Although most remembered for his dubious biographies of mathematicians, Bell specialized in algebra. This article focuses on his approach to abstraction in that area. The author supplies several examples from Bell’s expository writing that espouse the “modern” abstract viewpoint. But this paper contends that Bell was less aligned with contemporaries, such as Emmy Noether and Emil Artin, than with the postulate theorists of the preceding generation, like Huntington and Veblen. The author also sees the abstraction in Bell’s research as at times half-hearted, finding Bell ultimately to be more comfortable working in concrete settings.