Israel and Babylon

For presenting to the English-speaking public this translation an explanation is scarcely necessary. Since the days of Ferdinand Christian Baur no theological controversy has so agitated Germany as has this present question as to the relation between the Old Testament and the traditions of Babylon. Opened on January 13th, 1902, by the now famous lecture before the Emperor, the struggle has raged and is raging yet with a fury of almost unparalled violence. The literature on the subject has become so voluminous as to form almost a library in itself. Prof. Delitzsch cites some twenty titles in the appendix to the second edition of his first lecture but these are but a modicum of the whole.

In one regard especially the present situation may be paralleled with the Baur controversy. Nearly every person who could contrive to print or to have printed his views on the subject has done so and, in consequence, by far the greater part of the pamphlets and articles that have appeared display a lack of proper information—not to say, learning. That a reply should be in some measure as well informed as the attack is a principle that has been disregarded in too many instances, and such a disregard merely assists in weakening the cause defended.

None the less, many scientists and theologians of note have appeared on both sides, such names as Budde, Jensen, König, Jeremias, Hommel and Kittel are a sufficient evidence of that fact. But even much of their contribution to the discussion has been irrelevant, and much energy has been wasted fruitlessly in attempting to overthrow Delitzsch on his own ground. As an Assyriologist his work can scarcely be questioned. The proper question is: Do his results in Assyriological study form a sufficient basis for his conclusions in theology? Not that this has been overlooked by any means—cf. Budde, especially—but the need was felt for a thorough scientist who should be at once a master of the Babylonian legends and a theologian of the first rank.

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