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Methodist Review

Albright Should Have Attended Penn

September 10, 2024
by Peter Feinman
Hermann Hilprecht (Wikipedia)

This blog is the third in a series of four 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). The 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).

This blog continues that trajectory with the study of Hermann Hilprecht. Only in the final blog will Albright, stealth student under Paul Haupt be addressed.

Hermann Hilprecht

Methodist Review saluted the efforts of the University of Pennsylvania in 1898 just when young William began reading it.

The greatest work of the United States in the field of archaeology, however, is that accomplished under the direction of the University of Pennsylvania in Babylonia.

After recounting the efforts of the professors of this university since 1884 in support of the historicity of the biblical story (and the pre-Ussher origin of human civilization), the column concluded with:

We shall await with interest for the translation of the tablets and documents found by the Pennsylvanian expedition in Babylonia, and greatly rejoice that so scholarly a man as Professor Hilprecht has undertaken this great task.

Further praise of Hilprecht followed.  According to Methodist Review:

No one has done more to popularize the study of archaeology than Professor Hilprecht, of Philadelphia, who for this reason is better known to the general public as an archaeologist than any other scholar of his rank.  His monthly contributions to the Sunday-School Times are always fresh, instructive, and reliable.

This praise of Hilprecht in Methodist Review occurred simultaneously with the appearance of ads

for Rogers A History of Babylonia and Assyria, the book which young William read that

launched his career in oriental studies.

The Sunday School Times was a weekly publication that served the needs of Sunday Schools.  With the implementation of the Uniform Lesson plan led by Methodist John Heyl Vincent, all Sunday schools taught the same texts each week. The Sunday School Times aided that effort with articles geared for the teachers of different grade levels.  In addition, it included newsworthy items relevant to its mission.  That included archaeological articles as well.  Albright read The Sunday School Times along with Methodist Review.  These highlights from The Sunday School Times at the time Albright was attending Sunday School are suggestive of the people and discoveries the youngster was exposed to in addition to his reading of the Methodist Review:

1. A series of articles by Rogers between 1901 and 1903 based on the very book Albright had read in Chile as well as additional articles on archaeology and the Bible; Albright noted reading unspecified articles by Rogers in his Sunday School classes in his October 18, 1924 letter to him. It is reasonable to conclude that these articles were from the Sunday School Times and that therefore Albright read other articles from this publication during this time period as well.

2. A series of articles by University of Pennsylvania professor Hermann Hilprecht in a regular column “With Spick and Spade in Bible Lands” from 1901 that ended in 1904. Hilprecht had begun writing for the Sunday School Times in 1886.  In 1902, the Sunday School Times referred to him as “the foremost living Assyriologist” whose column was “an absolute essential” for “one who wishes to know of the continued and ever-fresh revelations as to the inspired accuracy of God’s Word.”

3. Frequent articles by Bibliotheca Sacra editor George Frederick Wright on such subjects as the Creation, the Flood, Sodom (and its earthquake), and Jericho (and its earthquake). Wright was perhaps the foremost practitioner of his times of the effort to hold science and religion together as Albright would be in his time.  Wright’s focus on the glacial age and the Flood would have resonated with Albright whose dissertation was on the Deluge.

4. A new archaeological column beginning in 1911 by Melvin Kyle a future collaborator with Albright in the Holy Land.

In addition, there were an on ongoing slew of archaeological-related articles by such prominent figures as A. J. Sayce and Albert T. Clay on such topics as Sennacherib and the Deluge.

During this time, The Sunday School Times weighed in on the “Babel and Bibel” controversy.  In 1903, Herman Hilprecht authored an article on the contentious issue.  He quoted the conclusion to Delitszch’s lecture in January as a sure-fire way to rouse his readership in case they weren’t familiar with the talk:

“Revelation!  No greater aberration of the human mind can be imagined that the collection of invaluable remains of ancient Hebrew literature, as represented by the Old Testament, has been regarded for centuries as a religious canon, a revealed book of religion.”

So even if one did not have access to the speech in the original German, one could read excerpts of it in The Sunday School Times.  Hilprecht, of course, went on to condemn the conclusions of Delitzsch and to assert Israel’s uniqueness from its neighbors in its development of monotheism, the prophets, and national conscience. Albright’s relationship to Pan-Babylonianism is not the issue here but it is reasonable to conclude that Hilprecht would have joined Rogers in Albright’s pantheon of warriors of light against German biblical criticism.

In 1903, Hilprecht published Explorations in Bible Lands: During the Nineteenth Century, intended for a more public audience than the normal academic publications on those subjects had been.  Albright’s copy of this edition is now at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary library. The book was cited by Albright in a footnote in his first published article in 1911 while at Upper Iowa University.  In 1940, Albright later wrote about this book:

Among the more useful and reliable accounts of archaeological exploration and excavation in the Near East may be mentioned the following general treatments … [Hilprecht’s book was listed first as “Best for the period covered”].

However, Methodist Review did note that despite Hilprecht’s expertise, he should have been a more magnanimous human being:

This is especially true in his Explorations in Bible Lands During the Nineteenth Century, published in 1903.  This work, excellent and valuable as it is, has certainly too much vinegar and pepper.  The derogatory remarks and patronizing insinuations concerning Mr. Haynes, Dr. Peters, and other collaborators are decidedly acrimonious and caustic, and it goes without saying that such ungenerous words add nothing to the value of the book either from a literary or scientific standpoint.  There is a vein of the uncharitable running through a large portion of this beautiful and instructive volume.

So Hilprecht was an acknowledged expert in Gilgamesh, praised by both Methodist Review and Albright over a 40-year period, and teaching at a school that was in the forefront of archaeology and Assyriology, but with a personality problem that was about to cause problems.

Certainly one could claim that it is unlikely that over a decade later Albright would remember this column when contemplating graduate school; on the other hand, one should not overlook first impressions and the power of imprinting.  Methodist Review introduced young William to Rogers and he immediately bought the latter’s book once it was published; Methodist Review introduced young William to Hilprecht and he owned and used Hilprecht’s 1903 book by 1911 and praised it later in life.  It is reasonable to inquire why Albright did not matriculate at the American graduate institution that arguably was the leader in the relevant disciplines for Albright’s areas of interest.

PETERS-HILPRECHT CONTROVERSY

During the first decade of the 20th century, the University of Pennsylvania was rocked by what was known as the Peters-Hilprecht controversy. It also involved Jastrow, head of the Semitics department and longtime foe of the still German-national Hilprecht.  The long-standing conflict between these two University of Pennsylvania professors began to explode in 1903, at the time of the publication of Explorations in the Bible Lands.  A review of the table of contents quickly reveals that Hilprecht expropriated a lion’s share of the book he edited for himself.  His own excavations absorbed 355 pages in a 793-page book with the remainder for Egypt, Anatolia, Arabia, and all the other 19th-century Mesopotamian excavators combined.  This action caused difficulties with scholars both within and outside his university.

The famous “Babel und Bibel” speech of Delitzsch continued to remain a controversial issue.  Albright would have read about it in both Methodist Review and The Sunday School Times. Jastrow sought to procure Delitzsch’s services for the University of Pennsylvania but he was thwarted in those efforts by Hilprecht. The latter championed Assyriology for supporting the historical truths of the Bible, also the position of Methodist Review.  As a result, Jastrow’s effort failed and Delitzsch remained in Germany.

This incident serves a reminder that the field of Assyriology was a small one where the people tended to know each other.  The annual sessions of the American Oriental Society included 50-60 persons when Albright first began to attend them as a graduate student very similar to the size of the Ancient Near Eastern track at the AOS conferences today and a far cry from the several thousand at a Society of Biblical Literature conference.  This intimacy highlighted the significance of egos among the educated elite and made personalities an important part of understanding what actually was going on.  In this regard, oral tradition is an important complement to the written record of scholarship which may be as revealing of the human element as a monument erected by Pharaoh.

