Critical note on Friedrich Delitzsch

 

The evangelical German professor F(ranz) Delitzsch should be distinguished from his son (1850–1922), the liberal Assyriologist F(riedrich) Delitzsch.

 

a) This scholar promoted the scholarly climate that encouraged Adolf Hitler's racist and unbiblical version of Christianity.

b) Friedrich Delitzsch rejected the verbal inspiration of the Hebrew Scriptures.

c) He also attacked the concept of revelation and denied that the Hebrew Bible was authoritative for modern German Christians.

d) He also denigrated the ethical value of the Hebrew prophets.

e) Delitzsch thought that it was more beneficial for German Christians to learn to appreciate God's revelation to the German people throughout their own history.

 

In his last publication, DieGrosse Tauschung (The Great Deception) he stated that the Hebrew Bible was an untruthful historical record. It should be replaced by German Christians with Schwaner's Germanen-Bibel, which collects the thoughts of Germany's heroes of the past concerning God, eternity, and immortality. About the Jews he stated (Tauschung I:105): "It is obvious that such a people, which is deliberately landless or an international people, presents a great, a frightening danger for all other peoples of the earth."

 

Dr Benno Zuiddam

 

See also: Bill T. Arnold; David B. Weisberg. A Centennial Review of Friedrich Delitzsch's "Babel und Bibel" Lectures. Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 121, No. 3. (Autumn, 2002), pp. 441-457.