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Is Kant among the Prophets? Hebrew Prophecy and German Historical Thought, 1880–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2021

Paul Michael Kurtz*
Affiliation:
Ghent University

Abstract

This article examines the interpretation of Hebrew prophecy by German Protestant scholars in the era of 1880–1920. It argues, first, that Old Testament interpreters valued the prophets since they presented God as the guiding force behind human history and, second, that these theologians cum philologians saw the prophetic conception of history as anticipating their own understanding of God in the world. The inquiry bases this argument on a reading of numerous exegetes, both leading lights and forgotten figures. Moreover, it traces this interpretative tendency across a range of sources, including specialist studies, theological monthlies, political and literary journals, popular works, public speeches, and pedagogical literature. Rather than leave the prophets in the past, these exegetes also ushered them into the present, employing their historical teachings to shore up the Christian faith. In doing so, they identified Hebrew prophecy with German Protestantism and in contrast to Judaism.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Central European History Society of the American Historical Association

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Footnotes

An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2019 Celtic Conference in Classics, in Coimbra, as part of the panel “‘What daimōn drove you on?’ Understanding Divine and Human Agency in Ancient Greek Thought and Intellectual History.” My gratitude extends to the organizers, Rebecca Van Hove and Alexandre Johnston, for inviting me to think along these lines, to Gareth Atkins and Simon Goldhill for providing insight at the conceptual stages of this work, to an exceptional anonymous reviewer for offering excellent suggestions to reinforce the argument and draw out its implications, and to Daniel D. Pioske for giving feedback on the final form. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 749628, undertaken at the University of Cambridge in 2017–2019, as well as from the Flemish Research Council (FWO).

References

1 Attributed by student Bernoulli, Carl Albrecht, Die wissenschaftliche und die kirchliche Methode in der Theologie. Ein encyklopädischer Versuch (Freiburg: Mohr, 1897), vii, 90, 223Google Scholar; Bernoulli, “Dem Senior der Basler Universität, Professor Bernhard Duhm zu seinem 80. Geburtstage,” National-Zeitung, Supplement 470 (Sunday, 9 October 1927). Bernoulli cites two works by Duhm, but this precise formula appears in neither. However, Duhm did use this language to re-present claims in the biblical text: Duhm, Israels Propheten [Lebensfragen 26; Tübingen: Mohr, 1916], 302, 309, cf. also 354. Unless cited otherwise, all translations are my own.

2 1 Samuel 19; cf. 1 Samuel 10.

3 See Nelson, Eric, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sheehan, Jonathan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Ilany, Ofri, In Search of the Hebrew People: Bible and Nation in the German Enlightenment, trans. Mishory, Ishai (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Tal, Uriel, Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics, and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870–1914, trans. Jacobs, Noah Jonathan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 199Google Scholar.

5 Heschel, Susannah, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus, Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Wiese, Christian, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany, trans. Harshav, Barbara and Wiese, Christian (Leiden: Brill, 2005)Google Scholar. Both authors ultimately concentrate on the efforts of Jewish scholars to reclaim the history of Judaism and subvert such master narratives of Christianity as the fount of Western civilization. For another dimension of biblical scholarship as colonial knowledge, see Kurtz, Paul Michael, “The Silence on the Land: Ancient Israel versus Modern Palestine in Scientific Theology,” in Negotiating the Secular and the Religious in the German Empire: Transnational Approaches, ed. Habermas, Rebekka (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019), 5697CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Stackert, Jeffrey, A Prophet Like Moses: Prophecy, Law, and Israelite Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Wellhausen, Julius, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, 1st ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1894), 77, 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In the preface, he also stated, “Prophecy cannot be separated from the law, from Jewish piety, and from Christianity; it forms, already, the transition from Israelite to Jewish history” (Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, 1st ed., v).

8 Other writings fit into yet another category, one more open and generic, which eventually consolidated into a third division and restructured the two-part compilation.

9 See Anthony Grafton, “Introduction,” in F. A. Wolf, Prolegomena to Homer, 1795, ed. and trans. Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and James E. G. Zetzel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 3–35; Glenn W. Most, “The Rise and Fall of Quellenforschung,” in For the Sake of Learning: Essays in Honor of Anthony Grafton, ed. Ann Blair and Anja-Silvia Goeing, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 2.933–54.

10 For more on the trends of this period, see David Lincicum, “Criticism and Authority,” in The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, ed. Joel D. S. Rasmussen, Judith Wolfe, and Johannes Zachhuber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 72–88; John W. Rogerson, “The Bible and Theology,” in The Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century Theology, ed. David Fergusson (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000), 455–67; and Henning Graf Reventlow, History of Biblical Interpretation, vol. 4, From the Enlightenment to the Twentieth Century, trans. Leo G. Perdue (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010 [2001]).