The final straw to this Hilprecht contretemps was a controversy over (1) what he had actually discovered, (2) where certain tablets about the flood actually had been found [or purchased], and (3) whether the tablets were gifts to the Babylonian Expedition Fund from him personally as he claimed, or from the Ottoman authorities who merely released the items through him.  In addition to these legal/financial considerations, one also needed to address what the tablets actually meant: was Hilprecht’s translation valid?

The first issue led to an institutional response. Seven sessions of investigation in April, 1905, were conducted producing almost 600 pages of testimony.  The scandal did not die when the University of Pennsylvania trustees exonerated Hilprecht and did not publish the proceedings despite Methodist Review‘s reporting this “gratifying” news.  Meetings of two professional societies, the American Oriental Society and Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis in 1905 and 1906, were caught up in this controversy.  The lack of resolution of this contretemps from the scholars’ point of view led to sixteen Orientalists representing Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Johns Hopkins (Haupt), Chicago, and Union Theological Seminary asking Hilprecht to clear up the “imputations” on “the integrity of American scholarship.”  This manifesto of complaint was publicly published in the American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature along with Hilprecht’s response when the situation could not be resolved privately. Hilprecht followed in 1908 with a vigorous self-published defense.  Albright’s 1908 edition of Hilprecht’s The So-Called Peters-Hilprecht Controversy is now at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary library.

In 1910, Hilprecht published a text related to the biblical flood which continued the controversy. Albright’s 1910 edition of Hilprecht’s The Earliest Version of the Babylonian Deluge Story and The Temple Library of Nippur is now at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary library.  Let it be noted here that it revived the controversy as yet another example by the “reprobate” who continued to play fast and loose with the truth.  Meanwhile, Methodist Review stood by its man whom it had praised in 1900 and 1905.  The discovery and the disagreement over his interpretation of this flood text was reported by Methodist Review in 1910 with the following conclusion:

It will be perhaps admitted by scholars everywhere that this new fragment of a Deluge tablet was executed before the days of Abraham, and that the “father of the faithful” was perfectly familiar with the story of the Flood as related in the first book of the Hebrew Scriptures.  This being true, there can be no reason for any school of critics to assert that the writer of Genesis borrowed the Deluge story not only from Babylonia but from the age following the captivity.

Then after declaring the similarity of the fragment to the Pentateuchal account even without Hilprecht’s emendations to the text, Methodist Review claimed:

It is a source of comfort to every earnest Christian student and lover of the Bible that the more we study the cuneiform inscriptions and other monuments of antiquity, the less reason we have for doubting the genuineness and authenticity of the Bible, and, indeed, the less reason for depressing the dates of the Old Testament books….

Finally, we may say that it is very unfortunate for American scholarship that a controversy has arisen and is still in progress concerning this fragment.  It was especially uncalled for that the charges made against Hilprecht in 1904, but not substantiated, should have been brought before the public again in 1910.

Whatever the end of this controversy may be, jealousy has played too prominent a part in this matter, for, say what we may, Professor Hilprecht is no fakir, but a man of ripe scholarship and the peer of any living Assyriologist.

Once again, the University of Pennsylvania appeared as a place to go for Albright if he was willing to risk some controversy.  However, the choice would be taken from him.

This publication of Hilprecht’s The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania in 1910, came as the Peters-Hilprecht controversy was about to conclude with the retirement of Hilprecht.  Contrary to Sayce’s conclusion linking biblical awareness of the Flood story to the exilic period when Babylon supposedly first became a great city, Hilprecht declared that this latest cuneiform tablet of the Deluge Story conclusively proved that it was written and known before the time of Abraham at Ur.  Recounting a conversation with the Provost of the University of Pennsylvania on December 1, 1909 when he reported this discovery, Hilprecht wrote:

Upon Provost Harrison’s inquiry as to the possible relation of this new text to the Biblical story, both with regard to its age and contents, I answered immediately that it had been inscribed more than 600 years before the time generally assigned to Moses, and in fact even some time before the Patriarch Abraham rescued Lot from the hands of Amraphel of Shinar and Chedorlaomer of Elam; furthermore, that in its preserved portion it showed a much greater resemblance to the Biblical Deluge Story than any other fragment yet published.

In case there is any uncertainty, Hilprecht here did equate Amraphel with Hammurabi.  Furthermore, the excavation of this tablet, which he dated to the 21st century BCE, helped him to better identify the participants in the alliance referred to in the story of Genesis 14 and the political machinations of that time.

Hilprecht dated these events to the aftermath of the collapse of the Sargonic empire.  Sargon the Great, the deity’s representative on earth, had conquered the four cardinal points of his known world with his capital at the cosmic center and Elam to the east, Subartu/Assyria to the north, Amurru to the west, and Shumer, now part of Akkad, to the south.  Thus whoever defeated grandson Naram-Sin and plundered the latter’s capital had the right to declare himself to be “king of the four quarters of the world” as the successor by force to that empire.  According to Hilprecht this was is precisely what had happened.  It was in the aftermath of these events that the patriarch Abraham appeared in history as recounted in the story of Genesis 14 based on Hilprecht’s dating and interpretation of the newly discovered flood text. As to his role in the discovery, Hilprecht asserted:

[I]t will be recognized at once that I surely did not overestimate the value of our greatest discovery made at Nippur.  If anything, I did not speak positively and enthusiastically enough about the fundamental importance of that great storehouse of human knowledge, religious conceptions and spiritual emotions, and its far-reaching influence upon the science of Assyriology and the entire history of civilization.

So the editor who had appropriated the lion share of his 1903 book to himself apparently still placed himself and his work at the cosmic center of Assyriology.

However, the manner in which Hilprecht substantiated his claims to the academic community may be interpreted as an object lesson for anyone seeking to employ archaeological discoveries to validate biblical texts.  In five of the 20 footnotes to his analysis of this 14-line text, Hilprecht “supplements” the text with his own emendations and on one occasion uses the biblical flood story to restore the Babylonian text, a reversal of academic protocol. As a result of the application of his own emendations, Hilprecht unequivocally declared that the P version of the biblical flood story must be the oldest one by the writers posited in the Documentary Hypothesis instead of the youngest as traditionally thought:

This fact is so plainly depicted in the history of the city as represented by its ruins, that I would regard it as a waste of time to lose any more words about it.

The Amorites had overthrown the old order of things, the learned culture of Babylon, and they had established ties between Palestine and Babylonia in the time of Hammurabi/Amraphel, historical Abraham, and the story of Genesis 14.  Thus it was precisely at the time of the story of Genesis 14 when the world of the ancient Near East was in transition and the opportunity to create a new cultural synthesis or religious innovation was most prevalent.

Hilprecht’s book produced a speedy response.  The Philadelphia newspapers reported the discovery on March 19, 1910 and George Barton, of nearby Bryn Mawr College had responded in the final issue of JAOS in the very same year.  Barton, who had served as the director of ASOR in Jerusalem in 1902-1903, had been in the forefront of those who earlier had condemned Hilprecht.  The following citations amply illustrated the derogatory manner in which Barton held the scholarship and person of Hilprecht:

To base a conjectural emendation on another conjectural emendation to another passage which stood in another context is insecure ground.

Upon line 12 Hilprecht stakes a great deal, and his treatment of it is really astounding….He then supplies from the P Document of the Old Testament, without even telling us what the Babylonian form of the words would be….More extraordinary and inexplicable still, however, is Hilprecht’s note on line 12.

The writer is reluctantly compelled to believe that Hilprecht’s footnote is deliberately misleading and that the following statements of Hilprecht in the So-called Peters-Hilprecht Controversy are untrue.

