5. Cheyne. Encyclopædia Biblica
A Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religious History, the Archæology, Geography, and Natural History of the Bible. Edited by the Rev. T. K. Cheyne, M.A., D.D., and J. Sutherland Black, M.A., LL.D. Vol. I: A to D. New
York: the Macmillan Company; London: Adam & Charles Black. 1899. 1
T he scholarly world has for some years been aware that there was in preparation a new Bible dictionary, originally projected by the late
W. Robertson Smith, and after his death taken in charge by Prof. T. K.
Cheyne and Dr. J. Sutherland Black, destined to be the mouthpiece of the newer criticism in its most radical form. The appearance of the first volume has disappointed none of the expectations which had been formed concerning it. The vigorous scholarship and indefatigable industry of Dr.
Cheyne and the skill and experience of Dr. Black as an editor of encyclopædias justly led the public to look for a notable work at their
hands. It is a notable work that lies before us. Every page is instinct with living learning, poured out without stint on every subject which naturally comes into view in a dictionary of the Bible. And it is safe to say that on no encyclopædia ever published has there been expended such a wealth of expedients to make it the handy, useful book of reference which it is the very mission of an encyclopædia to be. It is possible even that in both matters the thing is overdone. It requires a number of pages to put the reader in possession of the abbreviations, symbols, typographical devices, systems of cross-reference by the employment of which the book has been reduced in size and increased in handiness; and the average reader may be somewhat appalled as he contemplates the necessity of mastering this new language before he advances to the work itself. And he certainly will not read far into the latter before he will recall the familiar distinction between knowledge and wisdom and will begin to desiderate less of mere learning and more of good judgment in the matter laid before him: after all, he who consults a Bible dictionary is commonly more in search of safe guidance to the knowledge of the truth than desirous of spending his time in learning some new thing. When once he is adjusted, however, to these two conditions, he will no longer be disappointed in the book. He will certainly find the type too small (though it is remarkably clear), and he will often find the articles too compressed: both of these faults he will recognize, however, to be in the right direction. He will assuredly not find the book characterized by sobriety and restraint in criticism or by trustworthiness or reverence in its dealing with the Biblical material: he was not entitled to expect this in a work the very keynote of which has ever been announced as "advanced criticism," and that as interpreted by Dr. Cheyne. But he will discover himself in possession in this book of a mass of information as to all archæological, geographical, and physical matters connected with the Bible which it would be difficult to surpass elsewhere; and with a complete
conspectus of the most recent conjectures as to its literary, political, and religious history, which will interest him extremely, and doubtless prove not less instructive than interesting. He justly expected all this in Dr. Cheyne's dictionary: he receives it in Dr. Cheyne's dictionary.
For this is distinctly, and in a sense in which the other large dictionaries of the Bible are not, the dictionary of one man, and that one man Dr.
Cheyne. It is somewhat important to note this fact clearly. For in the pious regard which the editors pay to the memory of the late Prof. W. Robertson
Smith and the anxiety they exhibit to give due credit to his initiative—to which the "Encyclopædia" owes its origin—the impression is apt to be obtained that it is in some true sense Dr. W. Robertson Smith's dictionary of the Bible. Except, however, that it is in a fashion the carrying out of a project contemplated by him and by men whom he trusted and to whose hands he committed the task, it is in no sense Dr. W. Robertson Smith's dictionary. Confessedly the positions taken up in the dictionary are not those which Prof. Smith taught during his lifetime. Dr. Cheyne only contends that they are such as Prof. Smith—who was always in the van of critical opinion—would have taught had his life been prolonged to the close of the century. It is an opinion which Dr. Cheyne is quite entitled to hold. Certainly Prof. Smith occupied a position which in principle leaves nothing to choose between it and Dr. Cheyne's own: and if with prolonged life he had not "advanced" step by step with Dr. Cheyne in the application of their common principles this would have been due not to less radicalism of fundamental postulates on his part, but only to differences between the two in habits of mind, spirit, and mode of applying common presuppositions. We do not ourselves think that Prof. Smith could have failed to "advance" steadily toward the goal toward which Dr. Cheyne's own face is turned. Whether he would have embraced the same body of opinions which Dr. Cheyne publishes in this dictionary—which is
proclaimed with some flourish to be Prof. Smith's own—may on the other hand be very seriously doubted. Prof. Smith's criticism was in principle all that Dr. Cheyne could desire: but he was a very serious-minded man, and liked to have some show of sober reason for his opinions. That these reasons were sound, that the apparently wide inductions on which he established his opinions were trustworthy, we are the last to believe. That Dr. Cheyne's patronizing air to his "more moderate colleagues," as only radical critics in the making, has a certain justification we do not question.
