Johann Schaumberger

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Johann Baptist (Clemens) Schaumberger (born September 23, 1885 in Schwandorf ; † August 27, 1955 in Gars am Inn ) was a German ancient orientalist and historian of science, especially of Babylonian astronomy.

Johann Baptist was born on September 23, 1885 as the third child of the spouses Jakob Schaumberger, called "Torbäck", and Barbara geb. Schreiber was born in Tännesberg.

Until the end of the elementary school years that he spent in Schwandorf, nothing pointed to his later extraordinary life. A crucial day was May 23, 1895, when he took part in the taking of his uncle's religious vows. This encouraged him to seek acceptance into an order himself.

Schaumberger joined the Redemptorist Order in 1903 and studied theology at their religious school in Gars am Inn and was ordained a priest on June 13, 1909. He then continued his studies at the Biblicum in Rome, where he received his doctorate in 1913. Afterwards he was a teacher of Bible exegesis at the religious school in Gars am Inn. He also dealt with ancient oriental studies and the history of astronomy of ancient Mesopotamia . He continued the work of the Jesuit scholar Franz Xaver Kugler (who died in 1929), for whose astronomy and star service in Babel (Münster, from 1907) he wrote supplementary books (Münster 1935), although the announced fourth supplementary booklet never appeared. With Abraham Sachs he wrote an edition of late Babylonian astronomical texts that appeared in the year of his death. Like Kugler, he was able to fall back on the copies of cuneiform texts by Johann Strassmaier .

He also examined cuneiform texts from around the time of the birth of Christ that suggest a possible explanation of the star of Bethlehem as a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. In the 1930s he attended the Oriental Institute in Chicago, where he identified astronomical cuneiform texts from Uruk .

For example, in 1938 he published an event well documented in cuneiform texts (about which the scholars also corresponded with the king), the conjunction of Mars and Saturn with the moon in Virgo on March 15, 669 BC. Chr.

Johann Baptist died on August 27, 1955 in Gars am Inn and was laid to rest in the crypt of his monastery.

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Literature list on Babylonian astronomy
  2. ^ For example, Schaumberger A new cuneiform fragment about the alleged star of the wise , Biblica, Volume 24, 1943, pp. 162-169 and Textus cuneiformus de stella magorum? , Biblica, Volume 6, 1925, p. 444, Zusatzbemerkungen, Volume 7, 1926, p. 294. These are cuneiform texts from Sippar that were deciphered by Paul Schnabel in 1925 .
  3. ↑ Commentary in Ulla Koch-Westenholz Mesopotamian Astrology , Copenhagen 1995, p. 140
personal data
SURNAME Schaumberger, Johann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schaumberger, Johann Baptist Clemens (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian and historian of science
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwandorf
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 1955
Place of death Gars on the Inn