Philhellenism and the furor orientalis

Modern Intellectual History

Volumn 1, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 331-358

  Marchand, Suzanne ^a  

^a LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 77954302660     PISSN: 14792443     EISSN: 14792451     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1479244304000204     Document Type: Article

References (80)

1. Heinrich Zimmer, Artistic Form and Yoga in the Sacred Images of India, trans. Gerald Chapple and James B. Lawson (Princeton, NJ, 1984), 19–20.
2. Two years after the publication of Kunstform, Zimmer married Hofmannsthal's daughter Christiane, and he would later serve as the Austrian writer's literary executor.
3. Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1964); D. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London, 1972); Frank Manuel, The Broken Staff Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, MA, 1992); Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1983,1993); Debora Shuger, The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity (Berkeley, CA, 1994). Of Arnaldo Momigliano's many important publications, I will cite only Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism, ed. Silvia Berti, trans. Maura Masella-Gayley (Chicago, 1994), and Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography (Middleton, CT, 1977).
4. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978), 12.
5. For a sketch of another archetypical “furious” orientalist, see Suzanne L. Marchand, “The Rhetoric of Artifacts and the Decline of Classical Humanism: The Case of Josef Strzygowski,” History and Theory 33 (Dec. 1994), 106–30.
6. Carl E. Schorske, “To the Egyptian Dig: Freud's Psycho-Archeology of Cultures in idem, Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism (Princeton, NJ, 1998), 191–218.
7. That there is a Jewish furor orientalis to be studied, I am certain; key proponents here would certainly be Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem and Franz Rosenzweig, all thinkers who emphasized the non-rational, more “oriental” side of Judaism in response, I believe, to the same sort of crises in classicism and liberalism (which here would include assimilationist doctrine and the Wissenschaft des Judentums) to which the gentile orientalists I describe here reacted. For some examples, see Martin Kramer, ed., The Jewish Discovery of Islam (Tel Aviv, 1999).
8. Some time ago, Frank Manuel began posing these uncomfortable questions; see his Broken Staff. See also Jonathan Hess, Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity (New Haven, CT, 2002), and Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible (Princeton, NJ, forthcoming 2005).
9. Ernest Renan, “Des religions de l'antiquite et de leurs derniers historiens Revue des deux Mondes, 835.
10. Eugen Wirth, “Orientalistik und Orientforschung: Aufgaben und Probleme aus der Sicht der Nachbarwissenschaften in Wolfgang Voigt, ed., XIX. Deutscher Orientalistentag (28. September bis 4. October 1975): Vortrage, Zeitschrift der Deutschen-Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, supp. III/1 (Wiesbaden, 1977), lvii.
11. See Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in Understanding (Albany, NY, 1988), 148-59; Suzanne L. Marchand Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750–1970 (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 46–7.
12. Babinger to C. H. Becker, Feb. 18, 1920, in Berlin (Dahlem), Geheimes Staatsarchiv, N. Becker, Mappe 6181.
13. Paul Deussen, Mein Leben, ed. Erika Rosenthal-Deussen (Leipzig, 1922), 87.
14. Ibin., 177–86.
15. Adolf Erman, Agypten und agyptisches Leben im Altertum (Tubingen, 1885), 6–7.
16. Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe's Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880, trans. Gene Patterson-Black and Victor Reinking (New York, 1984).
17. Leopold von Schroder, “Buddha und unsere Zeit” (1905), in idem, Reden und Aufsatze, vornehmlich aber Indiens Literatur und Kultur (Leipzig, 1913), 216–17.
18. In 1885, Theodor Noldeke commented that the Romans had rightly taken Aristotle's advice to Alexander to act as masters over the “Orientals” “just as, mutatis mutandis, the Europeans still today have the right to rule over the Asiatics.” Noldeke, Ueber Mommsens Darstellung der romischen Herrschaft und romischen Politik im Orient (Leipzig, 1885), 3.
19. Schrader had, however, engaged in heated debate with the Jewish scholar Joseph Halevy, claiming that the (Semitic) Babylonians had been able to invent writing, mythology, art and perhaps even monotheism only as a result of contact with the indigenous Turanians. Jerrold S. Cooper, “Posing the Sumerian Question: Race and Scholarship in the Early History of Assyriology Aula Orientalis 9/1-2, 52–3.
20. On Stucken see Ingeborg L. Carlson, Eduard Stucken (1865-1936): Ein Dichter und seine Zeit (Berlin 1978). An abridged English version of Dupuis's 12-volume work appeared in 1872, and was reprinted as The Origin of All Religious Worship (New York, 1984).