Additional examples could be provided from this one article.  Also in 1910, two Columbia professors, John Prince and Frederick Vanderburgh, voiced their criticisms, referring to Hilprecht’s “not unnatural desire to accommodate this fragment to the Old Testament account” while rejecting his conclusions and expressing concern over his actions:

To force biblical details into a mutilated Babylonian account is distinctly not permissible, and in so doing Hilprecht has largely injured the interest and value of his discovery from a scientific point of view.

In his 1916 dissertation, Albright copied the comments of the Columbia professors Prince and Vanderburgh in referring to “Hilprecht’s not unnatural desire to emphasize the importance of his find” and he supported the early date for the tablet which Hilprecht had proposed “in spite of the peculiar zeal a number of scholars have shown in lowering the date.” Hilprecht was right in his estimation of its value, but Albright chose to “pass silently over his attempt to inaugurate a new era in Biblical criticism by its aid.”  The goal wasn’t necessarily wrong, the execution by Hilprecht was.

Hilprecht had crossed the line of acceptable scholarship in his desire to be the one who substantiated the biblical account.  In his biographical article on Hilprecht, Benjamin Foster concluded:

Again, he seemed to be going beyond the evidence, perhaps for nonscholarly reasons, although he was by no means the only scholar of his day prone to enthusiastic presentation of biblical “discoveries” in Babylonian texts.  Because Hilprecht’s main backers on the scholarly level were European Assyriologists, the debate began to assume a nationalistic character, with American scholars complaining of foreign interference in the American university scene….

He left the [University M]useum in 1911 embittered and with a strong sense of betrayal …. [and] settled in Munich, Germany ….After the armistice, he returned to Philadelphia and became a U.S. citizen.

Hilprecht resigned effective the beginning of 1911 after issuing a countercharge against Jastrow and Barton.  He claimed that they had broken into his office and destroyed his files among other things.  With Jastrow as the Department chair from 1910 until his death in 1921 and James Montgomery joining the faculty in the 1909-1910 school year, the University of Pennsylvania had turned the corner on putting the controversy behind it … but it would take some time for the turmoil to die down and for Albright to follow the guidance of Jastrow upon graduation from Hopkins and be united with Montgomery in ASOR in the 1920s.

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

There was a lot for Albright to learn from this episode about how to present scholarship, how to present scholarship related to the Bible, and how to present scholarship related to the Bible in the American context. Now despite the comparatively large department dealing with the ancient Near East, despite the long-standing involvement in that area, and finally, despite Hilprecht’s specific involvement with the Gilgamesh epic, the subject mentioned in Albright’s letter to his father, it is easy to see why Albright in 1913 would have crossed off the University of Pennsylvania from the small list of potential graduate schools for him now that its popularizer of biblical scholarship and Gilgamesh expert was gone.  Under slightly different circumstances, one can easily imagine Albright pursuing his interests in the Flood story, Genesis 14, and the Bible at the University of Pennsylvania, but in the tumultuous circumstances at the time when Albright was in college himself, this was one school to scratch off his list.

Beyond any personal considerations for Albright, the Hilprecht incident also represented “a significant milestone in the growth of Semitics in America” that bears notice.  It reflected a change in the dynamics between American and European scholarship.  The Europeans tended to side with German-born, German-national Hilprecht who continued to return home annually (for example, see both Pinches and Hommel in The Expository Times in 1910).  European allegiance to German-national Hilprecht represented a corresponding danger to American scholarship if Hilprecht’s false scholarship was accepted as valid:

In Hilprecht, Jastrow saw a threat to the considerable recognition accorded to American scholarship over the previous two decades.

Looking back in 1918, Peters would comment, drawing on his own experience as a student in Germany, that there was much that he found unsound in German scholarship. Hilprecht understood the terms of the transatlantic battle and in his festschrift published in 1909, there was only one American contribution versus the nearly 30 European contributions.

This event legitimately may be regarded as a turning point in American scholarship:

During the course of the controversy, and perhaps as a result of it, American orientalists no longer turned to their European colleagues to set standards; in fact, one can almost see the tide turning against Hilprecht as he increasingly resorted to foreign support.

Wechsler and Ritterband characterize the event as the moment American orientalists were able “to declare independence” from European masters and establish standards as a corrective to German excesses. “The German born and educated H. V. Hilprecht served as a symbol for everything American Semiticists rejected in continental scholarship.” In this battle, Hilprecht represented a scholarship that was repugnant to his American colleagues. This confrontation added a new chapter to a relationship of long duration between the United States and Germany.  The emerging schism was summarized by American Peters as follows:

I have often called attention to the curious coincidence that when we were discovering the antiquities of Sargon, his actual inscriptions, in Babylonia, a distinguished Berlin Assyriologist was publishing a work in which he proved Sargon to be a myth and in which Babylonian chronology was reduced to the same sorry pass as that of the Bible in the hands of its critics;

an observation very similar to the one made by Rogers in 1900.  A decade or so later, University of Pennsylvania Professor Peters and Johns Hopkins University graduate Albright would be walking the Holy Land together when a new discovery about that nonmythical Sargon would show the way on how warrior heroes in the Bible similarly should be understood in history.

One of the consequences of the Peters-Hilprecht controversy would be the choices Albright would make as a postdoctoral student about his relationship with both the University of Pennsylvania and the new generation of German scholars.  Albright’s decisions came against this backdrop of efforts by American scholarship to assert its independence from German scholarship.  In this post-Harper post-Hilprecht era of American scholarship, who would assume the mantle of leadership?  Albright’s relationship first to Haupt and then to the American James Henry Breasted should be understood within this larger context.

Footnotes available on request.

Albright and Delitzsch: Their Pre-Academic Relationship

July 28, 2024
by Peter Feinman
Fredrich Delitzsch (https://en.wikipedia.org)

The ASOR Family Tree: William Foxwell Albright :An Elaboration on “Dawn and Descent: Social Network Analysis and the ASOR Family Trees”

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). The 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.” Instead the focus is on German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch (122).

In my previous blog, 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.

Methodist Review did more than introduce him to Rogers and archaeology. Through it he became aware of  Friedrich Delitzsch as well. Long before Albright became an undergraduate at Methodist Upper Iowa College or graduate student at Johns Hopkins, he was aware of Delitzsch.

PAN-BABYLONIANISM

When Albright read Methodist Review in Chile and Iowa, he learned of another weapon in the battle against Wellhausen besides archaeology as exemplified by Rogers’ book: the synthesis called Pan-Babylonianism. This doctrine expressed and extolled the exalted position of ancient Babylonia as the disseminator of higher culture not just directly within the ancient Near East but indirectly to the world (Arnold and Weissberg 2002; Huffmon 1983; Larsen 1995).  It posited that the ancient Babylonians had developed an early astral understanding of the heavens and the earth which much later became the basis for the biblical texts especially at the beginning of the Book of Genesis.  Essentially, through Pan-Babylonianism, Babylon had usurped Jerusalem, Jews, and the Bible as the cultural lodestone for western civilization since the biblical religion derived from the Babylonian culture.  This followed on the heels of the effort to use non-Semitic Sumerians to undermine the Jewish contribution to civilization (see Cooper).

Methodist Review disseminated information about Pan-Babylonianism to Albright even before “Pan-Babylonianism” became a named school of thought in the 20th century. The idea of Babylonia’s prominent cultural position was not new.  In fact, Rogers in 1894 already had claimed in Methodist Review that the Egyptian culture had been borrowed from Babylonia so the idea that biblical patriarchs from Mesopotamia had been immersed in the same culture was not necessarily a farfetched one to Albright (Rogers 1894). Possibly this was one of the earlier articles by Rogers which Albright had read prior to the purchase of A History of Babylonia and Assyria at age 10 (see his letter to Rogers dated October 18, 1924, American Philosophical Society).  The January 1899 issue of Methodist Review addressed this subject in more detail.  The “Archaeology and Biblical Research” section was entitled “The Religion of Babylonia” and it began:

Babylonia, now generally regarded as the cradle of the human race, possessed, as the monuments of that land clearly show, a very high degree of civilization at least four thousand years before our era (Methodist Review 1899:135).

