Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 68:272 (Oct 1911)
Article: The Babel-Bible Controversy
Author: William Notz

BSac 68:272 (Oct 1911) p. 641

The Babel-Bible Controversy

William Notz, Ph.D.

Among the epoch-making achievements of scientific research during the past century which possess a lasting character, the results of the explorations carried on in the countries of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers stand forth preeminently. Although excavations had been carried on systematically in Mesopotamia since 1842, the interest of the educated Christian world was more generally aroused in France in 1846 at the return of Paul Emil Botta from his successful expedition to Assyria. In England the interest of the public reached a climax when George Smith, in October, 1872, discovered, among the clay tablets of Assurbanipal’s library at Nineveh, an account of the Deluge, which he made public on December 3, 1872, to a representative audience over which Gladstone presided. A similar wave of enthusiasm swept over at least the Eastern States of this country, when the magnificent results of the various expeditions sent out by the University of Pennsylvania to Nippur in Babylonia, under Peters, Haynes, and Hilprecht, were made known. Again a climax was reached when, in the autumn of 1902, Professor Hilprecht, in a course of public lectures to large audiences, reviewed the remarkable finds made at Nippur. What a deep and permanent interest was created may be seen by the fact that, within the past twenty-five years, courses in Assyriology have been established in all the leading universities of this country.

BSac 68:272 (Oct 1911) p. 642

Museums, books, periodicals, and popular lectures were the means whereby such information was disseminated throughout the land; and at two universities, Pennsylvania and Yale, special chairs in Assyrian have been munificently endowed by such public-spirited men as the Clark brothers of Philadelphia and J. P. Morgan of New York.

The country most recently touched by the magic spell of the ancient Orient is Germany. Although a German scholar, Grotefend, first succeeded in finding a key for the decipherment of the long-forgotten cuneiform script, and although German scholars have ever since held a leading rank in Assyriology; yet the messages told by the ancient monuments of Babylon and Assur did not begin to interest the German people of all classes of society until recently, when Professor Friedrich Delitzsch of Berlin delivered, in the presence of the German Emperor and of a select audience, a series of lectures on “Babel and Bible,” which at once resulted in placing the subject before the forum of public discussion, and caused it to be discussed, in all its phases and bearings, by all classes of German society. A considerable Babel-Bible library in German has appeared in consequence.

Naturally the question arises, Why is it that within the l...