The two years 1177 BCE and 1676 CE would appear to have nothing in common. The impetus for their juxtaposition is the article “The Rising of the Indians”; or, The Native American Revolution of (16)’76” by Margaret Ellen Newell in William and Mary Quarterly 80 2023:287-324. While reading the article, I discovered that many of her observations also applied to Biblical studies even though the article is strictly about American history.
Here are some of the information that spurred me to see a connection.
On the subject of the “ill newes of the dayly Devastations made by the Indians,” Governor Jonathan Atkins of Barbados feared for the future of the empire. In April 1676, he penned a letter not just about events in New York and Virginia but New Spain and the Caribbean as well. He and others saw these Indian insurrections as a linked rather than as separate events. Collectively they threatened the empire. Even more so if Africans joined with the Indians. When the colonial leaders met, they expressed a real fear that they might be pushed out of the Americas.
Newell observes that European observers failed to perceive most of what went on in Indigenous societies and networks.
The conceptual failure was not theirs, then, but ours: scholars have not highlighted the simultaneity of Native American risings across the Western Hemisphere (288).
Instead of seeing the big picture the focus has been on Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and New England. Whereas the Haudenosaunee failed to expel the French, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was “the greatest and most successful rebellion of its sort in North American history” (289).
Newell observes:
…unspoken assumptions about the futility of Indigenous resistance to settler colonialism haunt the historiography of eastern North America and the Caribbean, distorting the contingency of colonialism that Atkins felt so viscerally (289).
Hence Newell’s reference to the concept of the Native American Revolution of 1676.
This model “challenges the current literature’s chronological and geographic boundaries” (290). So whereas a given conflict might be deemed a failure, a broad lens risks homogenizing individual events. The “’creeping genocide’” of colonization created a common set of challenges (291). Instead we should see the “conscious creation of multiethnic, multinational, and even multiracial coalitions and communities that became characteristic of many Native nations in this period” (292).
Paradigms have changed. Research on Spanish colonization challenges the concept of conquest. Instead there is failure outside Indigenous urban areas. There was constant resistance and containment (293). A “broader lens reveals that Native Americans responded to each other’s resistance movements in a dynamic fashion. The Pueblo uprising in 1680 and the1676 insurrections had an earlier history leading to those events. And, of course, there was always the possibility of slave revolts as well.
After surveying the interrelated actions of 1676, Ewell declares:
The concept of a Native Revolution of 1676 helps us reframe European-Native American relations and the colonization project in important ways (316).
She then describes these changes. Included are the longterm alliances among multiple groups and the creation of the more formal Wabanaki Confederacy in New England. Such group entities helped renegotiate the boundaries between the various Indian nations and the colonizers. These pan-Indian, multiethnic, and multiracial configurations encompassed huge swaths of land during the late 1600s and early 1700s. Ewell calls this development among the most ignored and thus most in need of further research (322). She challenges scholars to reframe, redevelop, and rewrite the histories based on the concept of the Native Revolution of 1676.
Something similar happened in the land of Canaan. Think of the coalition against Thutmose III. Or the multiple coalitions against Shalmaneser III. What about in-between? Did the Canaanite tribes organize against Egyptian imperialism the same way New England tribes organized against Europeans or the Haudenosaunee did in New York? In the past, I have referred to a NATO alliance led by Israel against Egyptian imperialism in 1177 BCE but the phrase Canaanite Confederacy works just as well. This is not an amphictyony (or conquest) but a coming together on multiple Canaanite tribes with a shared goal of freeing the land of Egyptian imperialism. The moment is remembered in the original Song of Deborah where Ramses III-se-se-Sisera is smited by a wilderness female, a complete reversal of Egyptian royal iconography and the era of Thutmose III is brought to an end. In the Song we have a primary source record that can be analyzed the same way the reliefs of Ramses III are.
SILOS
Some of these concerns expressed by Newell were echoed in a letter to Perspectives on History published by the American Historical Association.
With many important exceptions, we as a discipline have fallen in love with too many small, specialized topics. We write too much for each other, compounding this frequently with theoretical constructs that largely repel the uninitiated. With important exceptions, we hew too fiercely not only to single-region frameworks but to rather rigid periodization….
And we need more efforts… too reach out to that elusive beast, the general reading or podcast-consuming public (Stearns 4).