Its religion was highly developed and it was only natural that the Hebrews who were of Babylonian origin be familiar with it (Methodist Review 1899:136).  Shortly afterwards, this concept expressed by Rogers would become a fully developed methodology first enunciated in 1902 by his colleague Friedrich Delitzsch in what became the “Babel and Bible” controversy.

Before turning to those lectures, there was a discovery of note which changed the thinking of scholars in the field.  The discovery was that of Hammurabi’s Law Code in December, 1901-January, 1902, in the Persian city of Susa in modern Iran by the French.  Apparently the 7 1/2′ tall stela had been taken from Babylon as war booty millennia ago.  Methodist Review reported:

The discovery of this remarkable code is one of the greatest triumphs of archaeology and is of paramount interest to students of ancient history (Methodist Review 1903c:641).

 Methodist Review was enthused because Hammurabi, dated to about 2250 BCE at that time, The more extensive notice occurred in a book review on Babel and Bible by Friedrich Delitzsch in the January 1903 issue.

When Austen Henry Layard and George Smith were busily engaged in utilizing the newly discovered and deciphered Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions all England was deeply stirred by the confirmations of the Old Testament Scriptures which they produced.  From that day to this we have heard much of the importance of archaeology to the Christian apologist, and in quite recent times a battle royal has been fought over the question as to whether archaeology would be able to slay the dragon of Higher Criticism (Methodist Review 1903b:155).

Suddenly, what appeared was a new type of archaeology which minimized the value of the Old Testament instead of championing it!

Methodist Review was referring to the actual lectures of Delitzsch that were the basis of “The Babel and Bible Controversy.”  Considering how archaeology and Assyriology had been used as weapons of war on behalf of the historicity of the Bible, the journal characterized these lectures as “the revenge of Assyriology and Near Eastern archaeology on the Old Testament” (Larsen 1992:128).  Certainly, they became an important as part of the ongoing struggle between science and religion.  In hindsight, they also stand as budding expressions of a virulent anti-Semitism that soon would consume both Delitzsch and Germany.  How could the Assyrians be Semitic if they were such formidable warriors?  Wasn’t Jesus more likely to be the descendant of an Assyrian Aryan who settled in Israel/Judah than a Jew?  Pan-Babylonianism proved to be a powerful weapon in the war of the words that could be wielded effectively for the forces of light or of darkness.  Such military and cosmic vocabulary is exactly appropriate in the analysis of this phenomenon.

Albright would have learned from reading Methodist Review that the German emperor was present at that January 13, 1902 lecture at the Academy of Science in Berlin before the Deutsche Oriental-Gesellschaft, the German counterpart to the American Oriental Society.  Now this learned society was to be the stage for a new round of biblical confrontations.  The foundation memorandum published in the respected journal Orientalistische Literaturazeitung noted that the discoveries of the previous decades had revised the understanding of those original conditions … where we find the roots of our own culture, our time-reckoning and starlore, our system of weight and measure, as well as important parts of the religious concepts which are contained in the Old Testament (Larsen 1989:188).

Could those “original conditions” that were the roots of modern Germany have been Semitic … or Jewish?  Perhaps there was a way to undermine the Jewish and Semitic basis to both the Old and New Testaments.

In his first lecture of 1902 to the society, Delitzsch mocked this archaeological combat underway among what he called the “Bible-lands,” Germany, England, and the United States:

What is the reason for these efforts in remote, inhospitable, and dangerous lands?  What is the reason for this expensive rooting through rubble many thousands of years old, all the way down to the water table, where no gold or silver is to be found?  What is the reason for the competition among nations to secure excavation rights to these deserted mounds, and the more the better? (Delitzsch 1906:1)

The answer, of course, was the Bible.  The Bible was the cause of this vast waste of time, money and energy in god-forsaken terrain seeking bits and pieces of ancient rocks and clay.  So regardless of what Delitzsch had to say about the relation of the Bible to Mesopotamia, one readily detects the lack of enthusiasm for the entire venture in the first place.

A second lecture followed one year later on January 12, 1903.  By this time, Delitzsch was aware of the hostile reaction to his first lecture and upped the ante in his direct assault on the Hebrew Bible as a basis for authority for German Christians (Arnold and Weissberg 2002:455). Albright would have read the following perspective by Methodist Review about the book Delitzsch wrote from these lectures:

Our only regret about the book is that Delitzsch wrote it.  It gives far too much aid and comfort to the new school of wild criticism of which the talented Hugo Winckler is the chief exponent.  The whole aim of Winckler at present seems to be to prove the utter dependence of Israel upon Babylon (Methodist Review 1903:157).

Indeed it may be said that Winckler was the most bellicose and radical representative of the Pan-Babylonian school of thought (Carena 1989: 96-97, 111). Delitzsch also was criticized in a 1903 article in Methodist Review entitled “Some Diseases of Modern Biblical Criticism” (Konig).

If Albright had sought to pursue this area of interest on his own, he might have acquired one of three published versions the Delitzsch paper: Babel und Bibel, (Leipzig, 1902); Babel and Bible: Two Lectures Delivered before the Members of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in the Presence of the German Emperor, (New York, 1903); or Babel and Bible: Significance of Assyriological Research for Religion, (Chicago, 1906) where he would have read that Delitzsch equated Amraphel of Genesis 14 with Hammurabi (Delitzsch 1906:7, 62).  Although he did order books by mail especially from Germany (Albright 1948:164), he never provided a full list of what those books were.  Fortunately, the Southern Baptist Seminary maintains a record of the books it received from the Albright estate.  That listing includes a 1921 publication of Babel und Bibel but not the 1902 German or any English versions.[1] At this point it can not be determined when Albright first read Delitzsch’s lectures either in German or English but there should be no doubt that he was kept abreast on the ongoing controversy through Methodist Review.

In May 1903, the “Archaeology and Research” column in Methodist Review was fully devoted to the subject of “Babel and Bible.”  The opening lines were:

“Babel und Bibel” is the alliterative and captivating title of a small brochure from the pen of Friedrich Delitzsch, professor of Assyriology in the University of Berlin.  No publication of its size–only fifty-two pages, or not more than ten thousand words–has attracted in recent years such general attention as this address of Professor Delitzsch (Methodist Review 1903a:470).

The synthesis of Assyriology and archaeology presented to the general public engendered no hostile reaction;[2] the interpretations which followed did, as reported in Methodist Review in May, 1903:

First, Delitzsch declared that he did not believe in a personal revelation from God (Methodist Review 1903a: 471).

Second, Delitzsch declared that Old Testament stories were outgrowths of Babylonian mythology including the very name of the deity of Israel! (Methodist Review 1903a:472).

Third, Delitzsch declared that not only was the name of the Israelite deity derived from Babylonia but, so was the concept of monotheism! (Methodist Review 1903a:473).

One might have expected, based on this report, for Methodist Review to have condemned Pan-Babylonianism along with Higher Criticism as an arch-enemy of people of faith, with Delitzsch joining Wellhausen as a high priest of rationalism.

Methodist Review did poke fun at this new school of thought.  In September, 1905, the fourteen-year-old William would have read an article “The Masai and Higher Criticism” in the Archaeology column (Methodist Review 1905b). The column paralleled the Masai “of Semitic origin” and the biblical traditions based on an ethnographic study just published in 1904.  The conclusion:

Had Delitzsch or Winckler or Cheyne discovered these Masai traditions on Babylonian tablets they would have without a moment’s hesitation, declared that they had at last the original of the Hebrew Ten Commandments (Methodist Review 1905b:811).

