With the discovery of the Hammurabi Codex a century ago, it was first suggested that the teachings of Moses, and perhaps the Jewish religion and culture in general, all stemmed from an Assyrian-Babylonian origin. One hundred years of the controversy "Babylon and the Bible"
Yaakov Shavit and Mordechai Eran
Friedrich Delitzsch sues Moshe for literary theft. Cartoon from February 1903
opens with a mirage play. On the stage of the theater, a resplendent royal figure appears: this is Hammurabi, a queen of ancient Babylon (18th century BC). His host, the distinguished German professor in Bilonovich, advances him with a eloquent blessing and asks him to carry the message of his one and only God. Hammurabi opens first in gibberish (Gebbabel), and then quotes some cruel laws from his book of laws, and declares his faith In a multiplicity of gods, he pointed angrily at his host, "wanting to Judaize my pure faith in idols!", because in his lectures he described the ancient king as a righteous king, who later became the God of Israel He therefore turns to the audience and apologizes, that the king's mind has deteriorated due to his extreme old age, but Hammurabi mocks him who seeks to confuse him with the spirit of the Bible. If I had a sword in my hand, he tells the audience, or at least a whip, the distinguished professor would not have walked away from here without a proper punishment. Only after the king has disappeared from the stage, the professor comes to his senses and exclaims that the one who appeared before him was a fake Hammurabi. The eternal Jew now takes the stage and says the last word: he represents an ancient people, but a living people, which is the faithful representative of the gospel of the one and only God to mankind.
The stele of Hammurabi's laws, about 1750 BC
The professor who was mocked in this hit-and-run sketch is Friedrich Delitzsch (1922-1850), the renowned German Assyrianologist who has been called "the apostle of the Neo-Babylonian religion." The Hitoli skit was presented at the jubilee celebration of the Orthodox Real School in Frankfurt in 1903, and is just one of the mocking reactions directed at Delitzsch. One can see in the sketch, as M. Breuer sees it, an expression of the sigh of relief that was heard from the Jewish Orthodox camp in Germany, when it seemed to believe that the evidence
The histories presented by Delich turned out to be nothing more than "soap bubbles". Ridicule and humor were indeed used by Delitzsch's critics (the Germans and the Jews), but even those who believed that these were "towers blooming in the air" from a scientific point of view feared that Delitzsch's authority as an exorcist might give his opinions a leg up, and therefore, usually, the reactions were reasoned, learned and serious.
There was good reason to worry. Delitzsch's lectures, which bore the name "Babel und Bibel", were printed, had a very large circulation, and were translated into several languages. They provoked an intense and stormy polemic, which did not weaken even after the emperor's public disapproval of some of Delitzsch's views ( a reservation that was actually from the rim to the outside), but even strengthened in the garden.
The polemic began a hundred years ago, after the first lecture given by Delitzsch in Berlin on January 13, 1902. In the hall were present Emperor Wilhelm II, who granted her patronage, as well as the chancellor and many others from the ruling and intellectual elite of Wilhelmine Germany (Delitzsch repeated this lecture on February 1 in the royal palace). The event was on behalf of the "East German Society", of which Delitzsch was one of the founders in 1898, but the imperial patronage turned things into much more than a popular scientific lecture, reviewing the latest research innovations before an audience of thirsty listeners; Especially the discovery of the "Codex Hammurabi" about a year earlier. The second lecture was given in public on January 12, 1903, also in the presence of the emperor, and the third, after the emperor withdrew his patronage, in October 1904. In between, Delitzsch published various essays, in which he responded to the criticism leveled at him.
It is important to remember that Delitzsch himself aimed from the beginning for much more than a scientific review; His intention was not only to prove the dependence of the biblical world on the cultures of Assyria and Babylon, but also to prove their moral superiority over it, and on this basis to claim that Lutheranism can do without the Bible, and in fact, it is better for it without the Bible. The reaction would surely have been much weaker and milder if it seemed that Delitzsch was talking about "Babylon and the Bible", that is, about possible cultural connections between the two, and not about "Babylon against the Bible", while he did not move from speculations about cultural influences to criticism of the principle of revelation and the moral content of the prophecy . But Delitzsch declared that the modern German should be freed from the "false faith of biblical revelation" and that biblical prophecy excels in abysmal hatred for other nations, and is completely opposed to religion, ethics and science alike, thereby expropriating the subject from the domain of professionals.
Assurologists, conservative theologians and German writers, each with his own interests, therefore came to the fray. The polemic that opened was an event in culture, also occupied public opinion in the following years, and was nicknamed the "Babel-Bibel-Streit polemic". According to one estimate, only by the end of 1904 about 1,350 short articles, about 300 articles Long and about 28 booklets and books!
