Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
Encyclopedia
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Lutheran churchman and neo-Lutheran theologian
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
.
He was born at Frondenberg, a Westphalia
Westphalia
Westphalia is a region in Germany, centred on the cities of Arnsberg, Bielefeld, Dortmund, Minden and Münster.Westphalia is roughly the region between the rivers Rhine and Weser, located north and south of the Ruhr River. No exact definition of borders can be given, because the name "Westphalia"...
n village, and was educated by his father, who was a minister of the Reformed Church and head of the Frondenberg
Fröndenberg
Fröndenberg is a town in the district of Unna, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.-Geography:Fröndenberg is situated in the Ruhr valley, approx...
convent of canonesses (Fräuleinstift). Entering the University of Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...
in 1819, Hengstenberg attended the lectures of Georg Wilhelm Freytag for Oriental languages and of Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler
Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler
Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler, KH was a Protestant German church historian.-Biography:He was born at Petershagen, near Minden, where his father, Georg Christof Friedrich, was preacher...
for church history, but his energies were principally devoted to philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, and his earliest publication was an edition of the Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
Mu'allaqat
Mu'allaqat
The Mu‘allaqāt is the title of a group of seven long Arabic poems or qasida that have come down from the time before Islam. Each is considered the best work of these pre-Islamic poets...
of Imru' al-Qais
Imru' al-Qais
Imru` al-Qais bin Hujr al-Kindi was an Arabian poet in the 6th century AD, and also the son of one of the last Kindite kings. His qaseeda, or long poem, "Let us stop and weep" is one of the seven Mu'allaqat, poems prized as the best examples of pre-Islamic Arabian verse...
, which gained for him a prize at his graduation in the philosophical faculty. This was followed in 1824 by a German translation of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's Metaphysics.
Finding himself without the means to complete his theological studies under Johann August Wilhelm Neander and Friedrich August Tholuck in Berlin, he accepted a post at Basel
Basel
Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...
as tutor in Oriental languages to Johann Jakob Stähelin ( 1797–1875 ), later a professor at the university. It was that he began to direct his attention to a study of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, which led him to a conviction, not only of the divine character of evangelical religion, but also of the unapproachable adequacy of its expression in the Augsburg Confession
Augsburg Confession
The Augsburg Confession, also known as the "Augustana" from its Latin name, Confessio Augustana, is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church and one of the most important documents of the Lutheran reformation...
. In 1824 he joined the philosophical faculty of the University of Berlin as a Privatdozent, and in 1825 he became a licentiate in theology, his theses being remarkable for their evangelical fervour and for their emphatic protest against every form of "rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
", especially in questions of Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
criticism.
In 1826 he became professor extraordinarius in theology; and in July 1827 took on the editorship of the Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, a strictly orthodox journal, which in his hands acquired an almost unique reputation as a controversial organ. It did not become well-known until in 1830 an anonymous article (by Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach
Ernst Ludwig von Gerlach was a conservative Prussian judge, politician, and editor. He was the son of Carl Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach and the brother of Ludwig Friedrich Leopold von Gerlach....
) appeared, which openly charged Wilhelm Gesenius
Wilhelm Gesenius
Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius was a German orientalist and Biblical critic.-Biography:He was born at Nordhausen...
and Julius Wegscheider
Julius Wegscheider
Julius August Ludwig Wegscheider , was a German Protestant theologian.He was born at Küblingen...
with infidelity and profanity, and on the ground of these accusations advocated the interposition of the civil power, thus giving rise to the prolonged Hallische Streit. In 1828 the first volume of Hengstenberg's Christologie das Alten Testaments passed through the press; in the autumn of that year he became professor ordinarius in theology, and in 1829 doctor of theology.
Main works
- Christologie des Alten Testaments (1829–1835; 2nd ed., 1854–1857; Eng. trans. by R Keith, 1835–1839, also in Clark's Foreign Theological Library, by T Meyer and J Martin, 1854–1858), a work of much learning the estimate of which varies according to the hermeneutical principle of the individual critic
- English translation in (Google Books)
- Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1831–1839); Eng. trans., Dissertations on the Genuineness of Daniel, and the Integrity of Zechariah (Edin., 1848), and Dissertation on the Genuineness of the Pentateuch (Edin., 1847), in which the traditional view on each question is strongly upheld, and much capital is made of the absence of harmony among the negative
- English translation in (Google Books for Vol. 1) (Google Books for Vol. 2)
- English translation in (Google Books)
- Die Bücher Moses und Aegypten (1841)
- English translation in (Google Books)
- Die Geschichte Bileams u. seiner Weissagungen (1842; translated along with the Dissertations on Daniel and Zechariah)
- Commentar über die Psalmen (1842–1847; 2nd ed., 1849–1852; Eng. trans. by P Fairbain and J Thomson, Edin., 1844–1848), which shares the merit and defects of the Christologie
- English translation in (Google Books for Vol. 1) (Google Books for Vol. 2) (Google Books for Vol. 3)
- Die Offenbarung Johannis erläutert (1849–1851; 2nd ed., 1861–1862; Eng. trans. by P. Fairbairn also in Clark's " Foreign Theological Library," 1851-1852)
- English translation in (Google Books for Vol. 1) (Google Books for Vol. 2)
- Das Hohe Lied ausgelegt (1853)
- Der Prediger Salomo ausgelegt (1859)
- English translation in (Google Books)
- Das Evangelium Johannis erläutert (1861–1863; 2nd ed., 1867-1871 Eng. trans., 1865)
- Die Weissagungen das Propheten Ezechiel erläutert (1867–1868).
- English translation in (Google Books)
Of minor importance are:
- De rebus Tyrioruz commentatio academica (1832)
- Uber den Tag des Herrn (1852)
- Da Passe, ein Vortrag (1853)
- Die Opfer der heiligen Schrift (1859)
Several series of papers also, as, for example:
- "The Retentio of the Apocrypha,"
- "Freemasonry" (1854)
- "Duelling" (1856)
- "The Relation between the Jews and the Christian Church" (1857; 2nd ed., 1859), which originally appeared in the Kirchenzeitung, were afterwards printed in a separate form.
Posthumously published:
- Geschichte des Reiches Gottes unter dem Alten Bunde (1869–1871)
- Das Buch Hiob erläutert (1870–1875)
- Vorlesungen über die Leidensgeschichte
External links
- Hengstenberg and His Influence on German Protestantism The Methodist Review 1862, vol. XLIV, p. 108