The article parlayed this insight into the declaration that the Masai, Hebrew, and Babylonian traditions all derived from the shared time and space in Arabia “away back”:

The discovery of the Masai traditions, coming upon the heel of the Babel and Bible controversy and the arrogant deductions of Winckler regarding the Hebrews and their traditions, has given a severe shock to the arbitrary conclusions of the literary-historical school of criticism which had built so extensively upon a philological basis (Methodist Review 1905b: 812).

The column ended with a ringing endorsement of the Hebrews for being the people who survived the mighty empires of the ancient world and who “gave the world the corner stone of all religion, monotheism” (Methodist Review 1905b:813).

Delitzsch had been characterized as one “perfectly willing to abandon corrupted scriptures, and especially the Old Testament, as a means to complete the Reformation” (Marchand 1996, 225). Yet despite the pronouncements of this future spokesperson for anti-Semitism, American Protestants found certain advantages to the Pan-Babylonian approach.  After all,

God could and did use evil intentions of human warriors to accomplish his own benevolent purposes.  This doctrine of God’s prevailing power and purpose was traditionally called the doctrine of providence.  Clergymen of the period believed and preached it with a passion.  They interpreted world history in light of it (Smylie 1959: 205).

Thus Methodist Review could use Pan-Babylonianism without embracing the more extremist ideas of the Babel and Bible school.  It accepted as reasonable the proposal that there would be continuities, as well as significant differences, between polytheistic pagan Babylonia and monotheistic biblical Israel.  The May, 1905 column reported in “Delitzsch’s Last Lecture,” that the latter had conducted himself in a responsible manner in his February 1905 presentation to the German Oriental Society in contrast to his paper three years earlier (Methodist Review 1905a: 483).   Nonetheless, in the January, 1906 issue, the full column was devoted to the status of the war between Babel and Bible (Methodist Review 1906). But of particular importance, the conflict was framed in terms of the Higher Criticism debate:

There was, however, no leader of national importance to throw down the gauntlet, to challenge the radical critics, apparently so firmly entrenched behind the “scientific” breastworks of historical theology.

But unexpectedly and without a moment’s warning the lightning struck.  The immediate occasion was that famous lecture by Professor Delitzsch before the German emperor and other celebrities (Methodist Review 1906:139).

That speech sparked a public outcry which initiated a public examination of the accepted “advanced thinking” of the biblical critics… and revealed the yawning gap between professor and pastor in Germany (Methodist Review 1906: 140). Methodist Review provided a university-by-university breakdown of the students in Germany in the summer semester of 1903 divided into the students taking classes with traditional versus Higher Criticism professors.  The analysis revealed that the tide had turned against radical critics (Methodist Review 1906, 142). The concluding statement of hope easily could have been written by the post-World War II Albright school as well:

It stands to reason that if the majority of students are brought under the influence of conservative teachers, and that by their own will, the results will be favorable to more evangelical and spiritual work in their churches after they have become pastors (Methodist Review 1906: 143).

So the fourteen-year-old William would have read about how Delitzsch inadvertently was helping reverse what the destructive forces of Higher Criticism had achieved: how could the first millennium BCE evolutionary model of Wellhausen be correct if two to three millennia earlier there had been highly advanced cultures of great sophistication and learning in the ancient Near East? (Albright 1948)

One may see in this debate over Babylonia, the first attempt to create a secular synthesis that encompassed Egypt to Elam and the many millennia of the pre-Greco-Roman world: that unity would have been appealing to William in the library of his parents constructing imaginary worlds in his mind (Cross 1973:4).  Regardless of whether Pan-Babylonianism was right or not, it represented the attempt by an individual to bring order to this newly revealed ancient universe, precisely as Albright himself would do in From the Stone Age to Christianity in 1940.  It was the effort and not the merit of the claim which warrants attention.

A reminder of the importance of the comparative approach in the study of religion to Albright (Freedman 1989:34-35) occurred in the September, 1912 Methodist Review, the year before he left for Hopkins.  Another Rogers book was reviewed, this one entitled Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament.  Comparative study was praised not condemned as long as it was done properly the way Rogers had in this new book published by The Methodist Concern:

Nothing seems to have escaped his keen vision.  The author unquestionably has furnished the most complete collection of cuneiform literature ever brought together in any language for the purpose of illustrating the Old Testament ….  Those who know The [sic] History of Babylonia and Assyria, and the Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, by the same author, know something of the thoroughness and skill with which Professor Rogers handles the material which his superior scholarship places at his command ….  It should have, and without doubt will have, a prominent place in the libraries of all earnest Bible students ….(Methodist Review 1912:834-835)

Both the Gilgamesh flood story and Abraham in the time of Hammurabi are mentioned.  So even before Albright matriculated at The Johns Hopkins University, Albright would have been well aware from Methodist Review of the positive value of comparative study and the historicity of Abraham in the time of Hammurabi.[3]

As this review and the previous blog show, Methodism is the unsung and not so invisible hand helping to mold the mind of the person who one day would stand on the pinnacle of biblical archaeology in America.

 

References

  1. William Foxwell Albright. Pp. 156-181 in American Spiritual Autobiographies, ed. Louis Finkelstein. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Arnold, B. T. and Weisberg, D. 2002.  A Centennial Review of Friedrich Delitzsch’s ‘Babel und Bibel’ Lectures. Journal of Biblical Literature 121:441- 457.

Carena, O. 1989.  History of the Near Eastern Historiography and Its Problems, 1852-1945, Neukirchen: AOAT.

Cooper, J. 1991. Posing the Sumerian Question: Race and Scholarship in the Early History of Assyriology.  Aula Orientalis 9:47.66.

Cross, F. M. 1973. W. F. Albright’s View of Biblical Archaeology and its Methodology. Biblical Archaeologist 36:2-5.

Delitzsch, F. 1906. Babel and Bible: Significance of Assyriological Research for Religion. Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company.

Freedman, D. N. 1989. W.F. Albright as an Historian. Pp. 33-43 in The Scholarship ofWilliam Foxwell Albright: An Appraisal, ed. Gus W. Van Beek. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

Huffmon, H. B. 1983. Babel und Bibel: The Encounter Between Babylon and the Bible. Pp. 125-34 in Background for the Bible, ed. M. P. O’Connor and D. N. Freedman. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.

Konig, E. 1903. Some Diseases of Modern Biblical Criticism. Methodist Review 85 (Fifth Series 19):701-716.

Larsen, M. T.
1989 Orientalism and the Ancient Near East. Pp. 181-202 in Humanities Between Art and Science: Intellectual Developments 1880-1914, ed. Mogens Trolle Larsen and Michael Harbsmeier. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.
1992 Seeing Mesopotamia. 107-131 in The Construction of the Ancient Near East, ed. Ann C. Gunter. Culture and History 11.
1995 The ‘Babel/Bible’ Controversy and Its Aftermath. Pp. 95-103 in vol.1 of Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Marchand, S. L. 1996. Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Methodist Review
1899. The Religion of Babylonia. 81 (Fifth Series 15):135-138.
1903a. Babel and Bibel. 85 (Fifth Series 19):470-473.
1903b. Book review of Babel and Bible. 85 (Fifth Series 19):155.
1903c. The Code of Hammurabi. 85 (Fifth Series 19):641-644.
1905a. Delitzsch’s Last Lecture. 87 (Fifth Series 21):483.
1905b. The Masai and Higher Criticism. 87 (Fifth Series 21):810-813.
1906. Theological Reaction in Germany. 88 (Fifth Series 22):139-143.
1910. Abraham. 92 (Fifth Series 26):480.
1912. Book review of Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament by Robert William Rogers. 94 (Fifth Series 28):831-835.

