This blog is the fourth in a series of four blogs on the position of William Foxwell Albright as the dean of American Biblical archaeology. The current issue of NEA includes the article “Dawn and Descent: Social Network Analysis and the ASOR Family Trees” by Diane Harris Cline, Eric H. Cline, and Rachel Hallote (NEA 87:2 2024:122-131). That article is based on a survey of ASOR members to determine educational experience and connections or family trees among the scholars. The results shed light on the “urban myth of William F. Albright as the ‘founder’ of biblical archaeology.”
In the first blog (The ASOR Family Tree: William Foxwell Albright), I explored the Methodist role in the development of the Albright’s biblical thought. Through Methodist Review the child in Chile was introduced to the conflict between the forces of light and darkness in the biblical arena. Methodist Robert W. Roger’s book A History of Babylonia and Assyria published by Methodists became known to young William through Methodist Review. Thereafter Albright’s course was set. He would fight the fight not by being a missionary or a circuit rider like his father, but through archaeology.
In the second blog, I explored the introduction of Friedrich Delitzsch and Pan-Babylonianism to Albright again through Methodist Review (Albright and Delitzsch: Their Pre-Academic Relationship).
The third blog continued that trajectory with the study of Hermann Hilprecht (Albright Should Have Attended Penn). At first glance, based on the favorable reporting in Methodist Review and Hilprechts’ own articles in The Sunday School Times, Hilprecht seemed like a good candidate to be Albright’s mentor in graduate school. Then the PETERS-HILPRECHT CONTROVERSY erupted. I suggest this event contributed to Albright looking elsewhere for his graduate school. That search led him to Paul Haupt.
In this blog, I turn to Paul Haupt.
ALBRIGHT’S CHOICE
The Johns Hopkins University did not rate highly in the Methodist pantheon[1]. A 1902 Methodist Review article had provided a list of acceptable and unacceptable schools for the course of study Albright was about to begin, and Hopkins fared poorly in it:
The most prominent advocates of radical criticism among us are Harper, Briggs, Toy, Smith and Haupt … Radical criticism is represented in Yale, Harvard, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Union [Seminary], Chicago, and Andover.
Certainly a decade later it is unlikely that Albright consulted this list about potential schools. Nonetheless, if Hopkins had a reputation contrary to the teachings of Methodist Review, there had to be something which drew Albright to that school instead of to one where such radical criticism did not prevail (Behrends 1902:786).
Hopkins professor Paul Haupt was one of the recognized giants in his field in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In some ways, Haupt may be considered the Albright of America before Albright, being the all-time record holder for articles in JBL with 75. As Albright doctoral student and later colleague George Ernest Wright described Haupt:
His vivid and forceful personality, his vast learning, his voluminous writings (a list of his publications numbers some 522 titles) had an impact upon American oriental studies including the Old Testament, exceeded only by his pupil and successor, W. F. Albright (Wright 1951:18).
Biographer Benjamin Foster described Haupt’s career as follows:
His career marks a turning point in the development of American Semitic and biblical studies. Whereas previously promising American Semitists had been obliged to travel to Germany to complete their studies, Haupt created a program at Johns Hopkins that in effect transplanted the Leipzig philological tradition to the United States of America and so contributed significantly to raising the standards of American Semitic philology. He was also important in creating an American biblical and Semitic discipline at home in a professional, secular, university academic department rather than in a theological seminary, as had been the case for much of the nineteenth century (Foster 1999:321).
Thus it was becoming less and less necessary for an American to go abroad to obtain a German-style graduate education in the areas of biblical scholarship. However, although American students could now attend schools in America in these subjects, this did not mean that American schools were academically independent from the German schools. The story of that American declaration of educational independence would be played out during the early decades of the 20th century just as Albright was deciding where to matriculate at the graduate-school level.[2]
PAUL HAUPT
The German-born and -educated Haupt had received his doctorate in 1878 from Friedrich Delitzsch at the University of Leipzig. Following his graduation, he did post-doctoral work at Leipzig. During this early part of his career Haupt focused on Assyriology:
His work in Sumerian abandoned the fantastic speculations of his predecessors on the relationship of Sumerian to other languages and treated it as a language to be studied in its own right according to rigorous linguistic standards. (Foster 320).
