Synopses & Reviews
From the 1880s through the 1920s a motley collection of American scholars, soldiers of fortune, institutional bureaucrats, and financiers created the academic fields that give us our knowledge of the ancient Near East. Bruce Kuklick's new book begins with the story of the initial adventure of these determined investigators--a twelve-year dig near the Biblical Babylon, at Nippur, conducted at intervals from 1888 through 1900 and bankrolled by the Babylonian Exploration Fund. To unearth tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets, the leaders of this venture faced harsh living conditions in the desert and an academic war of each against all that was quickly begun at the site itself. As their knowledge increased, they risked their personal religious beliefs in the search for historical truth. Kuklick discusses their tribulations to illuminate two other contemporary developments: first, the maturation of the American university, particularly in contrast to its German counterpart; and second, the influence of religious-secular conflict on the ways in which Western scholarship appropriated or appreciated other cultures.
The Nippur expedition spawned unseemly (and entertaining) fights among the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Harvard, and Chicago for leadership in the study of the ancient Near East--not to mention disagreements with their own developing museums and an international scandal called the Hilprecht controversy. More significant than these quarrels was the concern for the meaning of history displayed in this period of Near Eastern scholarship. The field was linked to Biblical criticism and Judeo-Christian interests, and many of the orientalists originally possessed strong religious commitments--which some put aside as they struggled for objectivity. As recent critics have shown, "orientalism" was an example of the West's ability to appropriate the "other" for its own purposes. However, Kuklick's study demonstrates that the censure of orientalism hinges on modes of argumentation that scholars of the ancient Near East helped to legitimate, and at no small cost to themselves.
Review
andldquo;Unraveling the complex process in which the American Protestant project of moral and religious reform helped to stimulate the development of andlsquo;Assyrianandrsquo; national consciousness, Becker provides an excellent example of how secular modernity could be configured in a non-colonial missionary context in the encounter between two different Christian communities.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Beckerandrsquo;s masterful work bears on some of the key problems in the contemporary study of religion and modernity. And there are few regions of the world where these issues are more fraught than this onceandmdash;but certainly no longerandmdash;obscure corner of the Middle East. This is a book full of surprises and insights, revealed with a sure hand and impressive erudition.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Beckerandrsquo;s command of Syriac and Neo-Aramaic allows him to open up a Protestant missionary archive otherwise inaccessible to historians of American religion. The novelty of that research is matched by his ingenuity in engaging larger questions about modern formations of nationalism, religion, liberalism, and secularism. From the American Protestant outpost in Urmia, Becker draws a sparkling picture of a andlsquo;missionary modernityandrsquo;andmdash;a portrait marked by both historical subtlety and theoretical sophistication.andrdquo;
Synopsis
"The author brilliantly captures the characters, institutions, discoveries, and debates that accompanied the social and intellectual history of Near Eastern archaeology in the United States."--C. C. Lamber-Karlovsky, Harvard University
Synopsis
Most Americans have little understanding of the relationship between religion and nationalism in the Middle East. They assume that the two are rooted fundamentally in regional history, not in the history of contact with the broader world.and#160;However, as Adam H. Becker shows in this book, Americansandmdash;through their missionariesandmdash;had a strong hand in the development of a national and modern religious identity among one of the Middle Eastand#39;s most intriguing (and little-known) groups: the modern Assyrians. Detailing the history of the Assyrian Christian minority and the powerful influence American missionaries had on them, he unveils the underlying connection between modern global contact and the retrieval of an ancient identity.and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
American evangelicals arrived in Iran in the 1830s. Becker examines how these missionaries, working with the andldquo;Nestorianandrdquo; Church of the Eastandmdash;an Aramaic-speaking Christian community in the borderlands between Qajar Iran and the Ottoman Empireandmdash;catalyzed, over the span of sixty years, a new national identity. Instructed at missionary schools in both Protestant piety and Western science, this indigenous group eventually used its newfound scriptural and archaeological knowledge to link itself to the history of the ancient Assyrians, which in time led to demands for national autonomy. Exploring the unintended results of this American attempt to reform the Orient, Becker paints a larger picture of religion, nationalism, and ethnic identity in the modern era.and#160;
Synopsis
This is a fascinating study of the relationship between the arrival of American Protestant missionaries and the emergence of an ethnic nationalism among East Syrian Christians within the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.and#160;and#160; Missionary innovations in media, education, and ritual became integral to the development of a new Assyrian national consciousness among and#147;Nestorianand#8221; Christians dispersed across parts of what would become Turkey, Iran, and Iraq.and#160; Before the American missions were established in the 1830s, these Christians lived intermingled with a number of other religious and linguistic groups, and tribal affiliation or village of origin were the predominant bases of self-identification. However, by the turn of the twentieth century a national consciousness had developed whereby many of them understood themselves to be descendants of an ancient near eastern race. That nationalist understanding, the author shows, still reverberates in and beyond these and#147;Assyrianand#8221; Christian communities today. Becker effectively connects this Assyrian story to the wider literature on how and#147;religionand#8221; itself is established as a distinct social, cultural domainand#151;a process of reification that gains particular force in the Enlightenmentand#8217;s aftermath.and#160; He reveals just how much American Protestant missionaries participated in that reinvention of and#147;religion.and#8221;and#160; The resulting construction lined up closely with American liberal political projectsand#151; religious freedom and personal autonomy. That this missionary view of and#147;religionand#8221; proved so useful for forging an Assyrian nationalist discourse is a compelling twist of the story line.and#160;and#160; The ongoing, unstable play between these two inventionsand#151;and#147;religionand#8221; and and#147;nationand#8221;and#151;is wonderfully detailed throughout. The book speaks effectively to a wide audience of scholars, bringing into focus a kind of and#147;missionary modernityand#8221; that carries significance across various fields and areas of study.
About the Author
Adam H. Becker is associate professor of religious studies and classics at New York University. He is the author of Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom.
Table of Contents
Prelude: A Song of Assyria
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Names
and#160;
Introduction: Religious Reform, Nationalism, and Christian Mission
Chapter 1: The Church of the East before the Modern Missionary Encounter: Historicizing Religion before and#147;Religionand#8221;
Chapter 2: A Residence of Eight Years in Persia (1843): Mr. Perkins of West Springfield, Massachusetts, meets Mar Yokhannan of Gawilan, Persia
Chapter 3: Printing the Living Word: Moral Reform and the Awakening of Nation and Self (1841and#150;70)
Chapter 4: Being Together in the Living Word: The Mission and Evangelical Sociality (1834and#150;70)
Chapter 5: Death, the Maiden, and Dreams of Revival
Chapter 6: National Contestation and Evangelical Consciousness: The Journals of Native Assistants
Chapter 7: Continuity and Change in the Late Nineteenth Century: New Institutions, Missionary Competition, and the First Generation of Nationalists
Chapter 8: Retrieving the Ruins of Nineveh: Language Reform, Orientalizing Autoethnography, and the Demand for National Literature
Epilogue: Mirza David George Malik (1861and#150;1931) and the Engaged Ambivalence of Poetry in Exile
Notes
Bibliography
Index