11 For a guide through the complexities of this scholarship, see John Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century: England and Germany ([Philadelphia]: Fortress Press, 1984); and especially the following contributions in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, vol. 3.1, The Nineteenth Century, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013): Jean Louis Ska, “The ‘History of Israel’: Its Emergence as an Independent Discipline,” 307–45; Thomas Römer, “‘Higher Criticism’: The Historical and Literary-critical Approach—with Special Reference to the Pentateuch,” 393–423; Rudolf Smend Jr., “A Conservative Approach in Opposition to a Historical-critical Interpretation: E. W. Hengstenberg and Franz Delitzsch,” 494–520; Karl William Weyde, “Studies on the Historical Books—Including Their Relationship to the Pentateuch,” 521–55.

12 Bernhard Stade, “Ueber die Lage der evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands. Rectoratsrede, gehalten zur Feier des Stiftungsfestes der Landes-Universität Giessen am 1. Juli 1883,” repr. in Ausgewählte Akademische Reden und Abhandlungen (Giessen: Ricker, 1899 [1883]), 1–36, quote at 3.

13 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 3.

14 Carl Heinrich Cornill, The Prophets of Israel: Popular Sketches from Old Testament History, trans. Sutton F. Corkran (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1895[1894]), 4, cf. v–vi, which slightly altered the German original.

15 For more on prophetic psychology, see Robert Kurtz, Zur Psychologie der vorexilischen Prophetie in Israel (Pössneck: Feigenspan, 1904); Paul Schwartzkopff, Die prophetische Offenbarung nach Wesen, Inhalt und Grenzen, unter dem Gesichtspunkte der alttestamentlichen Weissagung geschichtlich und psychologisch untersucht (Giessen: Ricker, 1896).

16 Cf., inter alia, Bernhard Duhm, Das Buch Jesaia übersetzt und erklärt, Handkommentar zum Alten Testament 3/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1892); Hermann Gunkel, Die Propheten. Die geheimen Erfahrungen der Propheten, die Politik der Propheten, die Religion der Propheten, Schriftstellerei und Formensprache der Propheten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1917), a collection of articles first published between 1903 and 1917; Gustav Hölscher, Die Profeten. Untersuchungen zur Religionsgeschichte Israels (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1914). For more on prophetic interpretation by Duhm, see Henning Graf Reventlow, “Die Prophetie im Urteil Bernhard Duhms,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 85, no. 3 (1988): 259–74; Rudolf Smend Jr., “Wissende Prophetendeutung. Zum 150. Geburtstag Bernhard Duhms,” Theologische Zeitschrift 54, no. 4 (1998): 289–99; by Gunkel, see Konrad Hammann, Hermann Gunkel. Eine Biographie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 237–53; by Hölscher, see Rudolf Smend Jr., “Gustav Hölscher. Alttestamentler und Zeitgenosse,” in Diasynchron. Beiträge zur Exegese, Theologie und Rezeption der Hebräischen Bibel. Walter Dietrich zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Thomas Naumann and Regine Hunziker-Rodewald (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2009), 345–73.

17 Heinrich Ewald, Die Propheten des Alten Bundes erklärt, 1st ed., 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Krabbe, 1840–41), which underwent English translation. On the nineteenth-century consolidation and mid-twentieth-century breakdown of the portrait of (some) prophets as inspired individuals with unmediated contact with God, see Konrad Schmid, “Klassische und nachklassische Deutungen der alttestamentlichen Prophetie,” Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 3, no. 2 (1996): 225–50.

18 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 284.

19 On the debate over the role of Assyrians in the development of prophetic thought, cf. Julius Wellhausen, review of Die Theologie der Propheten als Grundlage für die innere Entwicklungsgeschichte der israelitischen Religion dargestellt, by Bernhard Duhm, in Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie 21 (1876): 152–58.

20 Julius Wellhausen, “Israel,” in Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., vol. 13 (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1881), 396–432, esp. 417.

21 Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte, 2nd ed., Sammlung Theologischer Lehrbücher: Alttestamentliche Theologie (Freiburg: Mohr, 1899), 174; Ernst Sellin, Der alttestamentliche Prophetismus. Drei Studien (Leipzig: Deichert, 1912), 101. As for terminology, Israel initially referred to the northern kingdom in the Levant and Judah to the southern kingdom; however, even in the biblical texts themselves, the Judahites claimed the name and legacy of the Israelites. Eventually, critical scholarship fixed the nomenclature of Hebrews, Israelites (i.e., Israelites and Judahites), and Jews based on a chronology tied to political history: the prestate, state, and poststate populations, respectively.