Albright had read a similar description of Haupt in A History of Babylonia and Assyria by Rogers:
In 1879 there appeared a small book by Paul Haupt which may truly be said to open a new era in the whole discussion [of Sumerology]. Haupt was then a young man of extraordinary gifts, and his handling of the Sumerian family laws showed how to treat a bilingual text in a thoroughly scientific manner (Rogers I:211).
To some extent, this retrospective passage is more revealing of what Albright sought from Haupt than his 1913 letter to his father touting Haupt’s authority on Gilgamesh: Haupt’s linguistic expertise. (Kramer 146).
Haupt assumed his position at Johns Hopkins at age 25 in 1883, being the first addition to the faculty of Johns Hopkins University since its founding in 1876. He would be the only German-born and German-trained scholar who joined the university as permanent staff in those early years. Haupt may have been the first person to teach Sumerology in America. Recent University of Pennsylvania graduate Cyrus Adler became the first student in Haupt’s Semitic Seminar begun in the fall of 1884. One of Haupt’s innovations was the institution of the January seminar in Assyriology during which time classes were suspended for an intensive month-long course that attracted scholars nationwide. Rogers was one of the participants in the initial January 1887 program. This program continued to be in effect throughout his career at The Johns Hopkins University. [3]
Haupt did appear from time to time in Methodist Review. In July, 1896, his Polychrome Old Testament was the feature of the Archaeology and Biblical Research column. This Wellhausen-based book, used different colors to designate the different biblical writers proposed by the Documentary Hypothesis (with brown, “author unknown” for Genesis 14). The following May, Haupt’s new translation of the Gilgamesh flood story was noted “with comments more or less favorable to our secular papers.” The article concluded that it was this text that proved the folly of higher criticism with its claims of exilic and post-exilic writing of millennia-old stories that actually could have been brought from Mesopotamia to Canaan by the patriarchs. Cobern identified him as famous for his learning and evangelical spirit in 1901 in contrast to his being linked with radical criticism by Methodist Review in 1902.[4]
A potential area of interest in Haupt to Albright was Gilgamesh.
In writing to his father, William referred again [following an earlier letter dated April 27, 1913] to hi fellowship application and explained that Prof. Paul Haupt, a German scholar, chairman of the “Oriental Seminary,” in which Assyriology was a main feature, was already probably the greatest authority on the Gilgamesh Epic (Running and Freedman 21).
Albright specifically referred to Der Babylonissche Nimrodepos by Haupt as the standard for the discipline. This series consisted of three books from 1881, 1884, and 1891, about the Gilgamesh story which at that time was often called the Nimrod epic after the biblical figure. The 1881 book consisted of 78 pages of drawings of cuneiform tablets and fragments in the British Museum without transliteration, translation, or comments. The area of academic expertise was critical since Albright specifically referred to. One presumes that during the course of his studies at Upper Iowa University, Albright became familiar with these books. One may conjecture that he may have read Haupt’s 1901 paper at the American Oriental Society entitled “The Beginning of the Babylonian Epic” published the same year in the Journal of the American Oriental Society. (Running and Freedman, 21; Albright, 1926: xxv, xxvii.).
Along these lines, a more current article by Haupt deserves notice. “Some Difficult Passages in the Cuneiform Account of the Deluge” was published in 1912.[5] In this article, Haupt discussed an historical flood at the ancient Sumerian city of Surippak, as he spelled it, discovered only eight years earlier. So in addition to anything Prof. Danny Parker might have said to Albright at Upper Iowa University about the current state of biblical scholarship, here Albright had the opportunity to read about a scholar currently engaged in research in the area of interest to him. Albright became a member of the American Oriental Society sometime in 1912, perhaps when JAOS was no longer available to him through the college. This article contained some of the ideas he incorporated into his dissertation under Haupt.[6]
In retrospect, it is important to reevaluate the legacy of Haupt as part of the process of gauging Albright’s relation to him. It is legitimate in this regard to note the recognized limitations of Haupt’s scholarship outside any consideration of his relationship to Albright:
[H]is critical judgment did not match his philological gifts, and despite occasional brilliant insights, his biblical scholarship had little long-term effect….Haupt’s substantial [early career] accomplishments in Assyriology and Semitics were overshadowed by his subsequent biblical publications, which were of far less importance (Foster 321).
