[6] The work attracted critical notice, not only for the dramatic nature of its narrative but also for disputes about which parts of it were original and which were Meinhold's reconstructions, written in imitation of the 17th-century style.

[7] Meinhold's intention was to set a trap for the disciples of David Strauss and his school, who pronounced the Bible to be a collection of legends from historical research assisted by internal evidence.

[8] In a direct challenge to these "modern documentary critics", Meinhold wrote in his preface to The Amber Witch: I have therefore attempted, not indeed to supply what is missing at the beginning and end, but to restore those leaves which have been torn out of the middle, imitating, as accurately as I was able, the language and manner of the old biographer, in order that the difference between the original narrative and my own interpolations might not be too evident.

As The Times wrote in the late 1840s: Meinhold did not spare them [Strauss and his disciples] when they fell into his snare, and [he] made merry with the historical knowledge and critical acumen that could not detect the contemporary romancer under the mask of two centuries ago, while they decide so positively as to the authorities of the most ancient writings in the world.

Writer Seabury Quinn wrote an article in the August 1925 issue of Weird Tales in which, unaware of the hoax, he recounted the plot of The Amber Witch as if it were an actual historical event.