Divine Legation (1738–41), Public Sensation: William Warburton and the Making of Eighteenth-Century Scholarly Celebrity

Abstract William Warburton, literary executor of Alexander Pope, controversially defended the divinity of the Pentateuch on the grounds that it omitted promises of future rewards and punishments. His monumental Divine legation of Moses demonstrated (1738–41) has long had a reputation for being vast, sleepy, and abstruse. This article shows how this seemingly impenetrable book nevertheless became a public sensation. Widely read and endlessly discussed in the periodical press, the book’s success owed much to a public already fascinated by biblical scholarship. Yet the sheer density of this erudite work made it an unlikely candidate for a literary sensation. Drawing on a rich cache of archival records, the article shows how public interest was ignited and sustained by the efforts of Warburton and his publishing team to capitalize on the eighteenth-century media ecology. As they created buzz and inflated the polemic, Warburton himself became a celebrity, his private life – including his sex life – caricatured in gossipy magazines. As his renown grew, so did his infamy, and the sensation was further fuelled by a growing appetite to witness his distinctive ‘theological rage’. Achieved against the odds, the notoriety of Warburton and his book show how eighteenth-century technologies of celebrity could make the sleepy exciting.