As Sasson phrases it: “what Haupt lacked, and therefore could not give his brilliant pupil, was the vision of the whole and a sense of purpose,” ironically paraphrasing the Methodist scriptural hermeneutic and undermining the methodology of the graduate seminar as developed by von Ranke and applied to the Bible by Wellhausen (Sasson 5). Thus one should recognize that Haupt’s expertise lay in Assyriology and philology, that his reputation was not based on biblical exegesis, and that it was his expertise in Gilgamesh and not the Hebrew Bible that drew Albright to him. .. plus he could not provide the visionary leadership and role model that Albright sought. Nonetheless, Haupt was the individual Albright personally had selected in the wake of Hilprecht’s resignation, and he was not fully aware of the world he had chosen to enter.
When Albright submitted an application to Hopkins, he included a copy of his article on dallalu (Albright, 1948:163). It was published in 1913 in Orientalische Literaturzeitung to which he had become a subscriber in 1912. He sought to close a gap in the Gilgamesh story (he had purchased his own copy).This in-depth philological analysis of selected and specific terms has been called the “diagnostic detail” approach (Machinist 1996:395, 397, 400). Albright wrote that it was by lucky chance that the application was accompanied by proof sheets of a paper to appear in a German journal (Albright 1948:163). By contrast, his biographers wrote:
Looking back later, William commented that Providence had again come to his aid, in that he was able to send proofs of his article on dallalu along with his application to Prof. Paul Haupt (Running and Freedman 22).
All things considered, therefore, Johns Hopkins under German-born and -educated Paul Haupt, expert in the Gilgamesh epic, was the best place at this particular point in time for student Albright to arm himself with some of the tools of the trade and weapons of war he needed to achieve his goal of illuminating religion through science. On that subject, “[founding JHU President] Gilman believed that research in Semitic languages would significantly aid in the reconciliation of science and religion by clarifying sacred texts.” He was an orientalist who served for many years as the President of the American Oriental Society. Both this organization and “reconciliation” of science and religion would prove to be important in the scholarship of Albright.
Haupt read many papers at the conferences of the American Oriental Society and the Society of Biblical Literature. His students were expected to do the same even before they had graduated. Besides the traditional values of such conferences (networking), Haupt saw them as furthering the reputation of his Oriental Seminary, its work, its methods, and its members (Machinist 2020:197). Albright did attend AOS and JBL conferences from 1915 to 1919 before going overseas. Space does not permit identifying his papers and the events at the conferences. Suffice it to say as grad student attending such conferences under the watchful eye of his dominating advisor meant that Albright remained in his stealth student mode and was not yet ready to stand on his own two feet.
The situation changed with the publication of “Historical and Mythical Elements in the Story of Joseph” published in the Journal of Biblical Literature (1918). Space does not permit a detailed analysis of the article nor is it necessary to do so here. The bulk of the article contains Albright’ analysis of the story of Joseph from the perspective a borrowing from the Egyptians by the Hebrews (1918:115-132). Suddenly, after this long Egyptian discourse, Albright switches gears to Haupt almost as is a second article had been grafted or appended to his original article.
Prof. Paul Haupt has happily suggested that Potiphera, priest of Heliopolis, and his daughter Asenath … belong originally to the story of Moses (1918:132).
After having analyzed the story of Joseph from his own perspective “I propose to takeup anew …), there is a dramatic shift to the scholarship of the frequently cited Haupt becoming the basis for the second half of the article.
In the two centuries or more which intervened between the death of Moses and the accession of Solomon, the Jews, who as Prof. Haupt has repeatedly emphasized, were the real spiritual heirs of Moses (and the through the Kenites closely related to him), can hardly have forgotten the basic facts of the life of Moses (1918:132-133).