21. The title of Jensen's work says it all: Moses, Jesus, Paulus: Drei Varianten des babylonischen Gottmenschen Gilgamesh: Eine Anklage und ein Appell (Frankfurt, 3rd edn, 1910).
22. Peter Jensen, Das Gilgamesh-Epos in der Weltliteratur, vol. 1 (Strasbourg, 1906), viii.
23. See Nittert Janssen, Theologie furs Volk: Eine Untersuchung Uber den Einfluf3 der Religionsgeschichtlichen Schule auf die Popularisierung der theologischen Forschung vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg unter besonderer BerUcksichtigung des kirchlichen Liberalismus in der lutherischen Landeskirche Hannovers (Gottingen, 1993), esp. 156–7.
24. On Eugen Diederichs's interest in religion, see Gary D. Stark, Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890–1933 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), 61–76. On the involvement of Gebauer-Schwetschke and P. Siebeck Verlags, see Janssen, Theologie furs Volk, 154–60.
25. Eduard Meyer to Georg Wissowa, Jan. 13, 1903, quoted in Christhard Hoffmann, Juden und Judentum im Werk deutscher Althistoriker des 19. und Jahrhunderts (Leiden, 1988), 166, no. 78.
26. By 1905, the first lecture had sold 6o copies and the second 45,000; some 1,650 articles and 28 pamphlets appeared in the next two years. Reinhard G. Lehmann, Friedrich Delitzsch und der Babel-Bibel-Streit (Gottingen, 1994), 50; Friedrich Delitzsch, Babel und Bibel: Ein Ruckblick Ausblick (Stuttgart, 1904), 3, 50.
27. Geoffrey G. Field Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of Houston Stewart Chamberlain (New York, 1981), 255–9.
28. E.g. Hugo Winckler, “Der alte Orient und die Geschichtsforschung Mitteilungen der vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft 1, 17–18.
29. See Alfred Jeremias, Die Panbabylonisten: Orient und die aegyptische Religion, vol. i> Im Kampfe urn den alten Orient (Leipzig, 1907), 21–2.
30. Hugo Winckler, Die jungsten Kampfer wider den Panbabylonismus (Im Kampfe urn den alten Orient 2) (Leipzig, 1907), 71–3.
31. Max Weber, Ancient Judaism, trans. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (London, 1952), 427–8.
32. Rumor had it that Friedrich's father, Franz, a noted Hebraist, was the illegitimate son of a Jewish boarder who roomed with the family. Cooper, “Sumerian Question 56 n. 56.
33. Wilhelm's letter to Chamberlain of June 3, 1923 opens with the statement: “My opinion is that Christ was of Galilean ancestry, and thus no Jew Houston Stewart Chamberlain Briefe, 1882–1924, und Briefwechsel mit Kaiser Wilhelm II., 1 (Munich, 1928), 273.
34. On Freud's attempt to revive the Enlightenment tradition of John Spencer and the illuminati, see Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge, MA, 1997).
35. There is now excellent new material on early modern histories of religion; for one example, see Guy G. Strousma, “Richard Simon: From Philology to Comparativism Archiv fur Religionsgeschichte, 3, ed. Jan Assmann et al. (Munich, 2001), 89–107.
36. Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago, 1998), esp. 186–228.
37. Abraham Geiger, Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume ausgenommen? (Bonn, 1833).
38. See William Foxwell Albright, History Archaeology and Christian Humanism (New York, 1964) 36–7.
39. Wilhelm Bousset, “Foreward to the First Edition in idem, Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus, trans. John E. Steely (Nashville, TN, 1970), 13. This translation was made from the 5th edn, 1964; the 1st edn appeared in 1913.
40. Momigliano, “J. G. Droysen between Greeks and Jews in idem, Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography, 315.
41. Birger A. Pearson, Gnosticism, Judaism, and Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis, 1990), 10–27, esp. 26 n. 41.
42. Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium vom Gott (Darmstadt, 1985 [rept of 2nd edn of 1924]), esp. 215-35; quotation at 222.
43. Von Harnack, Marcion. But Harnack would not go as far as Delitzsch's Grosse Duschung in a note added to the 2nd edn, Harnack distanced himself from the view that the Old Testament should be completely thrown out (223 n. 1).
44. Adolf Harnack, Die Aufgabe der theologischen Facultaten und die allgemeine Religionsgeschichte (Giessen, 1901).
45. For a more extensive treatment of Reitzenstein's work, see my essay “From Liberalism to Neoromanticism: Albrecht Dieterich, Richard Reitzenstein, and the Religious Turn in Fin-de-Siecle German Classical Studies in Out of Arcadia, ed. Martin Ruehl and Ingo Gildenhard, BICS Supplement 79, 129–60.
46. Naturally, there were numerous precursors to Reitzenstein here, from the Hermeticists to F. W. Ghillany, who argued in the 186os that oriental religions, including Mithraism, had shaped Christian symbols and practices. See Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, trans. W. Montgomery (New York, 1962; originally published 1906), 167.
47. Richard Reitzenstein, Poimandres: Studien zur griechisch-agyptischen und fruhchristlichen Literatur (Leipzig, 1904), 181–90.
