Thomas Kelly Cheyne
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Crawford Howell Toy, Thomas Kelly Cheyne, bahai-library.com.
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Thomas Kelly Cheyne

Crawford Howell Toy

published in Harvard Theological Review9:1

1916-01

1. Text

The appearance of the last product of Dr. Cheyne's
pen[1] offers occasion to review briefly his work, and to
estimate it as far as is now possible, bearing in mind that
the significance of a scholar's work is not always clearly
visible till some time after he has ceased to be active.

Cheyne was born in London, Sept. 18, 1841, and
died in Oxford, Feb. 16, 1915. He was educated at
Merchant Taylor's School and at Worcester College,
Oxford, was ordained in 1864, became Oriel Professor of
Interpretation of Scripture at Oxford with Canonry of
Rochester attached in 1886, and Fellow of Balliol College in 1868. His life was devoted mainly to the critical
study of the Old Testament, though he did not neglect
the New Testament, and sometimes passed into the
larger field of general religious history. His width of
interests and the fertility of his mind are illustrated by
the large number of articles that he contributed to the
Encyclopaedia Britannica and to the Encyclopaedia
Biblica, of which latter work he became general editor
on Robertson Smith's death in 1894.

His Old Testament study seems to have had a very
intimate relation to his literary and religious life. I was
told by Professor Robertson Smith that at an early
period in his career Cheyne fell into a state of perplexity
and doubt, and seemed at one time to be on the point
of giving up all interest in religion. From this depressing
state he emerged through his critical studies, probably
because these led him to separate the kernel from the
shell, and to rest in the spiritual conceptions of the Bible.
However this may be, his devotion to the Old Testament
remained throughout his life, and he became one of the
most influential English expounders of the new critical
views.

He entered on his life-work at a favorable moment.
For two hundred years eminent English thinkers had
favored and to some extent practised a certain freedom
in dealing with Biblical material, especially by laying
stress on its higher side; there had been, however, no
definite conflict of opinions on this subject before the
nineteenth century. The theory of Astruc and the
works of certain Continental scholars (especially De
Wette, Ewald, Kuenen, Wellhausen, and Renan) had
become known in England,[2] and gave an impetus to
research. The result was a conflict in the ecclesiastical
world. The first clash occurred in a Nonconformist
body. Professor Samuel Davidson, of the Lancashire
Independent College, had undertaken to edit a new
edition of Home's Introduction and was asked to rewrite
the volume dealing with the Old Testament. His treatment of the Old Testament, which was freely critical,
was pronounced dangerous by the Committee of the
College with such emphasis that he resigned his position
(1856). In the Church of England, while the Tractarian
movement concerned itself little with Biblical criticism,
its anxiety being to maintain what it held to be the purity
and authority of the Church, a storm was raised by the
publication of Essays and Reviews (1860); one of the
contributors was condemned in the Court of Arches
but sustained by the Privy Council. Finally came on
the Colenso case. Bishop Colenso was declared deposed
by the Bishop of Capetown for his volume on the Pentateuch, and was reinstated by the Privy Council. This
put an end to ecclesiastical prosecution in England for
what was called critical heresy; liberty of Biblical research was established (1865). A few years later in
Scotland Robertson Smith was removed from his chair
in the Free Church College at Aberdeen for articles in
the Encyclopaedia Britannica; but this action proved
ineffective — freedom came to be recognized generally in
Scotland.

Such was the atmosphere in which Cheyne began his
Old Testament work. It was his commentary on Isaiah,
the third edition of which appeared in 1884, that first
established him as a scholar of importance. The variety
of his learning, the vital character of his style, and his
frankness and courage in the expression of opinion, gradually commended the work to a wide circle of readers,
and his ideas, though they called forth opposition, were
accepted by a considerable body of students in England
and elsewhere. In later years he modified some of the
critical views expressed in the commentary, but continued to hold his main conception of the constitution of
the Book of Isaiah; so, for example, in his edition of the
revised Hebrew text which was published in 1899 in the
Sacred Books of the Old Testament. Some other prophetic
writings (Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah) he treated in a similar
critical manner. In 1888 his volume on the Psalter
appeared under the title The Book of Psalms or The Praises
of Israel, and secured immediate recognition by its fine
religious spirit, the incisiveness and directness of its
style, and its freedom of thought. Other works which
revealed his geniality were The Hallowing of Criticism
(1888), Aids to the Devout Study of Criticism (1892), and
Founders of Old Testament Criticism (1893). His little
volume, Jewish Religious Life after the Exile (in the series
American Lectures on the History of Religions, 1898),
though popular in style is helpful to other than general
readers. He was one of the first to bring out clearly
the value of the Book of Chronicles for the history of
Jewish religious ideas in the period in which it was
written (the third century B.C., according to Cheyne).