This shift in gears marks a corresponding shift in the paper of Dr. Albright, independent scholar to doctoral student under the influence of Haupt.
This pattern continues throughout the article. He even mentions Genesis 14 for some reason in the article on Joseph. He does so completely subsumed within in the shadow of Haupt.
As Prof. Haupt has repeatedly stated, the Hebrews were the precursors of the Arabs (1918:136).
Albright concurs with Haupt who had been and writing about and spoke about it at the 1918 AOS conference. The hand is the hand of Albright but the words are the words of Haupt.
His publication on Genesis 14 in this story of Joseph is a rewriting of the texts of Haupt. This is the Albright of his 1915 AOS papers paying homage to his mentor and not the Albright of the opening paragraph to the Joseph article charting his own way.
It appears the two articles have been combined as one.
1. a pre-World War military service paper written probably after the completion in 1916 of his dissertation and while he was still teaching at Hopkins. It was in preparation for the 1917 AOS conference and simply regurgitated the words of Haupt.
2. a post-World War I paper written in 1918 which makes no mention of Haupt. Albright instead uses such expressions as “I propose,” “eclectic viewpoint,” and “catholic in choice of methods.
This partial exegesis of Albright’s Joseph article suggests a potentially humiliating experience for the new Dr. Just as was trying to establish his own identity in the world of scholarship he parrots the words of his mentor and is published in JBL where the influence of Haupt loomed large.
But a step had been taken. He time was not distant when the stealth student would stand revealed and publish the articles he wanted to publish.
1. Albright, “Professor Haupt as Scholar and Teacher,” xxv. One should note that Johns Hopkins himself was a Quaker as were 7 of the 12 members of the first board (Hawkins, 3-5) and that it is the Quaker University of Pennsylvania that prides itself on being the oldest university (not college) in the United States (Gordon 4); see Fischer 530-538, and Baltzell 133-142 and 246-280, for Quaker attitudes towards education. Haupt also was a Quaker while he was a professor at The Johns Hopkins University (Albright letters to his mother, November 30, 1913, and January 23, 1916, personal papers Leona Running).
2. See also Albright 1926), xxxii, for the impact Haupt had on Semitic Studies in America. His arrival at Hopkins was an eagerly anticipated event for Jewish Americans seeking secular higher education. These opportunities previously had been lacking (a similar situation existed at the University of Pennsylvania; see Kuklick, 6 and Gordon, 6). Cyrus Adler, the future head of Jewish Theological Seminary, had been the first student to enroll in this department precisely in anticipation of Haupt’s arrival there (Orlinksy and Bratcher 139 n.205). These nondenominational institutions that were not in business to produce Protestant ministers provided the academic setting where Jews could pursue biblical studies in the discipline of Semitic studies (Sarna and Sarna 94-95; Wechsler and Ritterband 7). As a side note, Albright later commented that until he went away to graduate school, he had never consciously been aware of meeting anyone who was Jewish (1964:288).
3. Albright 1926:cxx-xxv; Hawkins 56 158; Meade 32-33; Records of the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Johns Hopkins University Archives; Johns Hopkins University Circular 56 (1887): 71 cited in Meade, 33; Johns Hopkins University Circular 60 (1887): 4 cited in Meade, 33. Haupt became a widower in 1884 after being married for two months and then in 1886 married the sister of his deceased bride. He continued to travel to Germany annually until World War I (Foster 321).
4. C. M. Cobern, “Higher Criticism,” in Methodist Review 83 (Fifth Series 17) (1901): 92-98. “Haupt’s Polychrome Old Testament,” Methodist Review 88 (Fifth Series 12) (1896): 644-646; “The Babylonian Flood Legend,” idem 79 (Fifth Series 13) (1897): 476, 478-479; “Dr. Behrends on Old Testament Criticism,” idem, 84 (Fifth Series 18) (1902): 786; see also Book review of Genesis Printed in Colors, idem 75 (Fifth Series 9) (1893) 161. Methodist Review cited The Literary Digest of February 20, 1897, in a footnote. According to The Literary Digest, The New York Journal article of February 7, 1897, about Haupt’s efforts to translate the flood tablets contained inaccuracies so it contacted Haupt directly to determine the true story about their discovery (“The Babylonian Story of the Flood,” 14/16 (1897): 497. The Literary Digest then printed Haupt’s translation of the flood story without comment (idem, 497-499).