22 Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, 178–79. He continued, “Let this never be overlooked nor forgotten: the costliest and noblest treasure that man possesses he owes to Israel and to Israelitic prophecy.” By 1917, the English translation had seen eleven editions; by 1920, the German, thirteen.

23 Karl Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, American Lectures on the History of Religions, fourth series, 1898–1899 (New York: Putnam's Sons, 1899), 196, a volume also published in German, in 1900.

24 Bruno Baentsch, Altorientalischer und israelitischer Monotheismus. Ein Wort zur Revision der entwicklungsgeschichtlichen Auffasung der israelitischen Religionsgeschichte (Tübingen: Mohr, 1906), 122. On the conservative side, see Eduard König wrote numerous works on religion in general and the prophets in particular, including Geschichte der Alttestamentlichen Religion kritisch dargestellt (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1912) and Das alttestamentliche Prophetentum und die modern Geschichtsforschung (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1910).

25 Karl Marti, The Religion of the Old Testament: Its Place among the Religions of the Nearer East, ed. W. D. Morrison, trans. G.A. Bienemann (London: Williams & Norgate, 1907 [1906]), 158, the original series being Kurzer Hand-Commentar zum Alten Testament, published by Mohr (Siebeck).

The Dutch Old Testament scholar Abraham Kuenen usually receives credit for coining the term ethical monotheism, in De godsdienst van Israël tot den ondergang van den joodschen staat (1869–70) and, at length, in De profeten en de profetie onder Israël (1875). But the phrase had also circulated earlier, in discussions of the ur-religion of humanity (Franz Xaver Pritz, “Über den Monotheismus als Urreligion der Menschheit,” Neue theologische Zeitschrift [1833] 6.1, 189–210, 305–29, 6.2, 26–50) and of the universalism of Zoroaster—as the highest form of religion before Christianity—compared to the tribal god of Abraham and ethical national god of Moses (Pertinax Philalethes [Peter Conradin von Planta], Die Wissenschaft des Staates, vol. 1, Der Mensch [St Gallen: Huber & Co., 1848], 120–22).

26 Rudolf Kittel, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 2, Das Volk in Kanaan, Quellenkunde und Geschichte der Zeit bis zum babylonischen Exil, 2nd ed., Handbücher der alten Geschichte 1.3 (Gotha: Perthes, 1909), 510fn1, being the second edition of his Geschichte der Hebräer—a work also translated into English. Though uncited, this final aphorism was penned by Friedrich Schiller, in his poem “Resignation,” but memorialized by Hegel.

27 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 3.

28 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 89–90.

29 Julius Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 1895), 104.

30 Eduard Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme. Alttestamentliche Untersuchungen, with contributions by Bernhard Luther (Halle: Niemeyer, 1906), 486; Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 2nd ed., vol. 1.1, Einleitung: Elemente der Anthropologie (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1907), §130–35; Hermann Gunkel, “Was haben wir am Alten Testament?”, Deutsche Rundschau 161 (1914): 215–41, esp. 226, published separately in 1916 as Was bleibt vom Alten Testament? and later translated into English with some omissions; see further Hugo Greßmann, Die älteste Geschichtsschreibung und Prophetie Israels (von Samuel bis Amos und Hosea), Die Schriften des Alten Testaments in Auswahl neu übersetzt und für die Gegenwart erklärt 2/1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910); Max Haller, Das Judentum. Geschichtsschreibung, Prophetie und Gesetzgebung nach dem Exil, Die Schriften des Alten Testaments in Auswahl neu übersetzt und für die Gegenwart erklärt 2/3 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1914).

31 Franz Delitzsch, Biblischer Commentar über den Propheten Jesaia, 2nd ed., Biblischer Commentar über das Alte Testament 3.1 (Leipzig: Dörffling and Franke, 1866), 8, which saw English translation; see also Otto Pfleiderer, Die Religion, ihr Wesen und ihre Geschichte, auf Grund des gegenwärtigen Standes der philosophischen und der historischen Wissenschaft dargestellt, vol. 2, Die Geschichte der Religion (Leipzig: Fues [Reisland], 1869), 331–40. More fundamentally, one line of interpretation compared Hebraic and classical historiography within the framework of religious, psychological, and universal “pragmatism”: cf. Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette, Lehrbuch der historisch-kritischen Einleitung in die kanonischen und apokryphischen Bücher des Alten Testaments, sowie in die Bibelsammlung überhaupt, 8th ed., ed. Eberhard Schrader (Berlin: Reimer, 1869), 251; see also Kittel, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 2, 552.

32 Hölscher, Die Profeten, 188.

33 For a stark contrast between Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah, and Ezekiel, “the three foundation pillars” of Judaism, see the remarkable portrait by Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile, 217. In particular, Jeremiah and (Deutero-)Isaiah saw approval for promoting an inner piety and a non-particularist perspective: for example, Eduard Krähe, Jüdische Geschichte. Von ihren Anfängen bis zu dem Untergange des Reiches Juda (Berlin: Gnadenfeld, 1888), 424–25.