But meanwhile it is true that Dr. Cheyne's critical methods have none of the apparent caution which characterized Prof. Smith's procedure, and that his critical opinions have none of the air of grounded judgments which Prof. Smith knew how to throw around his.
Nor can it even be said that what Prof. Smith intended or what Prof.
Smith did has fared very well at the hands of the editors of the actual dictionary. This is certainly not precisely the dictionary Prof. Smith projected, if we are to believe the account of his purposes which Dr.
Cheyne gives us in his Preface. And certainly the material which Prof.
Smith left behind him has been treated in the most cavalier fashion. It appears to have been Prof. Smith's purpose to republish, in a revised and completed form, his own contributions to Biblical learning printed in the "Encyclopædia; Britannica," and to supplement these with such articles as were necessary to complete the scheme of an "Encyclopædia Biblica": and much work seems to have been done in the preparation of the briefer articles for this purpose. Almost none of this work has been given a place in the dictionary as published. The articles contributed to the "Encyclopædia
Britannica" have not been revised and republished. Only in the single instance of "Chronicles," cared for by the comparatively sober hand of Dr.
Driver, has this been done. The famous article "Bible" (spoken of in the Preface somewhat shortly as "inevitably provisional") has simply been
passed by. New articles on "Canticles" and "David" by Dr. Cheyne, written from wholly different standpoints, have been substituted for those by Prof.
Smith bearing these titles. While the minor articles "Angel," "Ark," "Baal,"
"Decalogue" have taken practically no account of what Prof. Smith had said on these themes in the "Britannica." The article "Baal" is signed indeed
"W. R. S.—G. F. M.," but stands in no internal relation whatever to the "Britannica" article; while the only connection which the new article "Ark" has with Prof. Smith arises from the incorporation into it of a short extract from his "Bennett Lectures." Besides occurring along with Dr. Driver's initials at the end of the article "Chronicles," and along with those of Dr.
Moore at the end of that on "Baal" (in this latter case one scarcely sees why), the initials "W. R. S." appear very infrequently in the pages of the volume— only, so far as we have noted in a somewhat hasty glance through its pages, at the end of the short and unimportant articles, "Abez"; "Adoni-Zedek";
"Adversary"; "Baalis"; "Barkos"; "Beth-Marcaboth"; "Bidkar." In a word, the only places where Prof. W. Robertson Smith is honored in this volume are the Dedication and Preface: in the body of the work he has practically no place and receives very scanty respect.
The book is distinctly therefore, we say, not Prof. Smith's, but Dr.
Cheyne's. A very large part of it is written by Dr. Cheyne's own hand. It is, indeed, a marvel of industry and scholarship that one man could have written so much, so much to the point, and so much so learnedly and acutely as Dr. Cheyne has written for this volume. It deserves to be accounted one of the wonders of the literary activity that marks the close of the nineteenth century. And even what has not been actually penned by Dr.
Cheyne bears for the most part the impress of his peculiar genius and reflects his modes of thought and feeling. He has had, of course, the choice of his collaborators in his own hands, and these have naturally been selected from the men most nearly akin to himself; and a large part of the work has
been done by younger men, trained by himself, and working in the spirit with which he has indoctrinated them. The result is that we not only have
"advanced criticism" in this new "Encyclopædia," but distinctively what we may perhaps be permitted to call without offense "Cheyneyesque" advanced criticism; and this is a variety which is certainly not marked by sobriety of judgment, but will strike most men—though they be "advanced critics" themselves—as sometimes erratic and often ungrounded. Thus even Dr. C. N. Toy—who of course welcomes the book as in the main learned and conscientious—feels impelled to enter a caveat against its over free resort to conjecture and the overboldness of its use of emendation of the texts with which it deals (The American Historical Review, v. 1900, p.
