The Threshold Covenant; or, The Beginning of Religious Rites

by H. Clay Trumbull

FROM PROFESSOR DR. T.K. CHEYNE.

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.”