34 Julius Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, vol. 5, Die kleinen Propheten übersetzt, mit Noten (Berlin: Reimer, 1892), 93, cf. 94; cf. Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, 1st ed., 77.

35 Bernhard Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 2.1, Geschichte des vorchristlichen Judenthums bis zur griechischen Zeit, Allgemeine Geschichte in Einzeldarstellungen 1/6 (Berlin: Grote, 1888), 74. Although volume 1, Geschichte Israels unter der Königsherrschaft, was single author (1887), volume 2 was bipartite, with Stade writing part 1 and Oskar Holtzmann part 2, Das Ende des jüdischen Staatswesens und die Entstehung des Christenthums.

36 Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, 2.1, 73, cf. 77.

37 Cf. Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte, 356, cf. 435, 439. With this work, he intended “to show the difference of pre-prophetic and post-prophetic religion from prophetic [religion]” (Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte, v). Although he argued for a greater appreciation of Judaism in its significance for Christianity, he did so only by distinguishing “earlier and later” Judaism (i.e., pre- and post-Maccabean) and casting the former as positive and the latter as negative (Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte, v–vi).

38 Richard Kraetzschmar, Das Buch Ezechiel übersetzt und erklärt, Handkommentar zum Alten Testament 3.3.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1900), viii.

39 Theodor Arndt, Die Stellung Ezechiels in der alttestamentlichen Prophetie (Berlin: Haack, 1885), 28, cf. 6. Rudolf Smend was a, if not the, first to designate him thus (Smend, Der Prophet Ezechiel, 2nd ed. [Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament, Lfg. 8; Leipzig: Hirzel, 1880], viii, the first edition being by Ferdinand Hitzig). Previously, the fatherhood of Judaism had been assigned to Abraham (Anton Ziegler, Historische Entwicklung der Göttlichen Offenbarung in ihren Hauptmomenten speculativ betrachtet und dargestellt [Nördlingen: Beck, 1842], 78–79), Adam (cf. Salomon Formstecher, Die Religion des Geistes, eine wissenschaftliche Darstellung des Judenthums nach seinem Charakter, Entwicklungsgange und Berufe in der Menschheit [Frankfurt: Hermann, 1841], 134, cf. 205), and even “the spirit of superstition” (der Geist des Aberglaubens) (Carl Friedrich Bahrdt, Die sämtlichen Reden Jesu, aus den Evangelisten ausgezogen und in Ordnung gestellt zur Uebersicht des Lehrgebäudes Jesu [Berlin: Vieweg, 1786], 21).

40 Rudolf Smend, Der Prophet Ezechiel, 2nd ed., Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament, Lfg. 8 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1880), xviii, the first edition being by Ferdinand Hitzig.

41 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 393, cf. 391, 397.

42 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 401–02. The sentence then went in a different direction: “and that he is far from perceiving the kind of importance the migration of European Indogermans, their culture, their defining spirit should have in the world of the Asians, who are not capable of higher organisation.”

43 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 412–13, 419.

44 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 375, 386.

45 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 426, cf. 444.

46 Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, 3–4.

47 Hans Schmidt, Die Geschichtschreibung im Alten Testament, Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher 2.16 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1911), 53; cf. also Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte, 267, 440; Bernhard Duhm, Die Entstehung des Alten Testaments. Rede zur Rektoratsfeier des Jahres 1896 und zur Einweihung der neuen Basler Universitätsbibliothek am 6. November gehalten (Freiburg: Mohr, 1897), 30. Stade saw some precedent in the prophet Hosea for the allegedly Jewish understanding of history as decline: see Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 1, 582.

48 Schmidt, Die Geschichtschreibung im Alten Testament, 54.

49 Peter L. Berger, “Charisma and Religious Innovation: The Social Location of Israelite Prophecy,” American Sociological Review 28, no. 6 (1963): 940–50, esp. 942, 943; Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany, 199.

50 Cf. Wellhausen, “Israel”; Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte. He also spoke of a “counter-reformation.”

51 Paul Volz, Mose und sein Werk (Tübingen: Mohr, 1932), 137, emphasis original, cf. 129; see, too, Peter Volz, “Die radikale Ablehnung der Kultreligion durch die alttestamentlichen Propheten,” Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie 14 (1937): 63–85; Peter Volz, Prophetengestalten des Alten Testaments. Sendung und Botschaft der alttestamentlichen Gotteszeugen, 1st ed. (Stuttgart: Calwer Vereinsbuchhandlung, 1938); cp., in the Anglosphere, John Bright, “The Prophets Were Protestants: Fresh Results of Valid Criticism,” Interpretation 1, no. 2 (1947): 153–82.

