Dean Bartlett, of the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Philadelphia, is prominent as a devout and careful Bible scholar, who has the confidence of the Christian community to a rare degree. He was the first president of the American Institute of Sacred Literature, and he is the vice-president of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. His work, on the “Scriptures Hebrew and Christian,” as an introduction to the study of the Bible, won for him commendation from eminent scholars. Having read the proof-sheets of this book, Dean Bartlett writes:
“I thank you for the opportunity to read your book ‘The Threshold Covenant.’ And I also want to thank you for allowing me to know something of the growth of your thought on the subject, in the frequent conversations we have had about it during the years past. Ever since I came into the privilege of calling you friend I have been a witness of the truth of your statement in the Preface, that your theory is wholly a result of induction, that it came to you out of the gathered facts, instead of the facts being gathered in support of the theory. What I know as to your method would lead me to expect a result that must stand, and there are few writers who would be for me as authoritative as you in matters which I could not verify for myself. But here you furnish the means of verification.
“As the subject has come up between us from time to time and part by part, I have been led to think over what you told me, and it has seemed to me that nothing could exceed the care with which you advanced in your induction. And now that I review the work as a whole, I am convinced that you have demonstrated your theory. In doing so, you have thrown a whole flood of new bright light on primitive culture, on some of the sacredest phases of human life in all ages, on many places of Scripture from the first chapter to the last, and on the central sacraments of the Old and New Covenants.
“If this light came to me now for the first time in all its fulness, I am not sure whether I should be startled and almost blinded by it, or whether I should, at first at least, altogether fail to appreciate it. But you have been giving it to me gradually as it came to you, and so I have been in a position to become adjusted to it, and also to test its illumining quality. I find that it is not transitory, but permanent, not a flash but a steady light, in which the great objects of our Christian faith stand clearly revealed.
“I sincerely congratulate you upon the completion of such an important and illuminating work.”
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.