A similar problem has been detected in African studies:
…historians have backed themselves into their respective cul-de-sacs…Given the nature of disciplinary specialization it is not always possible for scholars to cross the national and imperial boundaries that from historical studies…African history is defined by the presence or absence of Europeans (Child 326,328,329)
Leonard-Fleckman warns us:
We cannot advance methodologically if we do not break out of the siloed discussions that we so often have, discussions often organized around the geographical regions where we live and work, the spaces in which we are trained, and/or the narrowness of our interests and areas of specialization (309).
Louise Hitchcock writes about Eric Cline working across multiple regions.
Most Aegean scholars have not studied the history and archaeology of Egypt, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, or Cyrus and the Levant…The message sent to graduate students is that they need to absorb the vast amount of data in the classical world to get a job… (200).
She advocates more collaborative efforts such as a panel at an international conference followed by a handbook. Cline concludes his brief Rejoinder with:
But I am also helpful that there will indeed be additional collaborative research building within the scholarly community, perhaps along the lines of the solid and interesting recommendations made by Louise Hitchcock (204).
In his abstract for the 2024 ASOR conference, Garfinkle writes:
The Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History was created in part to challenge the traditional cultural, geographical, and chronological barriers that divide the study of the ancient world into a series of regional specializations that often discourage broader, and more interdisciplinary conversations.
As it turns, there is an individual who defined Biblical Archaeology in such a way as to eliminate all geographical and chronological silos, William Foxwell Albright. In the Whidden Lectures for 1961 published in 1966, he said:
Biblical archaeology covers all the lands mentioned in the Bible, and is thus co-extensive 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 (1966b: 1).
In the Rockwell Lectures in January 1962, also published in 1966, he said:
The term “biblical archaeology” may be restricted to Palestine, or it may be extended to include anything that illustrates the Bible, however superficially. Accordingly, I shall use the term “biblical archaeology” to refer to all Bible Lands—from India to Spain, and from southern Russia to South Arabia—and to the whole history of those lands from about 10,000 B.C., or even earlier, to the present time (1966a: 13).
Today, it would be difficult for any individual to grasp the knowledge in all the chronological and geographical areas identified by Albright. Also there are new technologies for extracting information from the past. The sessions at ASOR and SBL reflect the narrowing of focus. One cannot attend all the sessions offered. One cannot read all the journals which are published. One cannot read all the books which are published. The challenge is much greater now and this excludes related organizations like AAA, AIA, and ARCE. I confess I don’t know what can be done to address these conditions or how to bring such understandings to teachers and the general public.
There will be an education outreach roundtable during lunch at ASOR. Stop by if you have something to contribute.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albright, William Foxwell, Archaeology,Historical Analogy, and Early Biblical Tradition (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1966a).
Albright, William Foxwell, New Horizons in Biblical Research (London: Oxford University Press, 1966b).
Child, Mott D., “The Roots and Routes of African Religious Beliefs in the Atlantic World,” William and Mary Quarterly 80 2023:325-351.
Cline, Eric, “Rejoinder: A Brief Response,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 10 2022:203-204.
Garfinkle, Steven, “So, What if the Ancient World Had No Boundaries? Thinking about and Publishing for an Antiquity without Borders,” ASOR 2024 abstract.
Hitchcock, Louise, “There Really Are 50 Eskimo Words for ‘Snow’”: 1177, Big Data and the Perfect Storm of Collapse,” Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 10 2022:200-203.
Leonard-Fleckman, Mahri, “Histories of Ancient Israel: Present State and Future Potential – A Review of Recent Works by Christian Frevel and Bernd Schipper,” Vetus Testamentum 74 2024:303-310.
Newell, Margaret Ellen, “The Rising of the Indians”; or, The Native American Revolution of (16)’76,” William and Mary Quarterly 80 2023:287-324.
Stearns, Peter N., “To the Editor,” Perspectives on History 62:5 May 2024:4
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.
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.
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.
[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).
[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.
[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.
[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.
Note: This post is part of a series on the ASOR and SBL conferences in November 2018
Who doesn’t love a parade? Everybody loves a parade. As it turns out parades or processions provide an alternate approach to the creation of the Hebrew Bible from the Persian-period fixated ivory-tower scribal elite approach. The Israelite processions exhibit the oral and performance attributes of the Hebrew Bible generally obscured by the text-based biblical scholars.
