Kuener, ABRAHAM

Kuener, ABRAHAM, an eminent Dutch theologian, was born at Haarlem, 16th September 1828, studied at Leyden, and became at the close of 1852 an extra-ordinary, in 1855 an ordinary professor there. He was rector of the university, 1861–62. His first important work was his Historisch-Critisch Onderzoek naar het Ontstaan en de Verzameling van de Boeken des Ouden Verbonds (3 vols. 1861–65; trans. in part by Colenso, 1865), which had a great influence on Old Testament scholars both in England and Germany. The result of the critical movement which he inaugurated, although it was first suggested by Graf, has been to entirely reconstruct the history of Israel, the priestly code and the historical portions connected with it being made the latest element in the Pentateuch. This view of Old Testament criticism has since been made familiar to Englishmen through the work of Wellhausen and his disciple Robertson Smith, and was developed further by Kuener in his best-known book, De Godsdienst van Israel tot den Ondergang van den Joodsehen Staat (1869–70; Eng. trans. 3 vols. 1873–75), and in the carefully revised and considerably fuller second edition of his Onderzoek (the Hexateuch, 1885; the Prophetic books, 1889). In the preface to the latter he says: 'In setting forth, for the first time, the complete and systematic critical justification of the Graian hypothesis, I am no longer advocating a heresy, but am expounding the received view of European critical scholarship.' Other works of Kuener's, only less important than these, are De Profeten en de Profetie onder Israel (1875; Eng. trans. 1877) and National Religions and Universal Religions, the Hibbert Lectures for 1882. Besides these Kuener has made countless contributions on biblical questions to the learned journals, especially the well-known Theologisch Tijdschrift, established in 1867. He died at Leyden, 10th December 1891. In critical insight and constructive ability, he stood at the head of the Old Testament critics of his time; Ewald's mantle had fallen on him. His firm grasp of historical method has given an unusual lucidity and force to his argument, and enabled him to bring almost for the first time the history of Israel into line with the history of other peoples of the ancient world. For, leaving the special supernatural question aside, its development must otherwise have been organic and normal, and this Kuenen was the first historian conclusively to demonstrate.