An interesting account is given in Wednesday's Times of a
lecture given by Professor Delitzsch, the eminent Orientalist, before the Kaiser, Count von Billow, the Prussian Minister of Public Worship and Education, and many leading Lutheran clerics. Professor Delitzsch, who laid special stress on the importance of Assyriology for the intelligent study of the Old, and even the New, Testament, declared that there could be "no greater mistake of the human mind than the belief that the Bible is a personal revelation of God. The contents of the Bible really controvert this view Scientific theology long ago recognised and demonstrated that by con- stant reconstruction and adaptation of entirely heterogeneous literary elements the Bible has become the canon of Scripture we now possess." By way of illustrating the success which had attended these efforts, Professor Delitzsch proceeded to refer the Ten Commandments to a Babylonian origin, and traced the exclusive and particularist monotheism of the Jews to the Babylonian conception of Jah-veh as a national deity. Amongst conceptions common to the Assyrian and Biblical systems he especially noted that of the resurrection from the dead, while "with pointed reference to the New Testament he spoke of the love of mystery and of the recital of fanciful stories which still characterised Orientals, especially the Bedouins."
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