Panbabylonism

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The Panbabylonismus was a flow within the German Ancient Oriental late 19th and early 20th century. Its main representatives are Hugo Winckler , Fritz Hommel , Eduard Stucken and Alfred Jeremias . In some cases, but not in all points, they were joined by Friedrich Delitzsch , Peter Jensen and Carl Bezold .

The ideological-scientific current of Panbabylonism was based on the assumption that from the first third of the 2nd millennium BC onwards. An ancient oriental doctrine appearing in astral mythical form from Mesopotamia spread over the entire earth. This cosmological- speculative "theory of the stars" has influenced other cultures spiritually and found different forms in them. Cultures in Egypt , ancient Arabia , Elam and Iran , Persia , India , China , Mycenaean Greece , Etruria , ancient America and prehistoric Europe showed the same foundations of spiritual life as they were in Babylon in relatively ancient times and in the clearest development would have.

Historical outline

As early as 1885, the German orientalist Fritz Hommel attempted to prove in his book History of Babylonia and Assyria , “that the Babylonian culture [is] older than the Egyptian, yes that the latter even shows a certain dependence on the Babylonian in its most important manifestations, that is to say the Babylonian Culture can rightly be called the oldest in the world and at the same time the mother of all other ancient cultures. ”In the five-part work Astral Myths of the Hebrews, Babylonians and Egyptians by Eduard Stucken, published from 1896 to 1907, essential parts of the cultural theory of Panbabylonism were elaborated . Thus founded stuccoes in the first part, that in his view the stories of Abraham on two Babylonian sources decline, the Etana -Legende and the descent into hell of Ishtar .

Fragments of the first panel of the ancient Babylonian Atrahasis epic whose Flood story entrance to the Epic of Gilgamesh and the first book of Moses found

The German ancient orientalist Hugo Winckler solved a scholarly dispute with his programmatic writing Himmels- und Weltbild der Babylonier as the basis of the worldview and mythology of all peoples from 1901 (published in Der alten Orient , 3rd year, issue 2/3, published by the Vorderasiatische Gesellschaft ) at the center of which he stood. Subsequent publications supplemented his representations of an old Babylonian worldview, which he did not formulate comprehensively. Winckler's views were supported by a public lecture by the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch to the German Orient Society on January 13, 1902, in which he defended the thesis of the Babylonian roots of the Jewish religion and the Old Testament (see Babel Bible dispute ). A second lecture by Delitzsch on January 12, 1903 dealt with the revelations of the Old Testament. In 1906 the German ancient orientalist Peter Jensen drew similar conclusions in his book The Gilgamesh Epic in World Literature , in which he interpreted Old Testament figures up to Jesus and Paul as Israelite Gilgamesh sagas .

In the second volume of his History of Israel, Hugo Winckler had already made connections between characters from the Bible and others from myths from the entire Orient in individual representations from 1900. Its further development to Panbabylonism in 1901 was taken up by the German historian of religion and ancient orientalist Alfred Jeremias in 1904 in his work The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient Orient , which appeared in its second expanded edition in 1906. In contrast to Winckler, intensified after his death in 1913, Jeremias did not see the Babylonians but the Sumerians as the original creators of culture. In Volume 4 of the Concise Dictionary Religion in Past and Present from 1930 (Col. 879), Jeremias defined panbabylonism as follows:

“The Panbabylonists want to show that the entire cultural life emanating from the Near East shows a development that cannot be explained by the laws of history and ethnology derived from the phenomena of the occidental world. The Sumerian-Babylonian cultural world presupposes a world doctrine according to which all state and social organizations were regulated, according to which law was pronounced, according to which all sciences and arts go back to an original wisdom revealed from heaven, according to which property is administered and protected. This ancient oriental theory of the world creates a picture of space and time in its cosmogony and its cycle theory, which is read from the starry sky ... Panbabylonism wants to provide evidence that this astral world view has shaped all cultures and religions of the world, in particular The biblical worldview also owes its symbolic language to this worldview. "

- Alfred Jeremias

The thesis of the origin of all mythology from Babylon (or Sumer ), as it was represented in the comparison of myths only by Winckler and Jeremias and from which Stucken turned more and more later, gave rise to violent polemics . In a lecture in May 1902, the German Protestant theologian and Old Testament scholar Karl Budde turned against Winckler's views, coining the Geusen word panbabylonism , which the representatives of the current then used themselves. Winckler responded to the attacks of Friedrich Küchler and Hugo Gressmann in his book The Youngest Fighters Against Panbabylonism from 1907. Winckler was annoyed that his opponents “sent young men into the fire” who were not aware of the scope of the argument.