His helpful Old Testament criticism was brought prematurely to a close by his adoption of the theory (due
largely to Winckler) that the main part of the records
concerning the early history of Israel refer to a district
in southern Judah called in Hebrew by a name (misr)
which usually means Egypt. This district is connected
with the Kenites, from whom, it is widely held, the Hebrews derived their initial cult of Yahweh; and the name
of one of the clans of the region, Jerahmeel, by its similarity in form to Israel and other Old Testament names,
suggested to Cheyne that it gives us the central point
of the Israelite development. Thereupon in a series of
volumes (Critica Biblica, etc.) he proceeded to rewrite
the early history, substituting the name Jerahmeel for
a great number of the names in the Hebrew text, undeterred by difficulties confronting such substitution.
Though this procedure was generally condemned by
scholars, Cheyne held on to it to the last. This unfortunate surrender to a baseless hypothesis was and is
deplored by his friends as a mere waste of fine critical
power. But it is generally felt that this lacuna in his
critical work must not blind us to the value of the contributions he has made to Biblical science.

His latest literary output (in the volume mentioned at
the head of this notice) is probably to be regarded not
as a quite new departure, but rather as the formulation
of ideas that had been long held by him more or less
consciously. Though he had surmounted his early doubt,
he seems never to have been in full sympathy with the
Church creeds. His various writings show an increasing
divergence from prevailing opinions; he was seeking
what he thought or hoped to prove a larger scope and
a purer atmosphere, and he fell in readily with certain
Oriental conceptions and systems that had been making
their way gradually in the Western world. He became
a member of a Brahmanist Society, and was in intimate
relations with the founder of the Bahaist Movement
and with his son. He held that peace among nations
could be secured only through religious union. Each of
the great religions of the present day, he thought, might
learn from the others, and a common faith would make
all men brothers. Though he affirmed the superiority
of the founder of Christianity to all other religious
teachers, he seems to have been especially attracted by
Bahau'llah and his formulation of religious truth — "one
God, and he a God of love." This is by no means a new
idea, but it seemed to Cheyne to acquire a new vital
energy as preached by the Bahaists, and in his latest
volume he supports it with enthusiasm. He does not
discuss the details of the hoped-for movement towards
universal peace; he does not, for example, consider
whether history shows that social fusion and religious
unification have always gone hand-in-hand. But whatever the difficulties in his theory and the obstacles to the
fulfilment of his hope, the reader cannot fail to be impressed by his religious breadth and the nobility of his
purpose.

In considering Cheyne's work as a scholar we must
bear in mind the variety of his interests and his diverse
intellectual tendencies. He was an omnivorous reader
in his own special subjects without losing his hold on
general literature — he was, for example, a student of
Dante. He seized on new discoveries in ancient history
and used them with effect for the illustration of his own
researches. He was attracted by new theories, especially when they attached themselves to generally accepted facts; and his vivid imagination sometimes so
clothed these theories with life that they seduced him
into precarious generalizations and into unfortunate
special pleading. His sympathy with broad ideas was
strong, yet it sometimes led him to hasty conclusions
which easily became a hindrance rather than a help to
progress. He was a simple-minded man, holding to his
own views with naive tenacity, aware of the existence of
other views, but seemingly not looking on them as things
that claimed his serious consideration. Opposing opinions he treated with kindness, never, so far as I have
observed, speaking of their authors with bitterness or
even sarcastically. His prevailing tone toward his literary opponents was one of gentle wonder and regret
that they could fail to see data and inferences as he saw
them.

In Cheyne's long career we have to recognize valuable
contributions to Biblical criticism and exegesis made in
his earlier books, and to honor him for his devotion to
all that he believed to make for the discovery of truth
and the well-being of men.

Notes
The Reconciliation of Races and Religion. Thomas Kelly Cheyne. A. & C.
Black, London. Pp. x, 214. 6s.

In America also they were not unknown. It will be remembered that the
translation of De Wette's Introduction by Theodore Parker and Frederick Frothingham
appeared in Boston in 1848-48.

2. Page scans

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-- Thomas Kelly Cheyne (Used by permission of the curator)