545). And Julius Wellhausen, in his biting way, does not hesitate to rebuke it for addiction to the employment of most doubtful data as if they were of historical value (Deutsche Literaturzeitung, xxi. 1900, coll. 9–12). Perhaps a transcript of a short section of Wellhausen's notice will exhibit, better than anything that we could ourselves say, this characteristic of the work. He remarks:
"The Dictionary projected by W. Robertson Smith was to be 'no mere collection of useful miscellanea,' but 'a survey of the contents of the Bible as illuminated by criticism.' To this his successors and especially the Chief Editor, Cheyne, have addressed themselves. The distinguishing characteristic of the work, at least so far as the Old Testament articles are concerned, is 'advanced criticism.' To the substantial indications of this belong: (1) the bold emendation and dissection of the Old Testament transmission, combined when necessary with subjective divination; (2) that conception of the general history of religion, of English
origin, which was applied to Semitic antiquity by W.
Robertson Smith, and has been lately applied to classical antiquity also by E. Rohde; (3) the effort to cast light on the Old Testament from Egypt and especially from Assyria and Babylonia. In the article on 'Bela,' written by Cheyne, we meet with the following with regard to the list of Edomitish kings in Genesis 36. In v. 32 we must read probably 'Bela b.
Achbor' instead of 'Bela b. Beor,' and certainly 'his city was Rehoboth,' instead of 'his city was Dinhabah.' The city of Rehoboth lay in the North Arabian land of Musri. Thence came Bela and Saul, and also Mehetabel, the daughter of Matred, the daughter of Mezahab (v. 39). For 'Matred' is a corruption of 'Misran,' 'Mezahab' of 'Misrim,' and 'Misrim' is merely a variant of 'Misran'; both represent the land of Musri. What unexpected gains for the understanding and correcting of the oldest Hebrew tradition spring thus from the discovery of this land in the cuneiform inscriptions! Not less fresh and important light as to the Ark is derived from the article 'Ark of the Covenant,' also written by Cheyne. It had never left, we learn, the land of the Philistines, up to David's day, but had only been transferred from a temple to a private house—and that, indeed, the house of Obed-edom in Gath; thence, however, David brought it up after a victory which he won over the Philistines. For it is certainly too incredible that David should have intrusted it in Jerusalem to the guardianship of a Philistine resident there.
This is a convincing consideration, as Kosters also saw— with whom Cheyne agrees. Although I feel myself now, I confess, too old to follow such a lofty flight, it is nevertheless
very pleasing to me to find here so full and faithful a portrayal of that latest phase of 'advanced criticism' which has hitherto been in some respects wholly unknown to me."
What strikes Profs. Toy and Wellhausen as bizarre and unbalanced may surely be looked upon without offense by others as registering something other than the ascertained and securely established facts of modern Biblical learning.
Of course the book, despite the dominance of Dr. Cheyne's hand, is not all of a piece. His touch is visible constantly; but all his helpers are naturally not of precisely one mind. In particular he complains in the Preface that "the literary and historical criticism of the New Testament is by no means as far advanced as that of the Old Testament"—which may be well taken as an expression of regret that he was not able to obtain New
Testament scholars who were willing to treat their text with the license with which he himself and his pupils dealt with that of the Old Testament. In some instances at least, however, his complaint is only partially justified by the event. The most copious writer on New Testament subjects in this volume is Prof. Paul W. Schmiedel, of Zürich, whose contributions—"Acts of the Apostles"; "Alphæus"; "Apollos"; "Barjesus"; "Barnabas";
"Christian" (name of); "Clopas"; "Community of Goods"; "Cornelius"; "Council of Jerusalem"—would make a small volume; and assuredly they are sufficiently arbitrary and ungrounded, one would think, to please the most exacting of "advanced critics." But within the limits of "advanced criticism" there are of course the necessary grades of opinions to be recognized which always accompany the work of a variety of writers. Only in such rare cases as the article on the Epistles to the Corinthians by Dr.
William Sanday and the ecclesiastical articles by Dr. J. Armitage Robinson is anything like a cautious voice raised. The body of helpers Dr. Cheyne has
gathered around him, though selected very broadly from a geographical point of view (the work plumes itself on its "international" character), in a word, form a rather narrow coterie of like-minded scholars.
