By T. K. Cheyne, D. Litt., D.D. London: Williams & Norgate; New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 1904.1
The “Crown Theological Library,” of which this volume forms the eighth number, is a new propaganda of what in our modern nomenclature is miscalled “liberal” Christianity. The most of the essays hitherto published in it are translations from the German and French of characteristic papers by such men as Friedrich Delitzsch, Harnack, Herrmann, Pfleiderer, Lobstein, Réville, Sabatier. They give the series the appearance of an attempt to naturalize in lands of English speech the variety of “liberal” Christianity now so flourishing on the continent of Europe. An occasional paper of English authorship has, however, been included. Among these certainly none can put in a better claim to either representativeness or readableness than this sprightly essay by Dr. Cheyne. Were it only on the score of literary delight no one ought to miss anything which Dr. Cheyne writes. The fine patience with which he bears with the intellectual backwardness of the uninstructed multitude whom he considers it his duty to correct; the tender solicitude with which he chides his fellow laborers in the field of Biblical criticism for their slowness of heart to believe all that this prophet has spoken; the depth of the interest which he exhibits in the religion which he makes it his business sedulously to undermine; the carefully chosen phraseology with which he gloves the hand with which he crushes; the childlike frankness with which he confesses his own great attainments and achievements, and congratulates the Christian world on its possession in these confused days of a guide to truth who unites within himself such clearness of sight, loftiness of aim, courage and tenderness—is it not all most engaging? When we add to these fascinations of manner the rich residuum of facts which the prudent reader may always strain out from Dr. Cheyne’s imaginative constructions, and the stimulus which he is sure to receive from contact with so widely-read a scholar, it will be readily understood with what pleasure each succeeding publication of Dr. Cheyne’s is received by a very broad public.
The present essay is an expansion of a lecture delivered before a society called “The Churchmen’s Union,” and is couched throughout in the tone of a heart-to-heart talk from a churchman to his fellow churchmen, with whom he feels heartily at one in all that is of the deepest concern, though not perhaps insensible that it has fallen to him to become the leader of his brethren to a better outlook than may possibly at present obtain among them. He describes the task which he undertakes as “partly an exposition of new facts, partly a plea for a bolder style of Biblical criticism, justified and invited by those facts” (p. 5). This bolder Biblical criticism which he wishes to commend has its application not merely to the Old Testament, but also, and chiefly in this lecture, to the New. The new facts to which he appeals are the facts unearthed by recent Oriental archæology. In effect the lecture is a plea for the employment of the results of recent research in the field of Oriental archæology not merely to the elucidation but the reconstruction of the Biblical records—in both Testaments. Their bearing on the understanding of the Old Testament has been more fully recognized and therefore is here less fully entered upon: their bearing on the understanding of the New Testament it is therefore made the business of the greater part of the lecture to insist upon. “In short”—the lecturer himself thus sums up this part of his contention—“there are parts of the New Testament—in the Gospels, in the Epistles, and in the Apocalypse—which can only be accounted for by the newly-discovered fact of an Oriental syncretism, which began early and continued late. And the leading factor in this is Babylonian” (p. 19). The purpose of the lecture may be, therefore, not unfairly described as an attempt to popularize the application of Pan-Babylonism for “accounting for” the New Testament as well as for the Old—although, of course, “Pan-Babylonism” must be understood here in no narrow sense, but rather, in accordance with Dr. Cheyne’s effort to do justice to the entire range of recent Oriental investigation, broadly enough to include the entirety of ancient Shemitic culture.
The contention of the lecture with respect to the Old Testament is, in brief, that “it is a fact, which cannot be argued out of existence, that we have recently acquired two new keys to the Old Testament, by which great problems are being brought nearer to a solution.” One of these, he continues, “is furnished by a critical Assyriology, soon, we may hope, to be reinforced from South Arabia; the other, by a more methodical textual criticism” (p. 185). Why anyone should attempt “to argue out of existence “such a fact as is here asserted, we cannot ourselves imagine. No one doubts the value of “a critical Assyriology” to Old Testament interpretation; and certainly one of the chief desiderata of Old Testament criticism is “a more methodical textual criticism”—for nothing has brought greater or more deserved reproach upon the reigning school of Old Testament textual criticism than its subjective arbitrariness. Dr. Cheyne is simply confusing in his thought the recognition accorded to “the two keys to the Old Testament” he instances, and the reception given to the use which he himself has made of these keys. The heartiest recognition of the value of “a critical Assyriology” “reinforced from South Arabia” is entirely consistent with a most decisive rejection, for both method and result, of Dr. Cheyne’s attempt to apply what he deems the results already attained by these branches of investigation to the problem of the interpretation of the Old Testament. And the most convinced conviction of the clamant need of a “more methodical textual criticism” of the Old Testament, happily, need not commit us to the acceptance of Dr. Cheyne’s textual criticism of the Old Testament: it may, on the contrary, be the very reason why we cannot accept Dr. Cheyne’s textual criticism, either in methods or in results. There is much that Dr. Cheyne says about the textual criticism of the Old Testament with which we find ourselves in full agreement. We agree, for example, that the ascertainment of the traditional text or texts and the ascertainment of the true text are two different problems, and ought to be kept separate. We agree, moreover, that the ascertaining of the texts that underlie the Massoretic and the Septuagint transmissions is the prior duty, to which succeeds the further duty of “approximating as closely as possible to the true text” that lies underneath both transmissions. We agree, moreover, that much of the current criticism of the text is arbitrary and subjective and can lead us nowhither. We feel no impulse to demur to the declaration that further criticism of the text must take “account of Winckler’s discovery of Musri and Kûs in the inscriptions.” But we should be sorry to think that this agreement in obvious principles would commit us to the acceptance of the new Bible which Dr. Cheyne has written on the basis of his Jerahmeel theory, or even of the new Psalms which he has produced by the help of a criticism which seems to us in its subjectivity and arbitrariness to surpass all that has gone before it—though that, of course, is saying a good deal.