Just as the final pages of this volume are going to press, a valued
communication concerning them is received from Professor Cheyne, of
Oxford University. Professor Cheyne is Oriel Professor of the
Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford, and Canon of Rochester. He
is well known on both sides of the Atlantic as a prominent English
representative of the school of modern “higher criticism,” or
“historical criticism.” He was a member of the Old Testament Revision
Company, and he contributed many important articles on biblical subjects
to the ninth edition of the “Encyclopædia Britannica.” In 1889 he
delivered the Bampton Lectures on “The Historical Origin and Religious
Ideas of the Psalter,” and his various works on Old Testament
literature, including Job, the Psalms, Solomon, Isaiah, and Jeremiah,
have made him familiar to English readers the world over. The kindly,
frank, and courteous comments of Professor Cheyne on “The Threshold
Covenant” are the more highly valued in view of the fact that he has had
occasion to suppose that the author’s standpoint of biblical criticism
was not quite the same as his own. He says:
“I am delighted to have been able to make early acquaintance with a book
so full of facts which really illuminate the dark places of primitive
times. That the explanation of the Hebrew Scriptures profits much by it,
is clear. Thank you for having devoted so much patient and thoughtful
care to the accumulation and interpretation of the facts. I have never
doubted your singular capacity for archeological work, and have only
regretted that there has not been greater fellow-feeling with the
critics (in the popular sense,–for you, too, are critical, though not
quite in the right sense and to the extent required, if I may personally
say this).
“I notice on page 46 f. a reference to the foundation of Jericho by
Hiel. It appears to me that the idea suggested by archeology is only
defensible on the principles generally associated with ‘historical
criticism.’ If this idea is in any way historically connected with the
act of Hiel related in 1 Kings 16 : 34 (wanting in LXX), and pointed to,
whether in reality or in the honest, though faulty, imagination of the
writer, in Joshua 6 : 26, we must suppose that the act of Hiel was
misunderstood by the critics of these two passages. For the deaths of
Abiram and Segub are referred to as divine _judgments_ upon Hiel for his
violation of the _ḥerem_, or ban, laid upon the site of Jericho,
whereas, according to the archeological theory, Hiel offered his
children as foundation sacrifices, believing that he could thus bring a
blessing on the city of Jericho. No plain reader will understand the
connection of the archeological idea and the two passages of Old
Testament–as it appears to me.
“The connection has been surmised by others before you,–probably you can
tell me who first struck out the idea. Is it in Tylor, or where? I
cannot remember. Winckler (_Geschichte Israel_, Part I, 1895) expresses
his adhesion to it. Kuenen (Onderzoek, I [1886], p. 233) holds that
there was a misunderstanding of the traditional facts on the part of the
author of the prediction in Joshua 6 : 26 in its present form, and of
the author of the notice in 1 Kings 16 : 34; he thinks that Hiel
sacrificed his two sons, but does not appear to recall the archeological
facts. I think he ought to have recalled them. But he is right in the
main, as it seems to me.
I have no prejudice against archeological illustrations of customs or of
phraseology. On the contrary, I delight in them. I have for many years
been on the archeological side, as well as on the critical....
“Robertson Smith took the right course, at once critical and
archeological. Only he could not do everything, and he purposed to limit
himself, to a great extent, to those branches of archeology which he
knew at first hand, or in which he could trust the experts. He would not
trust the English (biblical) archeologists, because they were not
critical.
“Are you right about (God’s) ‘strong hand,’ etc., page 83? And what
connection has _teraphim_ with _threshold_ (p. 109)? Bonomi is no
critic. You are very convincing about the passover blood.
“I will write again if any special notes suggest themselves. A number of
references in the Old Testament and the New Testament must be open to
divers interpretations; _but I habitually act upon your own principles_.
Phrases which seem to us simple, are often full of references which
archeology alone can explain. _Macte esto._”