Der Bahel-Bibel-Streit und die Wissenschaft des Judentums: Beitrage einer internationalen Konferenz vom 4. bis 6. November 2019 in Berlin.

• Author: Beckman, Gary

Der Bahel-Bibel-Streit und die Wissenschaft des Judentums: Beitrage einer internationalen Konferenz vom 4. bis 6. November 2019 in Berlin. Edited by EVA CANCIK-KIRSCHBAUM and THOMAS L. GERTZEN. Munster: ZAPHON, 2021. Pp. 334, illus. [euro]58.

Today all serious scholars recognize that the Hebrew Bible--divinely inspired or not--is a product of the world of the ancient Near East and that it shares literary elements also known from Mesopotamia and Egypt. This became evident already in 1872 with the announcement by George Smith of his discovery on an Assyrian cuneiform tablet in the British Museum of a flood narrative whose details closely matched those of the story of the deluge survived by Noah in the Book of Genesis. Immediately there arose among historians and theologians heated discussion concerning the direction of cultural influence and its implications for the religious significance of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

Thirty years later the German Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch delivered a lecture in Berlin on this question in which he demonstrated that Assyria and Babylonia were indeed the source of many elements throughout the biblical text. Among his audience was Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was so enthused by what he had heard that he commanded that the speech be repealed at the royal palace and who was instrumental in securing its prompt publication as Babel und Bibel (1902). A second lecture and its printing followed soon thereafter (Zweiter Vortrag uber Babel und Bibel, 1903), and a third in 1905 (Babel und Bibel: Dritter (Schluss-)Vortrag).

As he proceeded in developing his argumentation, Delitzsch became bolder in questioning the theological value of what contemporary pious Christians and Jews held to be the Word of God. Not surprisingly, controversy, known as the "Babel-Bible Conflict," broke out among scholars, churchmen, and laity alike, prompting the monarch to issue a statement affirming his own orthodox beliefs and leaving der Professor to respond to his critics in a series of revisions of each of his speeches. This process concluded in a separate treatise, Die grosse Tauschung (1920-21), wherein Delitzsch proclaimed that the Hebrew Bible--outside of the delivery of the Ten Commandments to Moses--was not divinely revealed and consequently had no significance for the religious life of Christians, particularly Germans.

The volume under review presents fourteen papers (twelve in German, two in English) presented at a conference...