52 Bruno Baentsch, “Prophetie und Weissagung,” Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie 50, n.s. 15, no. 4 (1908): 457–85, esp. 465; Max Haller, Der Ausgang der Prophetie, Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher für die deutsche christliche Gegenwart 2.12 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1912), 21.

53 Willy Staerk, Religion und Politik im alten Israel, Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge und Schriften aus dem Gebiet der Theologie und Religionsgeschichte 43 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1905), 25; Otto Procksch, Geschichtsbetrachtung und geschichtliche Überlieferung bei den vorexilischen Propheten (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1902), 57.

54 Georg G. Iggers, The German Conception of History, rev. ed. (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1983); see, too, Frederick C. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). For other dimensions of historical thought in the Germanies, see, with respect to Christian theology, Thomas Albert Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism: W. M. L. de Wette, Jacob Burckhardt, and the Theological Origins of Nineteenth-Century Historical Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); regarding Judaism, Nils Roemer, Jewish Scholarship and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Between History and Faith (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005); concerning politics, John Edward Toews, Becoming Historical: Cultural Reformation and Public Memory in Early Nineteenth-Century Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

55 Hermann Gunkel, “The History of Religion and Old Testament Criticism,” in Fifth International Congress of Free Christianity and Religious Progress, Berlin, August 5–10, 1910: Proceedings and Papers, ed. Charles W. Wendte (Berlin-Schöneberg: Protestantischer Schriftenvertrieb and London: Williams & Norgate, 1911), 114–25, at 121, which had been published in German the previous year. For more on Gunkel's interpretation of history, see Paul Michael Kurtz, Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan: The Religion of Israel in Protestant Germany, 1871–1918, Forschungen zum Alten Testament 1/122 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 287–90.

56 Hermann Gunkel, “Das alte Testament im Licht der modernen Forschung,” in Beiträge zur Weiterentwicklung der christlichen Religion, ed. Adolf Deissmann et al. (Munich: Lehmann, 1905), 40–76, esp. 63. See further Mark Chapman, Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology: Religion and Cultural Synthesis in Wilhelmine Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), esp. 33–35, who has observed a shift away from this tendency in the thought of Ernst Troeltsch.

57 William Wrede, “Das theologische Studium und die Religionsgeschichte. Vortrag im Neuen theol. Verein zu Breslau am 2. Nov. 1903,” in William Wrede, Vorträge und Studien (Tübingen: Mohr, 1903), 64–83, esp. 66.

58 Hermann Gunkel, “Die Propheten als Schriftsteller und Dichter,” as repr. in Hans Schmidt, Die großen Propheten übersetzt und erklärt, with an introduction by Hermann Gunkel, 1st ed., Die Schriften des Alten Testaments in Auswahl neu übersetzt und für die Gegenwart erklärt 2.2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1915), esp. lxix; Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 1, 553.

59 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 3; Kittel, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. 2, 474–75.

60 Eduard König, Das Berufungsbewußtsein der alttestamentlichen Propheten. Vortrag gehalten in der evangelischen Kirche zu Unter-Barmen am 9. August 1900 (Barmen: Wupperthaler Traktat-Gesellschaft, 1900), 27–28; Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israels, vol. 2.1, 77.

61 Compare, for example, a key passage that connects world history, a god beyond all structures of the Earth, prophetic persons, divine communication to individuals, and Jesus in Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, with a reprint of the article “Israel” from the Encyclopædia Britannica, trans. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies, with a preface by William Robertson Smith (Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1885), 398.

62 Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, 35.

63 Hermann Gunkel, “Der Prophet Elias,” Preußische Jahrbücher 87 (1897): 18–51, esp. 51.

64 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 193. Unreferenced, the first citation seems to be Isaiah 22:11; though unquoted, the phrase “all in all” appears in 1 Corinthians 15:28.

65 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 96; Gunkel, Die Propheten, 55.

66 Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible, 233.

67 Reinhold Seeberg, Offenbarung und Inspiration, Biblische Zeit- und Streitfragen zur Aufklärung der Gebildeten 4.7/8 (Berlin: Runge, 1908), 65. He summarized, “History is of God; therefore, God is everywhere in it.”

68 The text, “Babel und Bibel. Ein Handschreiben Seiner Majestät Kaiser Wilhelms des Zweiten an das Vorstandsmitglied der Deutschen Orientgesellschaft, Admiral Hollmann,” dated February 15, 1903, was widely printed, circulated, and translated. The occasion was the Babel–Bible Affair: see the next section following.

69 Gunkel, “Das alte Testament im Licht der modernen Forschung,” 55; Gunkel, “The History of Religion and Old Testament Criticism,” 122.

