Dealing with its Language, Literature and Contents, including the Biblical Theology. Edited by James Hastings, M.A., D.D. Vol. I: A—Feasts. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 1898.1
The first volume of Dr. William Smith’s “Dictionary of the Bible” was published at the end of 1863, and was reissued in America four years later in a thoroughly revised form, under the editorial care of Dr. H. B. Hackett and Mr. Ezra Abbot. Before the close of the year 1870, the four volumes of the American edition were in the hands of the public. Of course there were other works of the kind in the field, the most valuable of which were probably Dr. Patrick Fairbairn’s “The Imperial Bible-Dictionary” (2 vols., London, 1866) and Dr. W. Lindsay Alexander’s edition of Kitto’s “Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature” (3 vols., Philadelphia, 1866). McClintock and Strong’s “Cyclopædia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature,” the publication of which was begun in 1867, sought to occupy so much wider a field that it hardly came into direct competition with the specific “Bible Dictionaries.” It is true to say, at all events, that the “American Smith” immediately took its place on the tables of scholarly American ministers and students of the Word as the standard work of the kind. That place it has worthily and almost undisputedly held ever since. Meanwhile a generation of years has passed, and in these days of restless research a generation is a very long time, in which many changes of opinion must needs occur, and some not inconsiderable advance in knowledge may haply be made. It is easy, to be sure, to overestimate the “increase of knowledge” that has come with “the process of the years.” Augustine points out that all the knowledge best worth having is acquired by the human animal in its infancy: it is the puling metaphysician who accomplishes the task set us by the oracle and learns to know himself, and, wiser than he may afterward become, separates off from himself the external world, and discovers about him other spirits like himself: it is in our earliest youth that we learn to think and speak and read: and what are all other acquisitions but relatively unimportant growths of these fruitful roots? Similarly what is best worth knowing about the Bible has not been reserved for the aging Church of the last third of the nineteenth century to discover. It is all duly set down in our Smith and Kitto and Fairbairn, and in our Calmet, too, and in whatever before that served to inform men what the Bible is, what it contains, and what one must know in order to understand and appreciate its message. Whatever else the last thirty years have discovered, they have not discovered the Bible, nor anything about the Bible of the first importance. Nevertheless the diligent labors of Bible students during this period have not been in vain: a considerable body of fresh information has been accumulated, sometimes of a corrective, sometimes of a supplementary character. The time has fully come to garner this new material and put it within the reach of all.
The most natural way of doing this was to build on the old foundations, and we were accordingly promised a revised edition of Smith. After the publication of its first installment, however, that project seems to have fallen through. In its stead, we have been bidden to look for two completely new Bible Dictionaries. The one of these, projected first by Prof. W. Robertson Smith, is being completed under the editorship of Prof. T. K. Cheyne, with the assistance of Dr. J. Sutherland Black; and its first part is announced to appear in the approaching October. It is expected to occupy what is known as a very “advanced” standpoint; to scorn “average opinion” and start out from “the latest that has been written” on each subject; and to apply the “most exact scientific methods” and thoroughgoing critical solvents to all that is Biblical. The other of our two promised Dictionaries, undertaken by the great firm of Messrs. T. & T. Clark, of Edinburgh, was understood to be laid out on less extreme lines and to aim at presenting rather what is known about the Bible than the latest conjectures concerning it by the least sober of scholars. It has outstripped its rival in speed of preparation, and its first volume now lies before us. Those who had looked forward to it, however, as throughout a reliable guide to what is really known of Biblical matters will be in some measure disappointed. The editor speaks of the care that has been exercised to exclude “unaccepted idiosyncrasies” from its pages. The success of the effort has been only partial. The trouble has been in the standard assumed. “Unaccepted” is a good word, but its value can be estimated only when we ask further, By whom? “Unaccepted” by a narrow circle of critical scholars which has acquired temporary vogue among us, has been the practical answer. And the consequences are that the sober reader finds the book characterized by the abundance of idiosyncrasies which crowd its pages and is offended by its apparent lack of coherence as a whole; and that the distinction between the two new Bible Dictionaries sinks at last very much into a question of details. The interval that separates the two is indeed just the interval that divides from one another the two Oxford colleagues, Drs. Cheyne and Driver. There is no need to minimize this interval; it is perceptible: but there is no difference in principle between the two; it is only a matter of a little more or a little less. The Edinburgh Dictionary both profits and loses by the difference. It loses by it in internal consistency and unity and in stability and hold upon the future—for, after all, the “moderate criticism” which it has elected to represent wavers between two opinions and must advance in one direction or the other through rapid changes; while for an extremer scepticism there is always a constituency—few perhaps but fit—it being true in this sphere too that the “poor we have always with us.” It profits by it, in so much as the frying pan, after all said, is a better place than the fire; and in so much as the essentially mediating and inconsistent character of the standpoint of “moderate criticism” which it assumes has naturally justified the insertion of many articles of a more conservative tendency (although these are mostly on the “safe” topics, that is, on such subjects as impinge only indirectly on matters of “criticism”) and especially has demanded a tolerably conservative attitude in matters connected with the New Testament. Despite its unsatisfactory critical point of view, accordingly, this new Dictionary is not only a rich record of, but also an important contribution to our present knowledge of the Bible: it has been edited with the highest skill and gathers in the most scholarly manner the results of modern research into Biblical matters: it is full, thorough, learned, and bids fair to be the student’s vade mecum for the next few years.