De-Assyrianization

In his Babel and Bible, Friedrich Delitzsch pointed to the leftovers of “Sumerian-Babylonian culture” in the modern world – the Zodiac as a system of twelve signs, the circle divided into 360 degrees, the hour divided into sixty minutes and the minutes into sixty seconds (66-7).

Babylonian influence is evident not only in science and mathematics, but in religion, and that disturbs Delitzsch: “Many a Babylonian feature has attached itself even to our religious ideas through the medium of the Bible. When we have removed these conceptions, which, though derived, it is true, from highly-gifted peoples, are nevertheless purely human, and when we have freed our minds of firmly-rooted prejudice of every kind, religion itself, as extolled by the prophets and poets of the Old Testament, and as taught in its most sublime sense by Jesus, as also the religious feeling of our own hearts, is so little affected, that it may rather be said to emerge from the cleansing process in a truer and more sympathetic form” (67). 

It’s not clear exactly what Delitzsch wants to delete. He finds “an echo of [the] contest between Marduk and Tiamat in the Apocalypse of John, where we read of a conflict between the Archangel Michael and the ‘Beast of the Abyss, the Old Servant, which is the Devil and Satan’” (52). Job, which “betrays a close acquaintance with Babylonian views” contrasts “a hot, waterless desert, destined for the wicked, and a garden, with clear, fresh water, for the pious” (59). Are these the sorts of things that need to be purged? Seems that this would involve quite a lot of purging.

Christianity, in short, must be saved from the Bible. Or at least from the chaffy forms of the Bible. We’ll keep the nugget of feeling.

NOTE: An earlier version of this post attributed Babel and Bible to Franz Delitzsch, the father of Friedrich Delitzsch, who was the author of the book. Franz is the popular evangelical commentators. Thanks to Rev Dr Thomas Renz for pointing out my error.