Since my first notice of Professor Hommel's "Ancient Hebrew Tradition," published in these columns last summer, I have read quite a number of hostile reviews of it in such periodicals as the Expositor, the Expository Times and the Critical Review. None of these are elaborate, and none of them attempt to refute his main thesis. They deal chiefly in pointing out extravagant or ill-founded conceits in which he indulges, as though the exposure of these were an answer to his principal line of argument. These notices are well calculated to prejudice the book in the estimation of those who have not read it; but to one who has they appear like the small work of picking at a man whose arguments you can not refute. The latest effort of this kind which I have seen is from the book reviewer of the Christian-Evangelist, and it appeared in the issue of that paper for December 23. As his review will go into the hands of many of my own readers, I think it well to notice some of his remarks. I do so, not as a defender of all that Hommel's book contains, certainly not of the few vagaries in which he indulges, but of the judgment to which I gave utterance when the book first appeared.

      This reviewer, speaking of the impression made by the introductory part of the book, says: [261]

      It appears that the author has set himself to the task of overthrowing what he calls the higher criticism, and one may suppose that firm ground has been at last reached regarding the whole problem.

      I am glad to observe, from this last remark that the writer, though evidently attached to the school combated by Hommel, does not feel that he is standing on "firm ground." That he read Hommel with the hope of finding "firm ground," is a hopeful symptom in his own case.

      He next remarks:

      With the exception of certain philological material relative to the proper names to be found in the Old Testament, his facts have long been in the possession of every student.

      What shall be thought of this, when it is remembered that the aforesaid "philological material relative to the proper names to be found in the Old Testament," constitutes the main part of Hommel's "material"? In the very first paragraph of his preface he says:

      For years past I have been convinced that the question of the authenticity of the ancient Hebrew tradition could not be finally decided until the Hebrew personal names found in the Old Testament had first been exhaustively compared with contemporary names of similar formation, and carefully checked by them.

      This is the task to which the book is devoted; and to say that all the facts in the book, with this exception, have long been in the possession of every student, is idle talk.

      In regard to the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, the reviewer disparages Hommel's discoveries by insisting that, although the radical critics of the Wellhausen school deny all historical value in the earlier chapters of Genesis, the more conservative class, such as Driver, Smith, Briggs, etc., maintain that "the Biblical records dealing with the patriarchs have, to say the very least, [262] a basis in fact, and that such record as Genesis 14 contains unquestionably ably valuable historical evidence."

      "Valuable historical evidence" of what? The question is not whether this chapter contains historical evidence of something, but whether it is itself historical. It is well that the reviewer did not say outright that the scholars whom he names accept the chapter as historical, for Driver in his "Introduction" says:

      The historical improbabilities of the narrative contained in this chapter have been exaggerated; but though the four names in verse 1 correspond more or less exactly with those of Kings (about B. C. 2300), which have been discovered recently in the inscriptions, there is at present (December, 1896) no monumental corroboration of any part of the following narrative (p. 15).

      The reviewer is "inclined to be amused" at Hommel's efforts to "pose as a defender of orthodoxy," in view of the fact that "he frankly accepts every principle that characterizes modern critical procedure."

      It is still more amusing to see how completely the reviewer fails here to see the point. The fact that Hommel is himself a free critic, and that notwithstanding that he comes to the defense of orthodoxy, is the most striking feature of his work. He was once in full agreement with those whom he now rebukes, and he rebukes them although he has only in part escaped from the use of their methods.

      Once more, this reviewer shows his own animus toward Hommel and his contention by the following remarks:

      One wonders, therefore, whether, after all, the volume is not an attempt to gain the favor of a certain class of people who are anxious to find men with certain reputation for scholarship, uttering sharp words against what they are pleased to call "higher criticism," and whether Hommel has not joined a class [263] of writers, of which there are some examples in recent years, who have attempted to take advantage of a popular feeling against criticism to write books without having anything of new and valuable character to present.

      I leave this piece of charitable judging to speak for itself, only adding that it is better to reply to men's arguments than to cast suspicion on their motives.

[SEBC 261-264]