In the history of Assurological research, this controversy is usually remembered as nothing more than an episode. It is claimed that although he directed the attention of the general public to the great achievements of Assyrology in the fifty years preceding it, he also channeled attention in the direction of superficial sensationalism. Some believed that the harm of the polemic would be greater than its benefit because the educated public would lose faith in a scientific discipline, whose distinguished researchers cannot even agree on basic matters. But the issue at hand was much more than research methods. Professor Klausner, for example, who rejected the claim that biblical criticism is necessarily a manifestation of anti-Semitism, wondered in 1903 on the pages of "Hashiloh" how it is possible to explain that Assyrology "is the dry and difficult wisdom (...) came up on the agenda, became a question of the times, a scientific-philosophical question and social, and almost also a political question."
And Delitsch wondered indignantly: if my claims did not innovate anything, or have no foundation, what is the point of the great excitement? (His last book, "The Great Deception", which was published in 1920-1 long after the storm had passed, was already a distinctly anti-Semitic book, and Delitzsch wrote in it with complete confidence that he came out of the polemic with the upper hand).
The "Babylon and the Bible" polemic was mainly part of the internal debate within German Christianity between conservative Protestants and liberal Protestants (the polemic has been extensively described in several studies, especially in Johannig's 1988 and Lahman's 1994 books). Less known is the involvement of Jews in Germany And outside of it, at least a hundred articles, pamphlets and books were published in about three years by rabbis and scholars! Pen, Orthodox and Reformed alike, found it impossible to pass in silence on Delitzsch's ideas, which were widely circulated. On the other hand, the responses revealed both agreement on various matters and deep disagreements on other matters between the various camps.
Quite a few of the Jewish commentators saw in Delitzsch a modern characterization and in his publications - part of the anti-Jewish literature of the time and the folkist neo-pagan trend and its Aryan-German myth. Others included Julius Welhausen and the adherents of the "source hypothesis" to Delitzsch to a group of modern infidels, who set out in the name of science, but actually in the name of theology and hatred of Israel, to discredit the book of books; Both of them, it was written about them in the moderate educational journal "Hamigid", built in Germany "the second Tower of Babel, whose top is in the sky, (and) from which the sages of Ashkenazi will fight for the sanctity of the Hebrew Bible and the influence of Bnei Shem on the world." This is a total war against the Bible (hence - against Judaism) which harms the unity of the Pentateuch, its originality and its moral gospel. A more severe reaction claimed that while in Eastern Europe Rampantly harming the bodies and property of the Jews, Delitzsch and his supporters in Germany are harming their sacred spiritual property (in the Bible).
Such reactions did not just stem from the explanation that this is a strain of modern anti-Semitism, and not even just from the surprise and disappointment that things in this spirit against the Bible and prophetic morality come from within liberal German Protestantism. They also stemmed from the fact that Delitsch placed the truths of the Torah from Heaven and of Revelation not against theological or philosophical assumptions, but against historical-positivist evidence; Against the evidence of ancient literature, which proves, according to him, that the idea of the one God, the story of the act of creation and the flood, the institution of the Sabbath, the Law of Moses (and many other foundations of the Jewish religion and culture) all stemmed from an Assyrian-Babylonian origin. The conclusion from this was, of course, that they are all the fruit of human creation; And not only that - they are not the original creation of the ancient Israeli genius, but of the Assyrian-Babylonian genius.
The new status that the Bible (and especially the prophetic literature) gained during the nineteenth century among the various circles of modern Judaism, inspired them to fight back fiercely both on the scientific and theological and philosophical levels. The responses were not only apologetics; they were also part of the rebuilding process of the image of the ancient past of the people of Israel and of the new ways of interpreting its religion and its culture Faith to the test of science. From a historical perspective, the importance of the "Babylon and the Bible" polemic lies in the fact that there were similar polemics that took place in the hundred years since with regard to the relationship between the Bible, biblical criticism and archeology (here, the study of the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia) on the one hand, and between Faith and tradition, on the other hand.
The Jewish reactions at the beginning of the twentieth century preceded the willingness to use extra-biblical sources to prove the reliability of the biblical historical story, the antecedents of the Torah and the originality of the Bible as a spiritual-cultural work. In fact, they were a very public and intense expression of the Bible's status in the spiritual and cultural life of the modern Jew, and the value given to the Bible's universal moral gospel, but also to its originality and the reliability of the biblical historical story.
It is therefore possible to see in the public polemic, which opened at the beginning of 1902, the beginning of the principled polemic that continues in this field to this day.