The German mathematician, astronomical historian and Assyriologist Franz Xaver Kugler developed into the most pronounced critic of panbabylonism . As a Jesuit , Kugler's motivation and justifications were based on the Christian religion . He tried hard to reconcile theological doctrines and scientific astronomy. In 1910, for example, in his book Im Bannkreis Babels, he contrasted “pan-Babylonian constructions with facts about the history of religion” in order to refute Winckler and Jeremias. The German ancient historian, Egyptologist and ancient orientalist Eduard Meyer was also one of the opponents of Panbabylonism . In the first volume of his history of antiquity he writes:

“In no other area has amateurism sinned so badly as in this one. The last results of Chaldean science, the result of long-lasting methodical research of the 1st millennium BC, are harmless . BC, set at the beginning and derived from them religion and thought of primeval times. The main representative of this treatment is H. Winckler, the inventor of the "Babylonian" or "Oriental" worldview. He took over the wild fantasies that Stucken published under the title “Astralmythen” without criticism and expanded them further, and thus won numerous adepts; Hommel in particular made similar assertions. According to Winckler (e.g. CAT . 13. 24. 326. 332; also Hommel) even the precession of the equals is said to have already known this primeval time [just as he seriously ascribes to the Babylonians the knowledge of the phases of Venus and the moons of Jupiter !], and "their calculations of the movements of the stars are based on the time when the sun was in Gemini on the equinox ", d. i. in the 6th and 5th millennium; and the founding of the new capital Babel, which he traces back to Sargon , he derives quite naively from the shift of the equinoctial point from Gemini to Taurus , which has opened a new world age. The treatment of the calendar (CAT. 328, where the facts are completely ignored and replaced by a fantasy picture, cf. § 323 A.) is analogous, as is the treatment of myths and religion. Whether the statements of the monuments and the cultural status of the peoples are correct for such ideas is completely indifferent to the representatives of these teachings, in Sinear just as good as with the Israelites, Greeks, etc. a. to whom they impose these notions. In reality, this mystical wisdom has no more scientific significance than the original revelation of all world dimensions in the great pyramid , which Piazzi Smith taught at his time and which is still adepted. [S. the representation and criticism of these fantasies by Kugler, Auf den Trümmern des Panbabylonismus (from the magazine Anthropos, IV 1909), and: Im Bannkreise Babels 1910]. "

- Eduard Meyer

After Hugo Winckler's death in 1913 and the defeat of the German Empire in World War I , panbabylonism disappeared from the scientific discourse. The Handbook of the Ancient Near Eastern Spiritual Culture and The Old Testament in the Light of the Ancient Orient were reissued by Alfred Jeremias in 1929 and 1930, followed by two smaller treatises on the religious and cultural-historical significance of Sumerian culture, but in the latter the astral mythology made a noticeable contribution Background. The excavations of Robert Koldewey in Babylon were of no particular importance for Jeremias compared to the clay tablets with texts, which mainly refer to the prehistoric times of Sumerian culture.

Today panbabylonism bears the stigma of scientific questionability. The work of the Panbabylonians to correlate the intellectual Mesopotamian culture with the outside world was not only not continued, but largely forgotten. Even as a result of the most recent factual reports on the Babel-Bible controversy, their main theses have been ridiculed, effectively rejected, or turned upside down in recent decades. Regardless of this, the Finnish Assyriologist Simo Parpola came to the conclusion in 2001 that the Panbabylonians fulfilled the requirements of interdisciplinary competence, good critical judgment and well-founded methodology as requirements of intercultural studies far better than most of their critics. The central claim of the Panbabylonians that Mesopotamian ideas, knowledge and systems of thought were widespread in the ancient world since the earliest times has now become a firmly established fact and can be documented many times today.