70 Hermann Gunkel, Israel und Babylonien. Der Einfluss Babyloniens auf die israelitische Religion (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1903), 37, 16, the work being translated into English, too; Hermann Gunkel, “Ziele und Methoden der Erklärung des Alten Testamentes,” repr. in Hermann Gunkel, Reden und Aufsätze (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913 [1904]), 11–29, esp. 17. For more comparing and contrasting, see Gunkel, “Was haben wir am Alten Testament?”

71 Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte, 355, 195.

72 Duhm, Israels Propheten, 193–94. August Bender called Isaiah an “idealist”: August Bender, Vorträge über die Offenbarung Gottes auf alttestamentlichem Boden, mit steter Berücksichtigung der kritischen Forschung (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1891), 193.

73 Baentsch, “Prophetie und Weissagung,” 463.

74 On the wider venture in Protestant theology to synthesize historical work and philosophical reflection, see Johannes Zachhuber, Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany: From F. C. Baur to Ernst Troeltsch, Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); cf. also Frederick Gregory, Nature Lost? Natural Science and the German Theological Traditions of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).

75 Paul Kleinert, Die Profeten Israels in sozialer Beziehung (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1905). Cf. also the range of interpretation on economy, politics, and ethics, from alcohol to egotism—even beyond professional Protestant scholarship: for example, R., “Kampf der Propheten gegen den Alkoholismus,” Die Umschau. Übersicht über die Fortschritte und Bewegungen auf dem Gesamtgebeit der Wissenschaft, Technik, Litteratur und Kunst 4, no. 47 (1900): 926–31; Hermann Köhler, Sozialistische Irrlehren von der Entstehung des Christentums und ihre Widerlegung (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899), 102–04; the Jewish Siegmund Maybaum, Die Entwickelung des israelitischen Prophetenthums (Berlin: Düllmer, 1883); and Catholic Franz Xaver Walter, Die Propheten in ihrem sozialen Beruf und das Wirtschaftsleben ihrer Zeit. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sozialethik (Freiburg: Herder, 1900)

76 Eduard König, Der Offenbarungsbegriff des Alten Testamentes, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1882); cf. Theodor Christlieb, Moderne Zweifel am christlichen Glauben für ernstlich Suchende erörtert, 2nd ed. (Bonn: Marcus, 1870). For responses to König, see Sellin, Der alttestamentliche Prophetismus; Friedrich Giesebrecht, Die Berufsbegabung der Alttestamentlichen Propheten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1897).

77 Karl Bachmann, “Israels Prophetengestalten in ihrer Bedeutung für Unterricht und Predigt. Vortrag gehalten in der Konferenz des Jahresfestes des Prediger-Seminars-Hofgeismar am 22. August 1905,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 16, no. 4 (1906): 286–320, esp. 296.

78 Frederick C. Beiser, After Hegel: German Philosophy, 1840–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014; cf. also Frederick C. Beiser, The Genesis of Neo-Kantianism, 1796–1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

79 Baentsch, “Prophetie und Weissagung,” 483; Gunkel, “Das alte Testament im Licht der modernen Forschung,” 62. Gunkel argued elsewhere that supernatural explanation risked overlooking inspired individuals, which God's revelation as did the “eternal ideas” they carried: Gunkel, “Die Propheten als Schriftsteller und Dichter,” in Schmidt, Die großen Propheten, xxxvi.

80 Richard Kraetzschmar, Prophet und Seher im alten Israel (Tübingen: Mohr, 1901), 31–32.

81 Bernhard Duhm, Das Geheimnis in der Religion. Vortrag gehalten am 11. Februar 1896 (Freiburg: Mohr, 1896), 4–5.

82 Bernhard Duhm, Kosmologie und Religion. Vortrag, gehalten am 26. Januar 1892 (Basel: Schwabe, 1892), 5–7, 27–31.

83 Wellhausen, Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte, 1st ed., 320–21. The reference to du Bois-Reymond was removed in the second edition (with another to Thomas Carlyle). The first article in the first issue of Internationale Wochenschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik, on the unity of science, set these quotations in opposition to show two fundamentally different conceptions of history: Hermann Diels, “Die Einheitsbestrebungen der Wissenschaft,” Internationale Wochenschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik 1 (1907): 3–10; for more on this exchange, and on Wellhausen in general, see Kurtz, Kaiser, Christ, and Canaan, 162–65.

84 See further Yaacov Shavit and Mordechai Eran, The Hebrew Bible Reborn: From Holy Scripture to the Book of Books, A History of Biblical Culture and the Battles over the Bible in Modern Judaism, trans. Chaya Naor, Studia Judaica 38 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007).