Some fifty-three writers are represented in the volume before us. Of these some thirty-two are British, fifteen Continental, and six American.
Prof. Lucien Gautier, of Lausanne, writes an excellent article on the "Dead Sea"; and we confess that his name seems as out of place among its companions as do those of Profs. Sanday and Robinson. Prof. Tiele, of Leiden, and the late Prof. Kosters, also of Leiden, have been called on to write on their specialties. But the foreign contingent is mostly German:
Benzinger ("Atonement" [Day of], "Circumcision," "Golden Calf," etc.); Bousset ("Antichrist," "Apocalypse"); Budde ("Canon of Old Testament");
Guthe ("Dispersion"); Jülicher ("Colossians and Ephesians"); Kamphausen ("Book of Daniel"); Marti ("Chronology of the Old Testament," "Day," etc.); Eduard Meyer ("Adonis," etc.); Nöldeke ("Amalek," "Arabia,"
"Aram," "Aramaic," etc.); Schmiedel (as above); von Soden ("Aretas,"
"Chronology of the New Testament," etc.); Zimmern ("Creation,"
"Deluge"). The six American writers have not been called upon for much very important work. The most copiously represented is Prof. George F.
Moore, of Andover, whose articles, besides the extended paper on "Deuteronomy," chiefly concern matters of the neighboring idolatry
("Abimelech"; "Adoni-Bezek"; "Adoni-Zedek"; "Asherah"; "Ashtoreth"; "Asylum"; "Baal"; "Bezek"; "Chemosh"; "Cherethites"; "Dagon";
"Deuteronomy"). Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania, writes the important article "Canaan"; Prof. Nathanael
Schmidt, of Cornell University, that on "Covenant"; Prof. Francis Brown, of Union Theological Seminary, New York, contributes two short notes, on "Carites" and "Dedan"; Prof. Robert W. Rogers, of Drew Theological
Seminary, one on "Chiun and Siccuth"; and Prof. W. Max Müller, of the
Reformed Episcopal Seminary, Philadelphia, four articles connected with his Egyptological studies—"Baalzephon" (§ 2), "Brick," "Camel" (§ 3), and "Candace." The mass of this American material is not very considerable, but its quality is equal to that derived from any other quarter.
Of two classes of articles a special word may perhaps be fitly said. The first of these includes those in the domain of New Testament Geography.
These, as a body, appear distinctly inferior to the corresponding articles in Old Testament Geography. This is not because they are not full of learning; they are packed with information, often of a sort difficult easily to lay hands upon elsewhere. But it is because they are badly adjusted to their purpose.
The majority of them are from the pens of Prof. George Adam Smith, of Glasgow, whose interests lie in Old Testament study, and of Mr. W. J.
Woodhouse, Lecturer in Classical Philology at Bangor, whose interests lie rather in the classical than the Biblical region. The result is as might have been anticipated: they tell us much, but not as the New Testament student would fain have it told him, and often not what the New Testament student most needs to know. The other class of articles we wish to speak particularly of includes those of Dr. J. Armitage Robinson on prevailingly ecclesiastical subjects—"Apostle"; "Baptism"; "Bishop"; "Canon"; "Church"; "Deacon." These have been very much spoken against in some quarters as deeply dyed in Anglicanism and producing the strange anomaly of the conjunction in one "Encyclopædia" of the utmost radicalness of criticism with ecclesiastical teaching which cannot stand the test of the slightest critical examination. This conjunction would not, indeed, be unwonted; from Richard Simon's day it has ever been normal in certain quarters—and, indeed, when men feel the authority of the Scriptures breaking to pieces beneath their feet under the action of their critical postulates, it is not strange that they should temporarily grasp at the straw of "the Church." But in the present instance the criticism is so exaggerated
as to appear to us thoroughly unjustified. Dr. J. Armitage Robinson does not write entirely without bias—perhaps nobody does; and his bias is an Anglican one. But he writes not only with adequate scholarship, but with so balanced a judgment and such transparent candor, that his papers stand out in this "Encyclopædia" as a shining light in the midst of a dark place.
