Babel-Bible dispute

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The Babel-Bible dispute - in literature also the Bible-Babel dispute - is an ancient orientalist-theological discourse of the early 20th century. Although it took place practically at the same time as the dispute over so-called Panbabylonism and is often equated with it, the two disputes must be strictly distinguished from one another, both in terms of content and personnel.

course

The reason for the Babel-Bible dispute was a public lecture by the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch , which he gave on January 13, 1902 in the presence of Kaiser Wilhelm II in front of the German Orient Society at the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin . In this lecture he defended the thesis that the Jewish religion and the Old Testament went back to Babylonian roots. Babel has to be regarded as the explainer and illustrator of the Bible . In response to sharp polemics from conservative Jewish and Christian sides, which did not shy away from personal defamation, he emphasized in a second lecture the cultural, moral and ultimately even religious superiority of the Babylonian-Assyrian culture over the Old Testament-Israelite and began against one polemicize traditional church concept of revelation.

The total of three lectures on “Babel and the Bible” provoked a broad public discussion and a flood of writings, some of which sought an understanding, but mostly strongly contradicted Delitzsch from a conservative Christian and Jewish position. It was about its scientific interpretation as well as the claim that biblical texts had a revelatory function in the sense of verbal inspiration , especially on the conservative Protestant side . The Bonn Old Testament scholar Eduard König is likely to be his most productive main opponent .

Hugo Winckler then coined the term Panbabylonism to describe the far-reaching influence of Assyrian thought that he postulated on the Israeli idea of ​​God, which he saw as an echo of the astral cult. He was followed by Peter Jensen and Alfred Jeremias , who derived a large part of the stories in the Old Testament from the Gilgamesh epic .

With the First World War , the decline of the religious history school and the emergence of dialectical theology , the discussion lost its importance. Arguments from the Babel-Bible dispute, however, gained new meaning in the controversy over the Old Testament during the church struggle : Delitzsch himself spoke out in the last years of his life for the elimination of the Old Testament from church use and thus anticipated demands of the German Christians . Some ideas still populate the popular science discussion today.

A side effect of the dispute was the popularization of the German excavation results in the Near East, such as the Ishtar Gate . A secondary debate was the anti-Semitic group that formed around Kaiser Wilhelm II , to whom the idea of ​​a racial interpretation of the research results was important. Kaiser Wilhelm II deals with the issue of the dispute in detail in his book Events and Shapes .

The Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin commemorated the Babel-Bible dispute with an exhibition in 2019.

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literature

  • Klaus Johanning: The Bible-Babel dispute. A study of the history of research (= European university publications. Series 23: Theology. Volume 343). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1988, ISBN 3-8204-1455-X (also dissertation, University of Marburg 1987).
  • Reinhard G. Lehmann: The Babel-Bible dispute. A cultural political lightning. In: Johannes Renger (Ed.): Babylon. Focus on Mesopotamian history, the cradle of early learning, myth in the modern age. 2nd International Colloquium of the German Orient Society 24. – 26. March 1998 in Berlin. SDV Saarbrücker Druckerei und Verlag, Saarbrücken 1999, ISBN 3-930843-54-4 , pp. 505-521.
  • Reinhard G. Lehmann: Friedrich Delitzsch and the Babel Bible dispute (= Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Volume 133). Universitäts-Verlag, Freiburg (CH) 1994, ISBN 3-7278-0932-9 ; Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1994, ISBN 3-525-53768-9 (also dissertation, University of Mainz 1989).
  • Reinhard G. Lehmann: Delitzsch, Friedrich. In: Peter Kuhlmann , Helmuth Schneider (Hrsg.): History of the ancient sciences. Biographical Lexicon (= The New Pauly . Supplements. Volume 6). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02033-8 , Sp. 293-296.
  • Rüdiger Liwak: Bible and Babel. Against the theological and religious-historical naivete. In: Berliner Theologische Zeitschrift (BThZ). Volume 15, No. 2, 1998, pp. 206-233.
  • Yaacov Shavit : Babel Bible. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 1: A-Cl. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02501-2 , pp. 224-226.
  • Michael Weichenhan: Panbabylonism. The fascination of the heavenly book in the age of civilization, Frank & Timme-Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7329-0219-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Houston Stewart Chamberlain: Dilettantism, Race, Monotheism. F. Bruckmann Publishing House, Rome / Munich 1903.
  2. ^ Wilhelm II .: Events and Figures 1878-1918 . Verlag KF Koehler, Leipzig / Berlin, 1922, p. 183ff
  3. ↑ The Babel-Bible Controversy , accessed October 24, 2019.