85 Wilhelm Rothstein, “Religionsgeschichtliche Forschung und Offenbarungsglaube im Kampfe um das Alte Testament,” Deutsch-evangelische Blätter. Zeitschrift für den gesammten Bereich des deutschen Protestantismus 28 (1903): 525–62, esp. 558. For wider deployment of this perspective, cf. Paul Kalweit, “Offenbarung,” Deutsch-evangelische Blätter 30 (1905): 155–69; Erich Haupt, “Gemeinde und Wissenschaft im Kampf um die Bibel,” Deutsch-evangelische Blätter 30 (1905): 453–79.

86 Gunkel, Israel und Babylonien, 36–37, cf. 33–34, 39–40; cf. also Wilhelm Lotz, Geschichte und Offenbarung im Alten Testament, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1892), 7–8.

87 Rudolf Kittel, Die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft in ihren wichtigsten Ergebnissen, mit Berücksichtigung des Religionsunterricht dargestellt (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1910), 204–05, cf. 175–78. The book, which went through five editions over the next twenty years, underwent English translation.

88 Friedrich Baethgen, Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte. Der Gott Israel's und die Götter der Heiden (Berlin: Reuther, 1888), 288.

89 Julius Wellhausen, review of Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte. Der Gott Israels und die Götter der Heiden, by Friedrich Baethgen, Deutsche Litteraturzeitung 9, no. 37 (1888): 1321–22, esp. 1321—italics original and in English, alluding to Carlyle. An earlier commentator had also argued Moab could have developed a universalist monotheism if only it had conceived of its god in moral terms—this morality, of course, having been introduced by Israel's great prophets, mediated through Judaism, and completed in “the consummate religion,” that is, Christianity (August Kayser, Die Theologie des Alten Testaments in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung dargestellt, ed. Eduard Reuß [Strasbourg: Schmidt, 1886]).

90 Wellhausen, “Israel,” 411. When referring to “ethical monotheism,” Wellhausen likely referred to Kuenen. During the Great War, debates over prophetic ethics expanded into wider intellectual history and addressed larger questions of universalism and nationalism, history and philosophy, and Judaism and Christianity, notably between Hermann Cohen and Troeltsch: see Susannah Heschel, “Ecstasy versus Ethics: The Impact of the First World War on German Biblical Scholarship on the Hebrew Prophets,” in The First World War and the Mobilization of Biblical Scholarship, ed. Andrew Mein, Nathan MacDonald, and Matthew A. Collins (London: T & T Clark), 187–206; David. N. Myers, Resisting History: Historicism and Its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 35–67; Eckart Otto, “Die hebräische Prophetie bei Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch und Hermann Cohen. Ein Diskurs im Weltkrieg zur christlich-jüdischen Kultursynthese,” in Asketischer Protestantismus und der “Geist” des modernen Kapitalismus, ed. Wolfgang Schluchter and Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 201–55; cf. also Eckart Otto, “Max Weber und Ernst Troeltsch zur hebräischen Prophetie. Eine Interaktion zwischen Soziologie und Religionsphilosophie,” in Eckart Otto, Max Webers Studien des Antiken Judentums. Historische Grundlegung einer Theorie der Moderne (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 246–75.

91 Cornill, The Prophets of Israel, 1–2; Duhm, Israels Propheten, v, 8.

92 Otto Zurhellen, Die Religion der Propheten. Predigten (Tübingen: Mohr, 1911), 2.

93 Emil Kautzsch, Die bleibende Bedeutung des Alten Testaments. Ein Konferenzvortrag (Tübingen: Mohr, 1902); Gunkel, “Was haben wir am Alten Testament?”.

94 Cf. P[aul] Hartmann, “Biblische Geschichte und Kirchengeschichte in dem Lehrplan der höheren Schulen,” Preußische Jahrbücher 123 (1906): 295–304.

95 Gunkel, “Was haben wir am Alten Testament?,” 241; cf. Gunkel, “Das alte Testament im Liche der modernen Forschung,” 62.

96 For example, Johannes Wendland, “Wunderglaube und Wunderbegriff in der Theologie der Gegenwart,” Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie 53, n.s. 18 (1911): 193–217; Hermann Gunkel, “Was will die ‘religionsgeschichtliche’ Bewegung?” Deutsch-Evangelisch. Monatsblätter für den gesamten deutschen Protestantismus 5, no. 7 (1914): 385–97, which was later translated into English.

97 Heschel, “Ecstasy versus Ethics,” 188.

98 Otto Eißfeldt, Krieg und Bibel, Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher für die deutsche christliche Gegenwart 5.15–16 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1915), 39–41, 50; cf. also Otto Eißfeldt, Israels Geschichte, Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbücher 6.4 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1914); Hermann Gunkel, “Kriegsfrömmigkeit im Alten Testament,” Internationale Monatsschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik 9 (1915): 723–58, which was also published separately with another of his wartime pieces; Wilhelm Frankenberg, “Der Krieg in der Religion der älteren Propheten,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 27 (1917): 103–12.