Rogers, R. W. 1894. The Origins of Egyptian Culture. Methodist Review 76 (Fifth Series 10):51-63.

Smylie, J. E. 1959. Protestant Clergymen and America’s World Role, 1865-1900: A Study of Christianity, Nationality, and  International Relations. Ph.D. diss., Princeton University.

[1] A copy of Babel und Bibel, published 1903, was part of the Albright book collection donated to Southern Baptist Seminary but the date of Albright’s acquisition is unknown. Hermann Gunkel’s response published in 1904 also was in the donation (see Gunkel 1904), but the date of acquisition by Albright also is unknown. Interestingly, the collection does include Israel und Babylonien: Der Einfluss Babyloniens auf die israelite Religion by Hermann Gunkel which was published in 1903.  Of course, Albright could have acquired this book at a much later date.  Albright greatly preferred the scholarship of Gunkel to that of Wellhausen as was made abundantly clear in Albright’s 1964 introduction to a reprint of Gunkel’s The Legends of Genesis where Albright writes: “Wellhausen proves to have been wrong almost throughout, whereas Gunkel was right much of the time” [“Introduction” in The Legends of Genesis: The Biblical Saga and History, Hermann Gunkel, (New York, 1964), p.  ix.

[2] In a letter dated July 16, 1903, Paul Haupt, Albright’s future teacher, wrote to A. H. Sayce, a strong advocate of the historicity of the story of Genesis 14, that: “So far as Assyriology is concerned, what he [Delitzsch] has said is merely a repetition of we all have been saying for many years …” (John Hopkins University Archives, Paul Haupt).

[3] The Sunday School Times article of January 22, 1910 by Prof. Ungnad entitled “Archaeology’s Vindication of Father Abraham” was cited in “Abraham,” Methodist Review 1910

The ASOR Family Tree: William Foxwell Albright

July 16, 2024
by Peter Feinman

The ASOR Family Tree: William Foxwell Albright

An Elaboration on “Dawn and Descent: Social Network Analysis and the ASOR Family Trees”

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). The 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.” Instead the focus is on German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch (122).

They identify five of the eight founding members of the ASOR executive committee has having a connection to Delitzsch.

Morris Jastrow Jr., University of Pennsylvania and student of Delitzsch
James Montgomery, University of Pennsylvania and student of Hermann Hilprect a student of Delizsch and later a professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Albert C. Clay, Yale, also a student of Hilprecht
George A. Barton, Bryn Mawr College, another Hilprecht student
Cyrus Adler, The Johns Hopkins University, student of Paul Haupt a student of Delitzsch and later a professor at Johns Hopkins and teacher of Albright.

Thus Albright becomes a grandson of Delitzsch with many cousins before becoming a founder in his own right. The authors note that the “three generation ‘Delitzsch to Haupt to Albright’ trajectory is a good example for demonstrating that one cannot assume students share the same opinions or worldviews as their mentor” (129).

In this series of blogs, I wish to address four issues:

1. the true patriarch of Albright’s biblical scholarship
2. the Delitzsch/Albright relationship
3. why Albright did not attend the University of Pennsylvania
4. the Haupt/Foxwell Albright relationship.

The examination of these issues supplements the work in the NEA article.

THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN

Albright traced the origin of his journey into biblical scholarship to a childhood incident at age 10 when he was first exposed to the world of archaeology in the library of his Methodist missionary parents in Chile.  The incident was so important that his biographers asked on page 1 of their biography in 1975:

What forces had shaped his mind up to the age of ten, that he should so covet, and then devour and absorb, a book on ancient history?[1]

The goal in this analysis is to answer that question.  In so doing, it is necessary to explore the meaning of Methodism to the child at this precise time.  Certainly one can attribute the incident at age 10 to chance, coincidence, or providence, a more traditional Methodist term.  However, it is possible to identify more specific actions and events which contributed to the reading of this book which launched him on the career which would define his life.  In other words, instead of using the story Albright told about his childhood to begin the attempt to understand him, one should see it as a conclusion to his early childhood or a focal point to the life he subsequently would lead. By so doing, it is possible to place the larger story of Albright’s life within context and thus more fully answer the question posed by his biographers.

The story of this pivotal childhood event first appeared in print as part of an autobiographical essay published in 1948.  As the adult Albright recalled, he was a child abroad in a hostile environment both as a “gringo” (American) and a “canuto” (Protestant) and as a result “never felt secure”.[2]  Albright wrote of “the unknown terrors in the street” where “[i]nsults were frequently interspersed with stones” and of his minimal contact with other children in “play.”[3]  Instead, this nearsighted child with a metal brace on his left hand withdrew to his own father’s library and the “solitary games of his own contrivance.”[4] As he later put it, he did not “have a taste for picnics and outings enjoyed by other children.”[5] Albright student and colleague, George Ernest Wright later repeated Albright’s self-references of being a canuto, a member of a minority in a hostile environment enduring spoken insults and thrown stones.[6] In this description of Albright’s early life, one may draw two conclusions: (1) there were physical dangers to his life as the child of Methodist missionaries (in Catholic Chile); (2) the library was a place of refuge and solace.

Writing further in his autobiographical essay in 1948 about his childhood over 50 years earlier, Albright said of himself in the third person:

From the age of six he spent much of his time constructing imaginary worlds in his mind, and telling himself interminable tales of the wars and adventures of their heroes, covering centuries of time and thousand of miles in space, thus unconsciously cultivating a pronounced bend toward historical synthesis.[7]

These musings have the ring of verisimilitude: young boys do do exactly that type of thing usually in play with other children and perhaps not quite on so large a scale.  The goal of “historical synthesis” is the vocabulary of the adult Albright reflecting on his childhood being father to the man.  Albright saw here continuity in his own life and it is that proclaimed continuity which makes this story so important.

Albright would subsequently elaborate on this description in 1956:

Beginning at about the age of 7 [versus age 6][8] I constructed immense imaginary worlds, each of them having centuries of history which I invented.  Each of these worlds had its own geography, rivers, seaports, cities, lakes, mountains, covering thousands of miles.  And there were rich merchants, beggars, interminable wars and heroes of epic proportions.  I suppose my love of the romantic and wonderful was inspired by Tennyson and by Becquer, a Spanish romantic author whom I read in the original at that time.[9]

Certainly, one does not doubt that Albright did, in fact, read the books of these authors in childhood, although not necessarily at age seven.  Furthermore, these words better reflect what one would expect from John Ronald Reul Tolkien of Lord of the Rings fame than from the founder of the science of biblical archaeology.  Still, they reveal a child eager to enter the world of imagination even as his parents attempted to shield the child from the prevailing popular cultural influences.

As Albright further recalled in his autobiographical essay, at age eight he became intensely interested in archaeology and biblical antiquities.[10] No explanation is provided of why such an interest in archaeology clicked in his mind.  Given the occupation of his parents as well as their own library, the interest in the Bible is understandable; exactly how archaeology manifested itself into his consciousness is not.  Obviously, though, it did have an impact.  Albright described how two years later (in 1901) he ran errands for his parents until he had saved $5 which he was free to spend as he saw fit: on an archaeology book by Robert W. Rogers.[11] As Albright remembered this moment, “[t]hereafter his happiest hours were spent in reading and rereading this work, which was fortunately written in beautiful English by a well-trained and accurate scholar.”[12] The reading of this book in the library of his father as a ten-year old child was the event which caused him to become the adult scholar he became…or so the story goes.

