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William Foxell Albright

Albright Shrugged: The Haupt/Albright Relationship

October 21, 2024
by Peter Feinman

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.

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