literature

  • Hugo Winckler : The Babylonian culture in its relationship to ours . Part II. Eduard Pfeiffer, Leipzig 1900 ( digitized version ).
  • Hugo Winckler: Ancient oriental research . Third series, volume I. Eduard Pfeiffer, Leipzig 1902 ( digital copy ).
  • Hugo Winckler: Abraham as a Babylonian, Joseph as an Egyptian: the world-historical background of the biblical fathers' stories . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1903 ( digitized ).
  • Alfred Jeremias: The Old Testament in the Light of the Old Orient . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1904 ( digitized ).
  • Alfred Jeremias: The Old Testament in the Light of the Old Orient . Second revised edition. JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1906 ( digitized version ).
  • Alfred Jeremias : The Panbabylonists, the ancient Orient and the Egyptian religion . In: Alfred Jeremias, Hugo Winckler (Ed.): In the fight for the old Orient . tape 1 . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1907 ( digitized ).
  • Hugo Winckler: The youngest fighters against Panbabylonism . In: Alfred Jeremias, Hugo Winckler (Ed.): In the fight for the old Orient . tape 2 . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1907 ( digitized ).
  • Franz Xaver Kugler : Development of the Babylonian planetary science from its beginnings to Christ . In: Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel . tape 1 . Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster in Westphalia 1907 ( digitized version ).
  • Alfred Jeremias: The Age of Babylonian Astronomy . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1909 ( partial view ).
  • Franz Xaver Kugler: On the ruins of Panbabylonism . In: Anthropos . tape 4 , booklet 2. Anthropos Institute, 1909, p. 477-499 , JSTOR : 40442413 .
  • Hugo Gressmann , Arthur Ungnad , Hermann Ranke (eds.): Old oriental texts and images for the Old Testament . First volume: texts. JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1909 ( digitized ).
  • Franz Xaver Kugler: Nature, Myth and History as the Basis of the Babylonian Time Order . In: Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel . tape 2 . Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster in Westphalia 1910 ( digitized ).
  • Franz Xaver Kugler: Under the spell of Babels. Pan-Babylonian constructions and religious historical facts . Aschendorffsche Buchhandlung, Münster in Westphalia 1910 ( digitized version ).
  • Franz Xaver Kugler: Astronomy and Chronology of Older Times . In: Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel: Supplements to the first and second book . tape 1 . Aschendorffsche Verlagbuchhandlung, Münster in Westphalia 1913 ( digitized version ).
  • Alfred Jeremias: Handbook of the ancient oriental spiritual culture . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1913 ( digitized version ).
  • Franz Xaver Kugler: Astrology and chronology of the older time . In: Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel: Supplements to the first and second book . tape 2 . Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster in Westphalia 1914 ( digitized version ).
  • Johann Schaumberger : Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel: Supplement to the first and second book . In: Franz Xaver Kugler (Ed.): Sternkunde and Sterndienst in Babel . Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster in Westphalia 1935 ( digitized ).
  • Simo Parpola: Back to Delitzsch and Jeremias. The Relevance of the Pan-Babylonian School to the Melammu Project . In: School of Oriental Studies and the Development of Modern Historiography. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project. Held in Ravenna, Italy, October 13-17, 2001 (= Antonio Panaino, Andrea Piras [Ed.]: Melammu Symposia 4 ). Università di Bologna & Islao, Milan 2004, ISBN 978-88-8483-206-1 , p. 237–247 (English, PDF; 256.6 KB ).
  • Sergei Stadnikov : The Importance of the Ancient Orient for German Thinking: Sketches from the Period 1871-1945 . Propylaeum , Heidelberg 2007 ( PDF; 240.31 KB ).
  • Michael Weichenhan: Panbabylonism. The fascination of the heavenly book in the age of civilization . Frank & Timme, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7329-0219-4 ( partial view ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Sergei Stadnikov : The importance of the ancient Orient for German thinking: Sketches from the period 1871-1945 . Propylaeum , Heidelberg 2007, p. 5 ( PDF; 240.31 KB ).
