose foam created her; one which was not, in part or whole, put on paper and collected in one or two volumes through the external intervention of Providence, but which emerged leaf by leaf, like a budding flower, from the stem of Israel; one that did not bypass the Jews or go over the heads as it came to us from God, but came from the Jews themselves, under God’s guidance; a human creation, in other words, inspired by human faith, consummated by human art, preserved by human care, understood by every true human heart and acknowledged as the voice of the heart, as the voice of human devotion, human suffering, human happiness: such is the human creation the Bible is to me."