Let’s examine the ASOR presentation and see what it has to offer in contrast to the text-based presentations at the SBL conference.
Performance Art and the Body in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean
Laurel Hackley (Brown University), “Memory and the Body in Egyptian Festival Processions”
This paper addresses the body as an object and an actor in Egyptian festival processions. Public festival processions were spectacles made of bodies, as it was the massing and movement of bodies that created the event. Both spectators and participants played an active role in the creation of this event; the event in turn played a role in maintaining a ritual cycle that many different kinds of people could participate in. Embodied and sensory participation in cyclically repeating festival processions would have created personal memories. The particulars of individual bodily experience, locale, and time of year would have connected personal histories to mythological events and other narratives. This would have been reinforced by the performances associated with festival processions, in which mythological episodes were apparently reenacted. A particular focus of this paper is the role of costumed, foreign, or otherwise singular bodies. An additional investigation will be made into the role of dance and gesture in festival processions, and the existence of professionals or specialists who participated in these events. The paper draws on evidence from reliefs, texts, and material culture.
According to Hackley, Egyptians witnessed repeated parades throughout their life. These rituals aided the people to “buy” into the culture. They provide comfort to the people. She even used the term “punctuated” as the “punctuated equilibrium” sessions at the same time did (Lessons from the ASOR Conference: Punctuated Equilibrium and the Writing of the Hebrew Bible). In this case, she was referring to how the rituals punctuate time in an annual cycle. The Egyptians had monthly festivals. There could be processions on land as well as on water. They could include musicians and dancers. The national ones might have foreigners such as Nubians and Libyans to show the power of the king. Such events provided a sensory experience with the smells of food and incense and the sounds of music. As here in the United States, we approach our Roman-numeral numbered Superbowl and halftime show in February, we should be aware of the annual rhythm of our sports events in creating memories from generations to generations at the high school, college, and professional level. And where would the Summer Olympics be without the opening procession of nations following the arrival of the flag that had been carried by foot from ancient Greece?
When young William Thomas Albright (not yet “Foxwell”) was growing up in Chile, he experienced a multitude of processions and festivals. They happened to be Catholic. By coincidence when his family returned to the United States, they docked around July 4. His first impression as he absorbed the festivities of the American Independence Day was that the country was Catholic. He had to learn the ways of the country. It would seem that the Methodist father of biblical archaeology never embraced the importance of processions in ancient Israel – they were for Catholic/Baal societies and not the nomads who became Israel and were made of better stuff.
Biblical scholars certainly are aware of the parade. They know of the Egyptian festivals especially for a new king or in military triumph. The most famous of all such processions is the akitu most prominently associated with Babylon but observed elsewhere in Mesopotamia as well. Biblical scholars also frequently comment on the Babylonian influence on the formation of the Hebrew Bible. Somehow though the influences are limited to textual ones and not the akitu. Part of the reason for the minimization of the influence of the akitu on Israelite culture is because of the key person in the New Year festival: the king. For an akitu to be held or for there to be an Israelite equivalent, there has to be a king. There also had been a carried object. The idea of a charismatic king instituting an Israelite akitu with a carried object based in Jerusalem is unacceptable.
However as it turns out the Hebrew Bible does contain processions which were part of a royal-led Israelite akitu New Year fall festival. The processions just are not linked together in scholarship so the Israelite akitu remains hidden. Now consider these texts below as if they were part of a royal procession and not the creation of an ivory-tower scribal elite. And while Brown referred to mythical events in her presentation, historical events may be presented as well. The celebration of the akitu could call to mind Nebuchadnezzar I’s restoration of the statue of Marduk.
Into the Wilderness
And whenever the ark set out, Moses said, “Arise, Yahweh, and let thy enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee.” And when it rested, he said, “Return, O Yahweh, to the ten thousand thousands of Israel.” (Num. 10:35-36)
The first part of the New Year processions occurred when the statue of Marduk left the temple and was brought out into the wilderness. In the ancient Israelite version, the king performing in the role of Moses led the ark and the people from Zion into the wilderness, an area around Jerusalem. Perhaps they marched to the very site David had purchased from Araunah where the Jebusites once had conducted their own ceremonies (II Samuel 24:18-25). Whether a new song was composed or an existing song was incorporated into the new holiday is a separate matter.