His article on "Canon," indeed, we consider thoroughly bad: it begins with an a priori construction of the origin and early history of the New
Testament Canon which is at war with all the facts and has not even a priori probability to recommend it: and this, of course, the careful collation of certain of the historical facts that follow does little to redeem. Those on "Church" and "Baptism" would rouse little remark, one way or another: the stress in the former is laid upon the point of the unity of the Church, and little reference is made to the deeper conception which has gained for itself the name of the "invisible Church"; while in the latter the discussion of the formulas of baptism is hardly satisfactory, but the general drift of the article is sober and balanced. In the article "Apostle" there is apparent a lack of grasp upon the more fundamental question of the apostolic authority.
But the two articles on the most controverted topics—"Bishop" and "Deacon"—are really very good indeed, excellent instances of wellwrought-out statements of the essential facts, not written throughout without some bias, to be sure, but with careful guarding against the influences of personal traditions, and on the whole marking a successful effort to attain and state the truth without fear or favor. On all the main matters involved these two articles are distinctly on the right side. It would indeed be difficult to find anywhere a more accurate statement of the New
Testament evidence than that given in the "General Conclusions" of the former article (§ 7, col. 580); and on the chief points—that the bishop is a development from the presbyterate by differentiation of function and not from the apostolate by localization of service, that the government of the
local Church was in the hands of a plurality of presbyters with the bishops at their head, and that the diaconate was not a ministry of the word but a local ministry of subordinate, chiefly eleemosynary service—these articles are thoroughly sound and thoroughly non-Anglican. Indeed, were we to search the "Enclyclopædia" through for examples of pure and unbiased scholarship, intent only on discovering and setting forth the facts, we are not sure that we should find anything with a better claim upon our recognition than these carefully studied articles.
It is not possible to go into further details in reviewing a book of this kind. Perhaps enough has been said to suggest its general character. In comparison with the new "Dictionary of the Bible," publishing simultaneously under the editorship of Dr. James Hastings, it is more compressed, and more radically destructive in its criticism. It omits, moreover, not only all that large mass of explanations of the language of the Authorized Version which is so striking a feature in Dr. Hastings' work, but also all the professed treatment of topics of Biblical Theology which is almost the most characteristic feature of Dr. Hastings' work. To us, we do not hesitate to say it, Dr. Hastings' work is far the more trustworthy and the more really scientific and the more valuable book. And we say this with our eyes fully open both to the immensity of learning packed away in the "Encyclopædia Biblica," which makes it an indispensable guide to those who wish to know the latest facts discovered in Biblical archæology and as well the latest guesses hazarded in the way of the reconstruction of the Biblical history; and also to the sad fact that Dr. Hastings' work is itself filled with the "results" of a Biblical criticism which differs from that which vitiates the whole substance of Dr. Cheyne's less in principle than in stage of development. It remains true, however, that Dr. Hastings' work is by far the more sober and by far the more trustworthy, as well as the more comprehensive of the two. But the two, remarkable products of our day of
minute learning as they are, leave the way still open for a really satisfactory "Dictionary of the Bible"—a "Dictionary of the Bible" written from the standpoint of established faith in the trustworthiness of the Bible—its trustworthiness in its account of itself, in its account of the origin, nature, and development of the religion whose history it records, and in its account of the facts, doctrinal, ethical, and historical alike, which it recounts. Dr.
Cheyne declares not without some superciliousness that his book is based on a criticism that "identifies the cause of religion with that of historical truth." Of course. So is everybody's. The point of difference turns on what we deem "historical truth": and that is largely determined by the processes by which we suppose it can be attained. What we need is a "Dictionary of the Bible" which is sound in its views of historical truth and which does not wreck the cause of religion by insisting on adjusting it to a history which is at bottom, as Wellhausen puts it, "Weissagung aus den Eingeweiden." Who will give us, now, a "Dictionary of the Bible" which renounces speculation and sets out the facts?
1. 1 The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, xi. 1900, pp. 516–522. For review of vol. ii. cf. ibid., xii. 1901, pp. 459 ff.; vol. iii., ibid., xiii. 1902, pp.
460 ff.; vol. iv., The Princeton Theological Review, i. 1903, pp. 645 ff.