Another scholar was George Rapall Noyes, who was a country pastor in Brookfield and Petersham from 1827 to 1840, and devoted his leisure to Biblical studies. He became the professor of Hebrew and, lecturer on Biblical Literature in the Harvard Divinity School in 1840. His translations, with notes, of the poetical books of the Old Testament, beginning with Job in 1827, were of great importance as aids, to the interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. His translation of the New Testament, which appeared after his death, in 1868, gave the best results of critical studies in homely prose, and with painstaking fidelity to the original. That Noyes was in advance of the criticism of his time may be indicated by the fact that, when he published his conclusions in regard to the Messianic prophecies in 1834,[5] he was threatened with an indictment for blasphemy by the attorney-general of Massachusetts. Better judgment prevailed against this attempt to coerce opinion, but that such an indictment was seriously considered shows how little genuine criticism there was then in existence. What are now the commonplaces of scholarship were then regarded as destructive and blasphemous. Noyes said that the truth of the Christian religion does not in any sense depend upon the literal fulfilment of any predictions in the Old Testament by Jesus as a person.[6] He said that the apostles partook of the errors and prejudices of their age,[7] that the commonly received doctrine of the inspiration of the whole Bible is a millstone about the neck of Christianity,[8] and that the Bible contains much that cannot be regarded as revelation.[9] Even as early as 1835 these opinions were generally accepted by Unitarians; and they were not thought to impair the true worth of the spiritual revelation contained in the Bible, and especially not the divine nature of the teachings of Christ. It was very important, as Dr. Joseph Henry Allen has said, in speaking of Norton and Noyes, that "these decisive first steps were taken by deliberate, conscientious, conservative scholars,--the best and soberest scholars we had to show."[10]