Another Anonymous Obituary

We regret to announce that the Rev. Dr. Thomas Kelly Cheyne, the Biblical critic and Hebraist, died yesterday at his residence at Oxford. The cause of death was a form of paralysis from which he has suffered for a number of years.

Dr. Cheyne was in some respects the most original writer among the English scholars of our time who devote themselves to Old Testament study. Other men might be considered sounder scholars, but he had pre-eminently a power, often allied to genius, of presenting well-known facts from a new point of view. In recent years, it must be acknowledged, the special theories he advocated failed to win acceptance. Yet it would be unjust to doubt the value of his work, even in his later publications, and many who reject his conclusions will be ready to acknowledge their indebtedness to his illuminative criticism.

Born in 1841 Dr. Cheyne was the youngest son of the Rev. T. H. Horne, the Biblical scholar and bibliographer, whose "Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures" had a large circulation. Cheyne went from Merchant Taylor's School to Worcester College, Oxford, where he won the Chancellor's English essay and other prizes, also the Pusey and Ellerton Hebrew Scholarship. After graduating at Oxford he went to Germany and studies for some time at Gottingen. In 1868 he was elected to a fellowship at Baliol, and from that time he became known as a writer on subjects connected with the Old Testament. His work "Notes and Criticism on the Hebrew Text of Isaiah", published in the year he obtained his fellowship, was the first of a series of volumes devoted to that book. Cheyne divided the book not only between a proto and a Deutero-Isaiah, but he found many other sources in it.

Next to Isaiah, the Psalms occupied most of his attention. He published a translation of them in 1884, which he re-wrote 10 years later, having meanwhile published "The Origin and Religious Contents of the Psalter", (the Bampton Lectures of 1889) and "The Christian Use of the Psalms".

But perhaps Cheyne's most remarkable work was done for the "Encyclopaedia Biblica" of which he was joint editor with Dr. J. Sutherland Black. The originator of the scheme was Professor W. Robertson Smith, and much of that great scholar's work is preserved in it, but Cheyne's influence is predominant, and in it the main trend and results of his critical studies may be seen most clearly. He not only wrote some of the most important articles himself, but he laid down the advanced critical principles to be observed by those who contributed to the book. Though men of "moderate" views were to be found among his colleagues, they took only a minor part in the work. The "Encyclopaedia Biblica" not seldom puzzles rather than guides the reader, a great part of it, however, is of first rate importance.

JERAHMEEL

The theory to the advocacy of which Cheyne devoted much of his later work was an expansion of Winckler's view of a North Arabian kingdom, the land of Muzri or Mizrim in North Arabia. It was from this country, and not from Egypt (Mizraim), that the clans of Israelites entered Canaan. The kingdom of Muzri was subject to the mightier sovereignty of Melukha, which is referred to in the Old Testament under the name of Ashur. Jarahmeel was the name of an Ishmaelite tribe worshipping a god of the same name, and living in the Negeb, near the kingdom of Muzri, to whose land the Jews were deported. The Jerahmeelites and their neighbours were the leaders of the opposition against the Jews, and their severity forms the complaint in many of the Psalms. it is true that Jerahmeel has but a small place in the present text of the Hebrew Bible. But Cheyne urged that this obscurity is to be accounted for by the drastic treatment to which the ancient text has been subjected. when once the later emendations are rejected and the true text regained, Jerahmeel and his adherents are found everywhere. No conjectural emendation of the Hebrew text seemed impossible to Cheyne if only it could be made to point to Jerahmeel. He "Jerahmeelised" the Old Testament. He was at one time universally recognised as a leader of Old Testament criticism, and his influence was felt in Germany as well as in England and Scotland, but the Jerahmeelite theory destroyed confidence in him.

In 1885 Dr. Cheyne was appointed Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture in Oxford. A canonry of Rochester is attached to the Chair, and in his sermons in the cathedral Professor Cheyne embodied the results of criticism. These sermons were much appreciated, and show a measure of spiritual fervour which may not be so apparent in his later works.

Unfortunately Professor Cheyne's health gave way in the midst of his work and in 1908 he resigned his professorship, receiving a pension and the title of Professor Emeritus. A Civil List pension was also granted to him. After his retirement Dr. Cheyne published in 1911 "The Two Religions of Israel", as a further contribution to his North Arabian theory, a work equal to anything he had written in its free treatment of the text and the audacity of its suggestions. In 1912, though bed-ridden and nearly blind, he added yet another volume to his previous works on Isaiah, entitled "The Mines of Isaiah Re-explored", a study which revealed his critical powers and mental acuteness unimpaired. In his last book, published scarcely more than three months ago with the title "The Reconciliation of Races and religions", he wrote, "As at once an Anglican Christian and an adopted Brahmanist" to make the attempt "to bring the east and west religiously together". The bulk of the book, however, is devoted to a historical and biographical account of Bahaism. Professor Cheyne received many tokens of recognition. In 1884, when he was rector of Tendring, Essex, he was appointed a member of the Old Testament Revision Company. He also received the honorary degree of D.D. from Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and an honorary Fellow of Oriel and Worcester Colleges.

Dr Cheyne was twice married, his first wife, who died in 1907, being Miss Frances E. Godfrey. In 1911 he married Miss Elizabeth Gibson, who has written a number of poetical works of high merit, and is specially interested in social movements.

The funeral will be at Holywell Cemetery on Thursday at 2.