20 December 2008
Is Zecharia Sitchin Anti-Semitic?
Posted by MSH under: Ancient Astronauts; Sitchin .
I don’t believe so (Sitchin is Jewish).
That said, it seems Sitchin and his followers don’t realize how his ideas open themselves to that charge. How? Aside from pure imagination, a lot of Sitchin’s ideas presuppose a dependence of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) on earlier Sumerian and Babylonian literature. More acutely, Sitchin asserts over and over again in his books that the Old Testament writers borrowed their material from the Sumerian and later Mesopotamian people.
This idea was all the rage in the late 19th century and early 20th century, particularly in the wake of the famous “Babel und Bibel” (“Babel and the Bible”) lecture of Friedrich Delitzsch. It was the era of the decipherment of cuneiform and the discovery of creation and flood stories in Mesopotamian literature. It was also the era of deepening anti-Semitism, a belief cultivated nowhere more zealously than Germany, Delitzsch’s fatherland. In fact, it was in this environment that the “higher criticism” of the Bible began. The criticism of the Bible as in any way historical was led by German anti-Semites. The result was the pursuit of alternative origin stories, found ever-so-conveniently in the writings of the “Aryans” (who supposedly came from Sumeria — is this sounding familiar, ye followers of Sitchin?). The Nazis, of course, made this dogma, since the “Aryan” (Vedic) writings were written in Sanskrit, which was the ancient ancestor of Indo-European languages, of which German was prominent. Yes, they descended from the gods who first gave kingship, the right to rule, at Sumer — unlike those inferior Jews. They and their myths had to be eradicated.
As I’ve told Sitchinites at various lectures, no credible OT scholar today argues that the Genesis stories came wholesale from Mesopotamian material. That idea is passe, but Sitchin doesn’t seem to mind being 100 years behind the curve. The literary issue is far more complex than what we think of as borrowing, and people who spend time in the biblical text know it, and so have abandoned the views of Delitzsch and his followers.
For a readable (non-specialist) discussion of how Delitsch’s anti-semitism fueled his scholarship, click here [from Bible Review 18 no 1 (F 2002): 32-40, 47]. Amazing how this despicable bias influenced generations, and is still influencing amateur researchers like Sitchin, though only sub-consciously.
4 Comments so far...
Is Zecharia Sitchin Anti-Semitic? | UFO Religions Says:
20 December 2008 at 9:00 PM.
[...] don’t believe he is, but read this to know why the question is [...]
kjgkjg1978 Says:
29 December 2008 at 2:12 PM.
didnt civilization move from East to West???
Even the bible discribes God calling Abram from out of Ur which is ancient Sumer isnt it.
Anti-Semiticism aside wasnt Hebrew religion largely influenced by Mesoptamia since thats where Abram came from…..or you could say that the religions in Mesopotamia were/are just corruptions of Hebrew religion.
MSH Says:
1 January 2009 at 12:20 AM.
@kjgkjg1978: “largely influenced” is the overstatement here.
The Bias of 19th Century German Biblical and Assyriological Scholarship | PaleoBabble Says:
5 August 2009 at 11:04 AM.
[...] in turn erased his objectivity about the Mesopotamian influence on the Old Testament (see, “Is Zecharia Sitchin Anti-Semitic?”). I don’t think Sitchin or others who blindly follow him are anti-Semitic. But they [...]