In the wilderness, the land of chaos, there were challenges both natural and human to be overcome. The foremost battle between the forces of cosmos and chaos in the Israelite akitu was a human affair – the people who challenged the authority of Moses, the role being performed by the king. Moses and the king were triumphant in this wilderness showdown. The disruptive forces of chaos were vanquished.
These wilderness stories of cosmos and chaos are important. They became a battlefield where different political factions (scribal priests) could battle for power through supplements to the original performed story. Even when the Israelite akitu was no longer performed the texts still provided a venue through which internal political battles could be fought. In the United States similar such battle are fought again and again through the stories, parades, and celebrations of Thanksgiving, the American Revolution, and the Civil War.
Marking Turf
Untangling the layers in Josh 6 is beyond the scope of this blog. Suffice it to say, the historic kernel of the performance occurred when the king in the role of Joshua led the people around the city of Jerusalem. There was music and the people shouted. Everybody has a good time save perhaps for the people performing as Jebusites!
What is accomplished in the Jericho story performed on and around the walls of Jerusalem?
1. With the procession of the ark of Yahweh, the king marked the turf of his kingdom. In this regard, Jerusalem represented all the Canaanite cities that had remained loyal to Egypt, were anti-Israel, and only recently had become part of the kingdom of Israel under David.
2. The people marching included representatives of valor from all the tribes of the kingdom. This meant the tribes which had been part of Merneptah’s Israel and those who had been part of the Israelite-led anti-Egyptian NATO alliance in Iron I (see Deborah at the SBL Conference). They had only joined Israel when they went to Hebron to recognize David as their king. One is reminded here of the United States Independence Day parades on July 4 in the communities throughout the land where every civic/ethnic/religious/business group has a float signifying a connection to the foundational event of the country.
3. The festival differentiated between the Canaanite people, the 99%, symbolized by the queen performing on the city walls as Rahab and costumed as Asherah, and the Canaanite city rulers. The former were welcomed into the kingdom, the latter were not.
In 1783, when the British left New York after seven years of occupation and two years after the Battle of Yorktown, they pulled a fast one on the Americans. To prevent the Americans from raising the American flag at Bowling Green at the southern end of Manhattan, they greased the flagpole. A Dutch-American then went to the equivalent of a hardware store, got spikes for his shoes, and climbed the flagpole with the American flag. That event was commemorated in the annual Evacuation Day holiday which survived in New York until World War I when England became our ally. Recently the Lower Manhattan Historical Association (I am on the Board) successfully petitioned the New York City Council to rename the area “Evacuation Plaza.” We do not climb the flagpole but we do annually raise a 13-star flag for the 13 colonies which had become states.. I wonder who climbed down the Jerusalem wall as part of the Israelite festival and how long the scarlet cord remained displayed.
Establishing the Kingdom of Yahweh
The final step in the Israelite akitu was the established of the kingdom of Yahweh. The forces of chaos had been defeated and order was pronounced. As the song sang going into the wilderness said, Yahweh returned to rest. The specific action meant was the returning of the ark of Yahweh to Zion. Untangling the layers of the Ark Narrative is beyond the scope of this blog. The fight over who was responsible for its loss to the Philistines was part of the political infighting among the priesthoods/political parties. For the procession, the action was straightforward. David danced and the people celebrated.
The recognition of a royal performance including the people and the men of valor from all the tribes of the kingdom provides an alternative to the text-based debate on the Tetrateuch/Pentateuch/Hexateuch/Enneateuch division of the biblical text. The performed story of going forth from the garden to planting the ark of Yahweh at Zion provides a better start and finish point for the royal drama, the Israelite akitu. I call this narrative and performance the King David Bible (KDB), the seven-day fall New Year festival with King David in the lead male roles, Queen Bathsheba in the lead female roles, and Morgan Freeman as the voice of both God and the narrator who performed on stage as well at times (Is Morgan Freeman God? What Do Biblical Scholars Think?). O.K., it was really Abiathar! To understand the genius of David it is necessary to determine the political situation in the land of Canaan when he created his kingdom and to identify his writings and performances. Otherwise all you are left with is that Abraham Lincoln was a chieftain in the small chiefdom of Washington and who never wrote anything.