  2. ↑ Michael Weichenhan: Panbabylonism. The fascination of the heavenly book in the age of civilization . Frank & Timme, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7329-0219-4 , Panbabylonism and the unity of the human spirit, p. 19 .
  3. ^ Fritz Hommel : History of Babylonia and Assyria (=  Wilhelm Oncken [Hrsg.]: General history in single representations . Volume 2 ). G. Grote'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1885, The Significance and Importance of Babylonian-Assyrian History, p. 13 ( digitized version ).
  4. ↑ a b Sergei Stadnikov: The importance of the ancient Orient for German thinking: Sketches from the period 1871-1945 . Propylaeum , Heidelberg 2007, p. 6 ( PDF; 240.31 KB ).
  5. ↑ Eduard Stucken : Astral myths of the Hebrews, Babylonians and Egyptians . I. Abraham. Eduard Pfeiffer, Leipzig 1896, p. 1 ( digitized version ).
  6. ↑ Eberhard Zangger : The Luwians and the Trojan War . Orell Füssli, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-280-05647-9 , controversial topic Panbabylonism, p. 90 .
  7. ↑ Friedrich Küchler: The "ancient oriental worldview" and its end . In: Theologische Rundschau . tape 14 , no. 6 . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2011, p. 237 , JSTOR : 26151651 .
  8. ↑ Friedrich Delitzsch : Bible and Babel. A lecture . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1902 ( digitized ).
  9. ↑ Friedrich Delitzsch: Bible and Babel. Second lecture . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1903 ( digitized version ).
  10. ↑ Peter Jensen : The Gilgamesh epic in world literature . First volume. Karl J. Trübner, Strasbourg 1906 ( digitized version ).
  11. ^ Hugo Winckler: History of Israel in individual representations . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1902 ( digitized ).
  12. ↑ Michael Weichenhan: Panbabylonism. The fascination of the heavenly book in the age of civilization . Frank & Timme, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7329-0219-4 , Introduction: “Strange attempts to penetrate into prehistoric times”, p. 13 .
  13. ^ Matthias E. Kornemann: From the astral myth to the novel: Shape and transformation of the motif in the work of Eduard Stuckens . Galda + Wilch, Glienicke (Berlin) 1998, ISBN 978-3-931397-12-8 , Comparative Mythology, p. 93-94 ( digitized version ).
  14. ↑ a b Eberhard Zangger: The Luwians and the Trojan War . Orell Füssli, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-280-05647-9 , controversial topic Panbabylonism, p. 92-93 .
  15. ↑ Hugo Winckler: The youngest fighters against Panbabylonism . In: Alfred Jeremias, Hugo Winckler (Ed.): In the fight for the old Orient . tape 2 . JC Hinrichs'sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1907, p. 3 ( digitized version ).
  16. ↑ Eberhard Zangger: The Luwians and the Trojan War . Orell Füssli, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-280-05647-9 , Hugo Winckler (1863-1913), pp. 88 .
  17. ^ Eduard Meyer : History of antiquity . 3. Edition. First volume. Second section: The earliest historical peoples and cultures up to the sixteenth century. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung, Stuttgart 1910, Religion and Literature, No. 427, p. 592 ( Zeno full text library ).
  18. ↑ Peter Lancaster Brown: Megaliths, Myths and Men: An Introduction to Astro-Archeology . Dover Publications, Mineola, New York 2000, ISBN 978-0-486-41145-3 , Astronomy, Metrology and Pyramidology, pp. 267 (English, digitized version ).
  19. ↑ Michael Weichenhan: Panbabylonism. The fascination of the heavenly book in the age of civilization . Frank & Timme, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-7329-0219-4 , Autumn of Panbabylonism: Leo Frobenius and the slain King, p. 95-96 .
  20. ↑ Eberhard Zangger: The Luwians and the Trojan War . Orell Füssli, Zurich 2017, ISBN 978-3-280-05647-9 , "The world was envious", p. 108 .
  21. ↑ Simo Parpola: Back to Delitzsch and Jeremias. The Relevance of the Pan-Babylonian School to the Melammu Project . In: School of Oriental Studies and the Development of Modern Historiography. Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project. Held in Ravenna, Italy, October 13-17, 2001 (= Antonio Panaino, Andrea Piras [Ed.]: Melammu Symposia 4 ). Università di Bologna & Islao, Milan 2004, ISBN 978-88-8483-206-1 , p. 240–241 (English, PDF; 256.6 KB ).

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