As to the book in question, it is appropriate here to provide some background information about it.  In some ways, the two-volume book, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, was misnamed.  The Prolegomena or Book I (which covered most but not all of Volume I), was really about the history of the discovery of the history of ancient Babylonia and Assyria.  This book served as the latest of a series of academic books bringing the story of discoveries up-to-date as additional discoveries continually were made.  Given the events in archaeology at the time such as the discovery of Hammurabi’s Law Code in 1900/1901, it was a story requiring almost constant revision. In the meantime, for 348 pages, Albright in the library of his father “telling himself interminable tales of the wars and adventures of their heroes” experienced the thrill of intrepid explorers and brilliant scholars bravely venturing forth into the fierce unknown to wrest hidden knowledge from the forgotten past.  In this book, one wasn’t simply informed of the story of cuneiform, one could follow step by step as cuneiform was found, copied, and deciphered by the heroic giants of the just ended 19th century.  In his description of one such individual, Rogers provided a blueprint for the path Albright was to follow as a philologist in his own right:

It were [sic] difficult, if not impossible, to define the qualities of mind which must inhere in the decipher of a forgotten language.  He is not necessarily a great scholar, though great scholars have been successful deciphers.  He may know but little of the languages that are cognate with the one whose secrets he is trying to unravel.  He may indeed know nothing of them, as has several times been the case.  But patience, the persistence, the power of combination, the divine gift of insight, the historical sense, the feeling for archaeological indications, these must be present, and all were present in the extraordinary man who now attacked the problem that had baffled so many.[13]

These were the qualities Rogers’s hero decipher must possess.

Certainly in the autobiographical essay of Albright, the reading of this book looms large as a defining one of his childhood.  Certainly also there is no reason to doubt the historicity of the event: Albright as a child saved money and spent his hard-earned funds on this archaeology book which had a profound effect on him for the rest of his life.  Still, for the historian interested in the origins of biblical archaeology, one might inquire further into this story.  One might delve into the issue of what had happened at age 8 and how the child even became aware of the existence of the book in the first place … or why he selected it for his first major purchase in life. One wonders how many other ten year olds beside Albright actually read this book by Rogers around Christmas, 1901. One might also inquire about the full extent of the impact it had on his life.

METHODIST REVIEW

So how then did the child in Chile learn about the Rogers book published in the United States?  The way in which Albright actually was introduced into the field of biblical archaeology appears to have been through Methodist Review, a magazine the Methodist missionary family received while away in Chile and after returning to America.[14]  This publication of the Methodist Church was a semi-prerequisite for being a minister in good-standing with the Church.  The Upper Iowa Conference, the local Methodist organizational unit Wilbur Albright belonged to before being reassigned due to his missionary work overseas, strongly recommended its purchase to its members at the annual conferences of 1889 which Wilbur attended and in 1890 just after the Albrights had left Iowa for Chile.[15] Albright stated that he read this journal with avid interest between 1897 and 1909[16] or until he began college.[17]

Methodist Review provided the connection between William Foxwell Albright and biblical archaeology as it existed in the late 1890s and early 1900s.  Without this journal, he would not have become aware of the field until later in life and back in Iowa.  This is not to claim that he would not still have become the scholar he became, only that the journey might have started later.  It is through this journal that one can document the origins of his interest in both Assyriology and biblical archaeology.  Now not only did he know the stories of Goliath and Sennacherib, he knew about the people who were excavating them from centuries of burial and revealing their truths to the light of day.

 The magazine itself was undergoing changes during the 1890s.  The editor had died in 1892 after leading an effort against agnosticism, Old Testament criticism, rationalism and upheavals in the path of Christian culture and progress.[18] When the president of Methodist Drew Theological Seminary turned down the position, it was offered to Rev. William Kelly in 1893.[19]

The following January, Kelley launched a separate department as it was called or recurring section on “Archaeology and Biblical Research.” He presumably wrote these columns or they were written with his guidance and approval (they are unsigned). The excitement generated by such discoveries as the Amarna Letters with their biblical implications and perhaps the Ben Hur phenomenon, a book written by Methodist Lew Wallace, may have contributed to this decision.

The purpose of this new column in Methodist Review resonated with the values of biblical archaeology later to be expressed by Albright.

Our chief reasons for introducing a department of biblical research and archaeology into the Review are an intense love of the Bible and a strong belief in its divine power.[20]

Indeed, the 1894 definition of the scope of biblical archaeology:

We shall hail with joy any light which Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria, or any land may throw upon Old Testament chronology and history.  We shall welcome all the light which the study of comparative religions may furnish us regarding the origin of religion and the growth of revelation,[21]

anticipated the words Albright himself used in 1966:

Biblical archaeology is a much wider term than Palestinian archaeology, though Palestine itself is of course central, and is rightly regarded as peculiarly the land of the Bible.  But Biblical archaeology covers all the lands mentioned in the Bible, and thus is coextensive with the cradle of civilization.  This region extends from western Mediterranean to India, and from southern Russia to Ethiopia and the Indian Ocean.  Excavations in every part of this extensive area throw some light, directly or indirectly on the Bible.[22]

So the sciences of archaeology and comparative religions were the light to the revealed truth which should be welcomed: Albright couldn’t have said it any better himself and these words practically were a blueprint for Albright’s academic life.

There was, however, a problem: Higher Criticism.  The remainder of the article in the first issue of the column was devoted to “The Burning Question” of Higher Criticism with Julius Wellhausen being mentioned occasionally.[23]  Higher Criticism refers to the attempt to discover the source documents which allegedly were compiled to create the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. Wellhausen was its high priest, a term chosen deliberately.  Higher Criticism would emerge as a recurring theme in the publication of this normally four-page department in Methodist Review.

For young William to follow in his father’s footsteps as a missionary would have been to fight an old war while ignoring the new one.  Higher Criticism assaulted the very basis of the Methodist religion by denying the historical validity of the text on which the religion was based.  Why be either Methodist or Baptist if Jesus quoted from a book that was simply human written?  Why be either a Protestant or a Catholic if David was not an historical figure?  Why be a Christian if God was not involved in human history as attested in scripture?  While it is unlikely that the child asked these questions in precisely these terms, the precocious youth certainly recognized that the stakes were high in the showdown between destructive Higher Criticism and reverent Methodism. To succeed as a warrior of light in holding religion and science together, a lifelong ambition for which he was recognized,[24] he needed to master the weapons suitable for that war; such weapons were not those of the great Brush College warriors who had made Methodism the largest religion in America.[25]

Albright was only following the advice given by Rogers anyway.  In 1909, while Albright still was reading Methodist Review, Rogers wrote about the ongoing war waged against Wellhausen:

I am jealous of the reputation of our Methodist journals…. I take no exception to the writer’s expression of the hope that Wellhausenism is waning….  [But] Wellhausenism seems to me to be a pretty vigorous theory still.  If we wish to be rid of it, I fancy that we shall have to fight it with weapons forged directly out of its own armory.[26]

It is in this context that the purchase of the book by Rogers needs to be understood as well as Albright’s own studies at Johns Hopkins.

THE BOOK

In 1900 a series of ads appeared in Methodist Review for a new book by Robert W. Rogers. The price actually was $5 for the two-volume book so Albright in 1948 was correct in this memory. The ad stated:

This new history of Babylonia and Assyria contains in Book I, Prolegomena, the most elaborate account ever written of all the explorations and excavations in Assyria and Babylonia as well as the history of the decipherment of the inscriptions.  It is untechnical and popular in style, and is abundantly illustrated with copies of inscriptions, showing the processes of decipherment.  Book II gives the history of Babylonia from 4500 B.C. [long before 4004 BCE!] to the period of Assyrian domination, and Book III the history of Assyrian to the fall of Nineveh.  Book IV contains the history of the great Chaldean empire to the fall of Babylon.

