The Expositor for October last contains an article by John Taylor, in review of a recent work by Canon Cheyne, entitled "Aid to the Devout Study of Criticism," in which, among other curious things he states Cheyne's theory of the story about David and Goliath. He claims that Goliath was killed by Elhanan, the Bethlehemite (2 Sam. 21:19), and that the author of 1 Samuel has credited David with another man's [19] achievement. We are a little curious to know how Professor Cheyne found out that the statement about killing Goliath in 2 Samuel is true, while that in 1 Samuel is false? And how did he discover that the Goliath who was killed by Elhanan is the same one whom David is said to have killed? If 2 Samuel can be believed, and Cheyne seems to think it can be in regard to Goliath, Elhanan's feat was performed late in David's reign, at a time when his soldiers had said that he should not lead them out to battle any more, lest the "lamp of Israel be quenched;" and this Goliath was one of four brothers born to the "giant in Gath" (21:17-22); but David's feat was performed when he was a stripling, still alternately his father's shepherd and Saul's musician (1 Sam. 17:15). There was a space of not less than forty years between the two incidents. How is it that Cheyne knows more about these men than did the author of the book? "But," says Mr. Taylor, "the form in which that tradition has been preserved, bears the impress of the Divine Spirit, who has converted what would otherwise have been mere folk tales into vehicles of religious instruction for all ages." That is, the false credit given to David for killing a giant who was really killed by another man forty years later, with all the false details of the combat given in the seventeenth chapter of 1 Samuel, "bears the impress of the Divine Spirit." This is not exactly identifying the Divine Spirit with Beelzebub, but it comes dangerously near it. Mr. Taylor closed his review with the question, "Can criticism be devout?" Well might he ask the question. Strange to say, he thinks it can be, and that Cheyne's book is proof of it. [20]

[SEBC 19-20]