Friedrich Delitzsch

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Friedrich Delitzsch

Friedrich Delitzsch (born September 3, 1850 in Erlangen , †  December 19, 1922 in Langenschwalbach near Wiesbaden ) was a German Assyriologist .

Life

Delitzsch was born as the son of the Lutheran Old Testament scholar and Hebraist Franz Delitzsch . He studied from 1868, first in Leipzig with Franz Delitzsch, Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer and Ludolf Krehl Oriental , and Herrmann Brockhaus , Georg Curtius and Ernst Windisch Indo-European languages ; from 1871 in Berlin Ethiopian with August Dillmann and Sanskrit with Albrecht Weber and graduated with studies on Indo-European-Semitic roots . To Sanskrit the plan habilitieren he admitted after a fateful encounter with the Old Testament Eberhard Schrader in Jena, which it into the recently newly developed Assyrian introduced to, and qualified as shortly afterwards (1874) for Semitic languages and Assyriology in Leipzig, where he became associate professor in 1877 and full professor in 1885. In 1893 he was appointed to this title in Breslau and in 1899 as the successor to his former Assyriological teacher in Berlin at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin .

He was a co-founder and sponsor of the German Orient Society and since 1899 director of the Middle East Department of the Royal Museums. His special merits lie in the research of the ancient Near Eastern languages ​​(Assyrian / Akkadian), for which he created a number of basic aids in the course of his life, and the promotion of Old Testament textual criticism. Further circles he became known through his lectures on Babel and the Bible (1902-1905), which appeared in numerous modified versions and translations , which sparked the Babel-Bible dispute . In 1902 Delitzsch was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1904 to the American Philosophical Society . Since 1891 he was a member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences .

As a result of the Babel-Bible dispute, he took an increasingly critical stance towards the Old Testament in the course of his life. His work The Great Deception (see below) goes very far in this regard , in which, among other things, he calls for the Old Testament to be removed from the Christian canon and, following Paul Haupt and others, even suspected an Aryan origin of Jesus Christ. In the dispute with his opponents in the Babel-Bible dispute from 1903 he increasingly used argumentation patterns that were also used in the anti-Jewish polemics of his time. However, Delitzsch himself vehemently denied any anti-Semitic stance until his death. In fact, the biographical and scientific analysis of his statements on the Old Testament shows that subjectively there was no racist anti-Semitism , but increasing theological anti-Judaism . His rejection of the Old Testament was based essentially on his (biographically determined) theological inability to constructively combine historical text research and theology, which, despite his undisputed importance as an Assyriologist and despite fundamental contributions to the criticism of the Old Testament, theologically persistently discredited him.

Delitzsch was the father of four sons and two daughters. One son was the lawyer Kurt Delitzsch .

Fonts

  • Studies on Indo-European-Semitic root relationship. 1873. Reprint 1884.
  • Assyriological Studies. 1874.
  • Assyriological readings. 1904.
  • Where was paradise? 1881.
  • Hebrew language viewed in the light of Assyrian research. 1883.
  • Language of the Cosseans. 1884.
  • Prolegomena of a new Hebrew-Aramaic dictionary for the Old Testament. 1886.
  • Assyrian dictionary for all cuneiform literature published to date, taking into account numerous unpublished texts. 1887.
  • Assyrian grammar. 1889.
  • History of Babylonia and Assyria. 1891.
  • Decipherment of the Cappadocian cuneiform tablets. 1893.
  • Concise Assyrian dictionary. 1894-1896. Reprint 1968.
  • The Babylonian epic of creation of the world. 1897.
  • The emergence of the oldest writing system or origin of the cuneiform characters. 1897.
  • Ex Oriente Lux! A word to promote the German Orient Society. 1898.
  • The book of Job re-translated and briefly explained. 1902.
  • Babel and Bible . 1902. Speech by Delitzsch on January 13th before the German Orient Society in Berlin. Revisions in 1903, 1905 and 1921.
  • Second lecture on Babel and the Bible. New revisions published in 1903 and 1904.
  • Babel and Bible. A review and outlook. 1904.
  • Babel and Bible. Third (final) lecture. 1905.
  • In the land of what was once paradise. 1903.
  • More light. The most significant results of the Babylonian-Assyrian excavations for history, culture and religion. 1907.
  • To further the religion. 1908.
  • Shalmaneser II palace gates 1908.
  • Trade and Change in Old Babylonia. 1909.
  • The land of no homecoming. The thoughts of the Babylonian Assyrians about death and afterlife. 1911.
  • Assyrian readings with elements of grammar and a complete glossary. 5th edition 1912.
  • Sumerian grammar. 1914.
  • Sumerian glossary. 1914.
  • The reading and writing errors in the Old Testament are classified along with the marginal notes incorporated into the scriptural texts. A help book for lexicon and grammar, exegesis and reading. 1920.
  • The great delusion. Critical considerations on the Old Testament reports on Israel's invasion of Canaan, the divine revelation from Sinai and the effectiveness of the prophets. 1920/1921. Reprint 1934.
  • The great delusion. Second (final) part. Continued critical considerations on the Old Testament, especially the prophetic writings and psalms, along with conclusions. 1921. Reprint 1926.

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Reinhard G. Lehmann: Friedrich Delitzsch and the Babel Bible dispute. 1994, pp. 50-55, 80-103, 170-191, 250-256, 280-281.
  2. ^ Friedrich Delitzsch: My curriculum vitae. Reclams Universum, 36, No. 47, 1920, pp. 241-246.
  3. ↑ On the ruins of panbabylonism
  4. ↑ Reinhard G. Lehmann: Friedrich Delitzsch and the Babel Bible dispute. 1994, pp. 59-79
  5. ↑ Reinhard G. Lehmann: Friedrich Delitzsch and the Babel Bible dispute. 1994, pp. 256-271.
  6. ^ Enno Littmann:  Delitzsch, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 582 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Wikisource: Friedrich Delitzsch  - Sources and full texts
personal data
SURNAME Delitzsch, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Delitzsch, Friedrich Conrad Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Assyriologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 3, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH gain
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 1922
Place of death Langenschwalbach