99 Otto Eißfeldt, “Politiker und Propheten,” Preußische Jahrbücher 164 (1916): 514–21, esp. 519–20.

100 Paul Torge, “Die Propheten in ihrer Bedeutung für die Gegenwart,” Protestantische Monatshefte 19, no. 12 (1915): 397–412. He contrasted this appreciation with previous disparagement by “race theorists,” who deemed the Old Testament “un-German.”

101 Otto Richter, “Die Propheten Israels und wir,” Monatsblätter für den Evangelischen Religionsunterricht 13 (1920) 97–106, quote at 105–06; cf. Otto Richter, Kants Auffassung des Verhältnisses von Glauben und Wissen und ihre Nachwirkung besonders in der neuren Theologie (Lauban: Goldammer, 1905), biography at 53–54.

102 Haller, Der Ausgang der Prophetie, 4–5.

103 For example, Hermann Cohen, “The Significance of Judaism for the Progress of Religion,” in Fifth International Congress of Free Christianity and Religious Progress, ed. Wendte, 385–400, published in German the previous year; Hermann Cohen, “Das soziale Ideal bei Platon und den Propheten,” in Bruno Strauß, ed., Hermann Cohens Jüdische Schriften, vol. 1, Ethische und religiöse Grundfragen, with an introduction by Franz Rosenzweig, Veröffentlichungen der Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Berlin: Schwetschke & Sohn, 1924), 306–30, although the editorial notes on the lecture indicate its oral delivery in 1916 and 1918 (Cohen, Jüdische Schriften, vol. 1, Ethische und religiöse Grundfragen, 341); see further Daniel H. Weiss, Paradox and the Prophets: Hermann Cohen and the Indirect Communication of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Frederick C. Beiser, Hermann Cohen: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); on his debate with Troeltsch over prophetic ethics, see footnote 90 supra.

104 Hans Liebeschütz, “Hermann Cohen and his Historical Background,” The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 13, no. 1 (1968): 3–33, esp. 23; Myers, Resisting History, 60.

105 Cf. Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 392 (Wilhelm Windelband), 446–47 (Emil Lask), as well as, earlier, 318–19 (Johann Gustav Droysen), and, relatedly, 422–25 (Heinrich Rickert).

106 Heinrich Rickert, Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Eine logische Einleitung in die historischen Wissenschaften, part 1 (Freiburg: Mohr [Siebeck], 1896), 736.

107 Wilhelm Windelband, Geschichtsphilosophie. Eine Kriegsvorlesung, Fragment aus dem Nachlass, ed. Wolfgang Windelband and Bruno Bauch, Kantstudien Supplement 38 (Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1916), 9–10. Cf. also Droysen, who declared, “Our faith gives us the comfort that a divine hand carries us, that it governs fate, large and small. And the science of history has no higher history than to justify this faith; for this reason, it is science” (Johann Gustav Droysen, Vorlesungen über die Freiheitskriege, 2 vols. [Kiel: Universitäts-Buchhandlung, 1846], 1.5), a sentiment also expressed, inter alia, at the beginning of his “private foreword” to volume 2 of Geschichte des Hellenismus (1843), which was then brought into wider circulation when published in his posthumous Kleine Schriften zur Alten Geschichte (1893) and, moreover, in subsequent reprintings as “Theologie der Geschichte.”

108 Cp. Iggers, The German Conception of History, 133–44; Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 358–64, 377–80.

109 Iggers, The German Conception of History, 188–89. He continues, “Indeed, since this absolute manifested itself only in individual, historical forms, history became the only way to gain true knowledge and the historical approach constituted the most significant achievement of the modern spirit” (Iggers, The German Conception of History).

110 On the varied interpretations of said crisis, see Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 23–26; cf. footnote 54 supra.

111 Howard, Religion and the Rise of Historicism, esp. 1–22.

112 Frei, Hans W., The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 51Google Scholar.

113 Jörn Rüsen, “Historische Methode und religiöser Sinn—Vorüberlegungen zu einer Dialektik der Rationalisierung des historischen Denkens in der Moderne,” in Geschichtsdiskurs, vol. 2, Anfänge modernen historischen Denkens, ed. Wolfgang Küttler, Jörn Rüsen, Ernst Schulin, repr. ed. (Frankfurt/Main: Humanities Online, 2007 [1994]), 344–77, esp. 351, 357.

114 Wilhelm Caspari, Die israelitischen Propheten, Wissenschaft und Bildung, Einzeldarstellungen aus allen Gebieten des Wissens 122 (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1914), 5.