5. Haupt. The first footnote in the article refers to Das Babylonische Nimrodepos so it may be this article which led Albright to Haupt.
6. Letter to longtime friend Sam Geiser, December 25, 1912, Albright Papers. This article may have lead Albright to additional publications by Haupt on the subject of Gilgamesh and the flood. Presuming access to this issue of JAOS, Albright may have read Haupt’s 1904 article based on his presentation to the American Oriental Society about the introduction to the cuneiform deluge story which then referred to his 1901 presentation and article.
References
Albright Papers, American Philosophical Papers (not catalogued).
William Foxwell Albright, “Historical and Mythical Elements in the Story of Joseph,” Journal of Biblical Literature 37 1918:111-143.
William Foxwell Albright, “Professor Haupt as Scholar and Teacher,” in Oriental Studies: Published in Commemoration of the Fortieth Anniversary 1883-1923 of Paul Haupt as Director of the Oriental Seminar of the Johns Hopkins University, ed. C. Adler and A. Ember, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1926), xxi-xxxii
William Foxwell Albright, “William Foxwell Albright,” in American Spiritual Autobiographies, ed., L. Finkelstein, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948:156-181).
William Foxwell Albright, History, Archaeology and Christian Humanism, (New York: McGraw Hill, 1964).
E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979).
Dr. Behrends, Old Testament Criticism,” Methodist Review 84 (Fifth Series 18) (1902): 786.
C. M. Cobern, “Higher Criticism,” in Methodist Review 83 (Fifth Series 17) 1901:92-98.
David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 530-538.
Benjamin Foster, “Haupt, Paul,” in American National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 10.321).
Cyrus Gordon, The Pennsylvania Tradition of Semitics: A Century of Near Eastern and Biblical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (Atlanta: Scholars, 1986).
Paul Haupt, “The Beginning of the Babylonian Epic,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 32 1912:1-16.
Hugh Hawkins, Pioneer: A History of the Johns Hopkins University: 1874-1889, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960).
Samuel Kramer, “William Foxwell Albright, Review of Sumerian Mythology by, Journal of the American Oriental Society 64 1944:146.
Bruce Kuklick, Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life, 1880-1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
Peter Machinist, “William Foxwell Albright: The Man and His Work,” in The study of the Ancient Near East in the 21st Century: The William Foxwell Albright Centennial Conference, ed. J. S. Cooper and G. M. Schwartz, Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 385-403.
Peter Machinist, “Paul Haupt: between Two Worlds,” in From Mari to Jerusalem and back: Assyriological and Biblical studies in honor of Jack Murad Sasson, ed. Annalisa Azzoni, Alexandra Kleinerman, Douglas A. Knight, and David I. Owen (University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 2020), 191-221..
Harry Orlinksy and Robert Bratcher, A History of Bible Translation and the North American Contribution, (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991).
Running, Leona, personal papers.
Leona G. Running and David Noel Freedman, William Foxwell Albright: A 20th Century Genius, (Berrien Springs: Andrew University, 1991), reprint of the 1975 edition.
Jonathan Sarna and Nahum Sarna, “Jewish Bible Scholarship and Translations in the United States,” in Ernest S. Frerichs, ed., The Bible and Bibles in America, (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 83-116.
Jack Sasson, “Albright as an Orientalist,” Biblical Archaeologist 56 1993:3-7.
Harold Wechsler and Paul Ritterband, “The Hilprecht Controversy and Semitic Scholarship in America,” History of Higher Education Annual 1981 1:5-42.
George Ernest Wright, “The Study of the Old Testament: The Changing Mood in the House of Wellhausen,” in Protestant Thought in the Twentieth Century: Whence and Whither?, ed., Arnold Nash (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1951), 17-44.
