Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 34:135 (Jul 1877)
Article: On Assyriology
Author: Paul de Lagarde

BSac 34:135 (July 1877) p. 563

On Assyriology1

Paul de Lagarde

The following Review, which appeared originally in E. v. Leutsch’s philologischen Anzerger, Vol. vii. p. 532, is translated from the German of Professor de Lagarde, Lie. Theol., Ph.D., for the Bibliotheca Sacra, at his own suggestion. The Review is written by one of the leading Semitic scholars of the world, one whose knowledge of Syriac especially, and whose work in applying to the Semitic family of languages the same principles as Grimm and others have successfully followed in Indo-European comparative philology, has already given rich promise and rich fruit. What has seemed chaos begins to be orderly and living. What seemed only a field for empirics and mystics is beginning to reveal its real character under strict scientific treatment. Professor de Lagarde’s opinion on Assyriology must be carefully heeded. We shall publish soon an Article on the subject by another leading Semitic scholar. An Article by Professor de Lagarde on another important subject will shortly appear in our pages, with his special permission. — Archibald Duff, Jr., assistant editor of the Bibliotheca Sacra, is the translator of the following Review.

In 1875 A. v. Gutschmid discussed in Teubner’s Jahrbuclier fur classische Philologie, the new edition of M. Duncker’s History of Antiquity; and in the discussion gave it to be understood, in a manner at once careful and strictly reasoned from beginning to end, that what the Assyriologists had published as facts, were to be used more cautiously than Duncker had done. A notice counter to this appeared in the Jenaer Litteraturzeitung, not from Duncker himself, but from E. Schrader. Gutschmid has thought proper to reply to this anticriticism by an octavo volume of one hundred and fifty-eight pages. In this he certainly acknowledges explicitly, as he granted in 1875, that the work of the mere deciphering of Assyrian monuments has been in the main successful. But he reiterates, and that much more exhaustively, the grounds he had previously laid down which forbid following the Assyriologists with any confidence, notwithstanding what he had granted, as above stated. I must say that I regret the precious time which Gutschmid has spent on this work, but I can see that such a μέμνασ̓ ἀπιστεῖν is necessary, since the Prussian Government has been

BSac 34:135 (July 1877) p. 564

persuaded to give a seat and a voice to Assyriology, still extremely youthful, as it is, in Germany. For the experiment of J. Brandis ought not surely to count. The warning is necessary too, since younger savants bow down before this rising sun in enthusiastic and rather loud worship (cf. F. Delitzsch�...