Tuesday, March 26, 2024

It is the 26th of March 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Today I am going to tell you the story of a man who only lived to 36 but in those years would teach himself cuneiform and make one of the discoveries of the 19th century with implications for today… but first, to get to him: George Smith of London circa 1860 I need to go back to the Renaissance and Reformation in the 16th century.

It was in the 16th century that history as a discipline as we know it (for the most part) was first practiced. Sure, we had chroniclers and people who wrote the family trees and local histories, but it wasn’t yet a proper discipline. It was both the Renaissance and Reformation that made the study of the past paramount to the present. The Renaissance, with its attempts to resurrect the glories of Ancient Greece and Rome, and the Reformation with its cry “Ad Fontes!” Or “Back to the original sources.”

To simplify our format, you could go in one of two directions. The “historian” dealt with texts and ideas, while the “antiquarian” dealt with physical things- curators, archivists, museum conservators, etc… After the Enlightenment in the 19th century, a “new science” was created after the fashion of the day and the antiquarian became the “archaeologist”. Just as with the Renaissance and Reformation traditions, Christians became fascinated with what this new science of the past might reveal- “Biblical Archaeology” was born.

The Society of Biblical Archaeology was founded in 1870 in London and it was at their annual meeting in 1872 that George Smith bounds on to the global stage with his paper outlining his findings.

But Smith, born on this, the 26th of March in 1840, was no archaeologist. Smith had no formal training in the field or any field save his trade of banknote engraving, which he had been apprenticed to at the age of 14. But Smith was fascinated with the treasures recently unearthed in the Near East and sent to the British Museum, a building conveniently adjacent to his engravers shop. Smith became interested in the Cuneiform tablets from Nineveh, which had curious triangular-shaped engraved letters. He spent his evening teaching himself to read Cuneiform, and during his lunch breaks, he read the tablets at the museum.  He came to the attention of Sir Henry Rawlinson, the man who first deciphered Cuneiform. Rawlinson was so impressed with this 20-year-old self-taught engraver he offered him a job as his assistant in reading and translating the new tablets.

The story is told that upon his grand discovery, he began running like mad around the room and tearing his outerwear off- he had found, amidst the Akkadian texts, not only the ending to the great Epic of Gilgamesh, something thought forever lost, but this story recounted a flood, a God telling a man to build a giant boat to fill with living creatures and his family and a storm fell that engulfed the world in a flood. He presented his findings at the 1872 Society of Biblical Archaeology and this set off a public furor. Articles were published in major daily papers on both sides of the Atlantic, and Scholars and Christians and Christian scholars wondered what this could mean. And they debated in churches and schools and the papers themselves. Some suggested that parallel accounts in different cultures delegitimized historical accounts, while others pointed to these parallels as proof and legitimacy.

On the side of legitimacy was Smith, who went on to translate more and publish his “Chaldean Account of Genesis,” a curious title but a collection of Ancient Near Eastern stories and their biblical parallel. The book was a surprise hit and one of the best-selling books of the 1870s. Biblical archaeology would catch fire. Queen Victoria’s “Palestine Exploration Fund” received funding and is an important place in the British imagination. We can draw a line from here to the British Mandate in Palestine post World War I and the troubles today. It would also inspire the likes of William Albright, a giant in the field who would give us the groundbreaking Dead Sea Scrolls in the following century.

None of this was observed by Smith, who tragically died the year his book on Genesis was published, 1876. Born on this day in 1840, the self-taught translator who changed the future of Biblical Archaeology was 36 years old.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary for this Holy Tuesday of Holy Week from 1 Corinthians 1:18:

18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
    the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 26th of March 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose Purdue Boilermakers are making noise in the Madness of March, and he is Christopher Gillespie. 

The show is written and read by a man who noticed that Smith died of the same thing that used to get my characters in the Oregon Trail game- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.