Friedrich Delitzsch

He was co-founder of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) and director of the Vorderasiatische Abteilung (Near Eastern Department) of the Royal Museums.

In a 1902 controversial lecture titled "Babel and Bible", Delitzsch maintained that many Old Testament writings were borrowed from ancient Babylonian tales, including the Genesis creation narrative and the Genesis flood narrative.

In the early 1920s, Delitzsch published the two-part Die große Täuschung (The Great Deception), which was a critical treatise on the book of Psalms, prophets of the Old Testament, the invasion of Canaan, etc.

Delitzsch also stridently questioned the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible and placed great emphasis on its numerous examples of immorality (see also Julius Wellhausen).

Although Delitzsch's proposal to replace the Old Testament with German myths did not extend to this revision, his student Paul Haupt was one of the major advocates of the thesis of the Aryan Jesus.