All histories of Babylon and Assyria published prior to 1880 are hopelessly antiquated by the archaeological discoveries of the great expeditions to the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates.  Students of ancient oriental history in general, and of the history of Israel in particular, have longed desired a new history of the Babylonians and Assyrians which should be consistently based on original sources, and yet so written as to be intelligible and interesting to men who are not specially trained in the subject.  It is confidently believed that this great gap in modern historical literature is filled by this new history.[27]

A testimonial by Archibald Sayce in the ad saluted the book as a “veritable romance” of the history of the decipherment of inscriptions. One should not ignore the romance factor in the appeal of archaeology not only to men but to male and female children as well.

If this ad didn’t grab Albright’s attention, then two issues in 1901 were likely to have been the spur for him to save money to buy the newly published book.  The opening line of the January, 1901 “Notes and Discussions” reads:

A book of extraordinary interest, just issued by our Book Concern, in two volumes, octavo, is A History of Babylonia and Assyria, by Professor R.W. Rogers, of [Methodist] Drew Theological Seminary.  A full notice will appear in our pages in due time.[28]

So not only did Methodist Review report the publication of the book, it blessed the event as “our” book since it was published by the Methodists. Since the publisher in the ad and in the book is Eaton and Mains and not the Methodist Book Concern, the connection to Methodism may be overlooked or not realized.[29] The emphasis on the role of this book in the Albright mythology generally obscures the Methodist universe which created it, published it, blessed it, and informed Albright of it.

The subsequent book review characterized the Rogers’ book as fourth in a chain of transmission on the history of Assyria and Babylonia whereby each scholar expanded the synthesis as more and more information became available on the subject.[30]  The bringing together of the ancient chronological data is especially praised as an “unprecedented achievement” … and Rogers writes well, too! according to the review,[31] words similar to Albright’s characterization of it as “written in beautiful English by a well-trained and accurate scholar” previously noted.

This inquiry into the process whereby young William became aware of A History of Babylonia and Assyria reveals that it was part of the manner in which the Methodist world was being defined to him through Methodist Review.  On one level, the book simply furnished him with still more scripts for his dramas of stone wars on the patio of his mother or in the library of his father. On another level, the formal discipline of biblical archaeology may be construed as having emerged out of these battlelines textually revealed to him as a child in Methodist Review and the Rogers book.  Perhaps one day, Albright would cease fighting imaginary battles in the library of his father and fight real battles from the library of academia instead.[32]

In the next blog the pre-academic Albright/Delitzsch connection will be explored.

 

NOTES

[1] Leona Glidden Running and David Noel Freedman, William Foxwell Albright: A 20th Century Genius, (New York: The Two Continents Publishing Group, Morgan Press, 1975), reprinted Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1991), 1.

[2] William Foxwell Albright, “William Foxwell Albright,” in American Spiritual Biographies, ed. Louis Finkelstein, (New York: Harper and Brothers 1948), 158.

[3] Albright 1948:158.

[4] Albright 1948:159.

[5] Baltimore Sun, September 16, 1956, Section A.

[6] George Ernest Wright,  “The Phenomenon of American Archaeology in the Near East,” in Near Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Nelson Glueck, ed. James A. Sanders, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970),  23.  According to a footnote, Wright derived his information on Albright both from the latter’s 1948 autobiographical essay and from private conversations with him (39n.42).

[7] Albright 1948:159.

[8] Albright 1948:159.

[9] Baltimore Sun, September 16, 1956, Section A.

[10] Albright 1948:159.

[11] Albright 1948:159.

[12] Albright 1948:159.

[13] Robert W. Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1900), I:46.

[14] Burke O. Long, Planting and Reaping Albright: Politics, Ideology, and Interpreting the Bible, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 124.

[15] Minutes of the Upper Iowa Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, (1889) 119, 140; Minutes (1890) 200, 213.

[16] . Long 124, citing a 1947 letter by Albright.

[17] Based on a letter dated October 18, 1924, to Rogers from Albright (located in the uncatalogued Albright material at the American Philosophical Society), the latter not only had read his book, but had read articles by him both before and after the purchase as well as in his Sunday School class.  The “before” readings suggest that Albright did read the back issues of Methodist Review published before 1897, since the earlier articles of Rogers are from 1894 and 1895. The post-1901 article in Methodist Review is from 1909. Rogers wrote for the Sunday School Times from 1901 to 1906.

[18] James Mudge, “Seventy-five Years of the ‘Methodist Review,'” Methodist Review 10 [Fifth Series 76] 1894), 530-532.

[19] Mudge 533.

[20] The Hittites,” Methodist Review 76 [Fifth Series 10] (1894) 135.

[21] “The Hittites,”135-136.

[22] William Foxwell Albright, New Horizons in Biblical Research, (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 1.

[23] “The Hittites,” 136-138.

[24] At a symposium organized by Freedman in 1966 and with Albright present, Wright opined: “Palestinian archaeology is pursued by those in this country who for the most part are teachers of Bible in theological seminaries … and in the religion departments of our colleges and universities.  This holding together of Bible and archaeology is part of the interest and influence of W.F. Albright in this country” [George Ernest Wright, “Biblical Archaeology Today,” in New Directions in Biblical Archaeology, eds. David Noel Freedman and Jonas Greenfield, (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1969,) 160].

[25] For an example of the heroic Brush College warrior see the novel Edward Eggleston, The Circuit Rider: A Tale of the Heroic Age, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1878) written by a former circuit rider.  For an account by one of the most famous circuit riders of his experiences see James B. Finley, Autobiography of Rev. James B. Finley or Pioneer Life in the West, ed. W. P. Strickland, (Cincinnati: Methodist Book Concern, 1858).  One can’t help but notice that Albright’s father Wilbur Finley Albright, born 1859, and William’s younger brother Finley both may have been named after this wilderness warrior hero.

[26] Robert W. Rogers, “Wellhausenism on the Wane,” Methodist Review 91 [Fifth Series 25] (1909) 294.

[27] This ad was taken from Methodist Review 83 [Fifth Series 17] (1901) no page number.

[28] “Notes and Discussions,” Methodist Review 83 [Fifth Series 17] (1901) 113.

[29] The Methodist Book Concern itself was the subject of an article in the January, 1900, Methodist Review, celebrating eleven decades of publication in America as the arm of the Methodist denomination as the article concluded: “In our twentieth century Church the Book Concern should have a mission little less sacred in our thought than was that of the ark of God in the camp of ancient Israel” (George P. Mains, “Reviews and Views of the Methodist Book Concern, Methodist Review  82 [Fifth Series 16] (1900) 34-4949).  The author was from the publisher who took over the publication of the Rogers book.

[30] “Book Notices – A History of Babylonia and Assyria,” Methodist Review 83 [Fifth Series 17] (1901) 505-506.

[31] . “Book Notices,” 507.

[32] One should note that simultaneously with the articles champion various warriors of light against Wellhausen, there also appeared a slew of articles on Tennyson, the romantic writer whom Albright also read in childhood (see James Kenyon, “Tennyson in New Aspects,” Methodist Review 80 {Fifth Series 14] (1898) 434-453;  Robert Ingraham, “Carlyle, Tennyson, and Browning on the Future,” Methodist Review 81 [Fifth Series 15] (1899) 360-367; James Mudge, “Tennyson and His Teachings,” Methodist Review 81 [Fifth Series 15] (1899) 874-887; G. W. Baines, “The Faith of Tennyson,” Methodist Review 82 [Fifth Series 16] (1900) 582-591; Book review of The Mind of Tennyson by E. Hershey Sneath, Methodist Review 82 [Fifth Series 16] (1900) 833-835; Edwin Mims, “Mysticism in Tennyson,” Methodist Review 83 [Fifth Series 17] (1901) 62-71.