48. Wilhelm Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (Gottingen, 1907), 7–8.
49. Theodor Noldeke, Mandaische Grammatik (Halle, 1875); Wilhelm Brandt, Die Mandaische Religion (Leipzig, 1889) and Mandaische Schriften (Gottingen, 1893). See Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of an Ancient Religion, trans. Robert McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco, 1983), 25–30.
50. See Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung (New York, 1997), 126–36.
51. Hans Jonas, Gnosis und spatantiker Geist (Gottingen, 1934), 3.
52. Martin Buber, “The Spirit of the Orient and Judaism”, reprinted in Martin Buber, On Judaism, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York, 1967), 66.
53. Richard Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen: Nach ihren Grundgedanken und Wirkungen (Leipzig, 1910).
54. See George Foot Moore, “Christian Writers on Judaism Harvard Theological Review 14 (July, 1921), 197–254, esp. 241–8.
55. See Marchand, “From Liberalism to Neoromanticism.”
56. For a good discussion of the appeal of this approach, see Hans Kippenberg, Die Entdeckung der Religionsgeschichte: Religionswissenschaft und Moderne (Munich, 1997).
57. Hermann Gunkel, Schopfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (Gottingen, 1895), vii.
58. See, e.g., Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verstandnis, 96; Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London, 2nd edn, 1950), 142.
59. Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (London, 1970). E. H. Gombrich, Of course, this problematic also refers to Warburg's struggle to retain his sanity.
60. Lears uses this term to describe American Brahmin orientalism, in No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (New York, 1981).
61. Ibin., 246–7.
62. For the orientation of Zimmer pere, see Heinrich Zimmer, Altindisches Leben: Die Kultur der vedischen Arier nach den Samhita dargestellt (Berlin, 1879; rept Hildesheim, 1973), v—xiii.
63. Zimmer, “Some Biographical Remarks about Henry R. Zimmer in idem, Artistic Form and Yoga, 258–9.
64. Ibin., 250.
65. Ibin., 256–9.
66. Ibin., 248.
67. Zimmer, Artistic Form, 233–4.
68. Zimmer, “Some Biographical Remarks 249.
69. Zimmer quoted in Matthew Kopstein, “Schopenhauer's Shakti,” in Heinrich Zimmer Coming Into His Own, ed. Margaret Case (Princeton, NJ, 1994), io8.
70. Wendy Doniger, “The King and the Corpse and the Rabbi and the Talk-Show Star: Zimmer's Legacy to Mythologists and Indologists in Heinrich Zimmer Coming Into His Own, ed. Case, 56.
71. Heinrich Zimmer, The King and the Corpse: Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil, ed. Joseph Campbell (Washington, DC, 1948), e.g. 222.
72. For an interesting discussion of Weimar-era philhellenism, see Charles Bambach, Heidegger's Roots: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks (Ithaca, NY, 2003), esp. 46–56.
73. Freud quoted in Schorske, “To the Egyptian Dig 191.
74. Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, ed. Joseph Campbell (Washington, DC, 1946), 218–19.
75. Though, sadly, it often did: numerous orientalists collaborated with the Nazi regime. See Ludmila Hanisch, Die Nachfolger der Exegeten: Deutschsprachige Erforschung des Vorderen Orients in der ersten Halfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 2003), 114–73.
76. Though Zimmer's biographers do not address his religious inclinations, it seems from scattered evidence that he had, by the later 193os developed sympathy for a kind of Creuzerian Catholic universalism, which would fit, too, with his associations with the Hofmannsthal family. For some Delphic statements to this effect, see his “Some Biographical Remarks 257; The King and the Corpse, 52; and Gerald Chapple “Heinrich and Henry R. Zimmer in Heinrich Zimmer Coming Into His Own, ed. Case, 84.
77. Erwin R. Goodenough, “The Problem in idem, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, ed. Jacob Neusner (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 32–5. See also Neusner's “Editor's Foreword” in this volume. See William Foxwell Albright's attempt to balance the picture in History, Archaeology and Christian Humanism, esp. 17-40; also Arthur Darby Nock, “The Study of the History of Religion”, reprinted in idem, Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, ed. Zeph Stewart 1 (Cambridge, MA, 1972), 337.
78. Arnaldo Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (Cambridge, 1975).
79. The latter is a reference, of course, to Martin Bernal's Black Athena: The Afro-Asian Roots of Classical Civilization (London, 1987).
80. I would like to thank the following readers for their enormously helpful comments on various versions of this essay: Tuska Benes, Anthony Grafton, Malachi Hacohen, Susannah Heschel, Anthony J. La Vopa, Robert Norton, Carl Schorske, and Jonathan Sheehan. Oral versions of this paper were presented at Stanford University (Department of Classics) and at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University.