Johann David Michaelis
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...
biblical scholar and teacher, was a member of a family which had the chief part in maintaining that solid discipline in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
and the cognate languages which distinguished the University of Halle in the period of Pietism
Pietism
Pietism was a movement within Lutheranism, lasting from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century and later. It proved to be very influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to...
.
Life and work
J. D. Michaelis was trained for academic life under his father's eye. At Halle he was influenced, especially in philosophyPhilosophy
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...
, by Siegmund J. Baumgarten
Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten
Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten was a German Protestant theologian. He was a brother to philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten....
(1706–1757), the link between the old Pietism
Pietism
Pietism was a movement within Lutheranism, lasting from the late 17th century to the mid-18th century and later. It proved to be very influential throughout Protestantism and Anabaptism, inspiring not only Anglican priest John Wesley to begin the Methodist movement, but also Alexander Mack to...
and J. S. Semler
Johann Salomo Semler
Johann Salomo Semler was a German church historian and biblical commentator.-Youth and education:He was born at Saalfeld in Electoral Saxony, the son of a poor clergyman. He grew up in pietistic surroundings, which powerfully influenced him his life through, though he never became a Pietist...
, while he cultivated his strong taste for history under Chancellor Ludwig. In 1739-1740 he qualified as university lecturer. One of his dissertations was a defence of the antiquity and divine authority of the vowel points in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
. His scholarship still moved along the old traditional lines, and he was also much exercised by certain religious scruples, with some seeing a conflict between his independent mind and that of submission to authority - encouraged by the Lutheranism
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
in which he had been trained - which affected his reasoning.
A visit to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in 1741-1742 lifted him out of the narrow groove of his earlier education. In passing through the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
he made the acquaintance of Albert Schultens
Albert Schultens
-Biography:He was born at Groningen, where he studied for the church. He went on to the University of Leiden, applying himself specially to Hebrew and the cognate tongues. His dissertation on The Use of Arabic in the Interpretation of Scripture appeared in 1706...
, whose influence on his philological views became allpowerful a few years later. At Halle Michaelis felt himself out of place, and in 1745 he gladly accepted an invitation to Göttingen as Privatdozent
Privatdozent
Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...
. In 1746 he became professor extraordinarius, in 1750 ordinarius, and in Göttingen he remained till his death in 1791.
One of his works was a translation of four parts of Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson
Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...
's Clarissa; and translations of some of the then current English paraphrases on biblical books showed his sympathy with a school which attracted him by its freer air. His Oriental studies were reshaped by reading Schultens; for the Halle school, with all its learning, had no conception of the principles on which a fruitful connection between Biblical and Oriental learning could be established. His linguistic work indeed was always hampered by the lack of manuscript material, which is felt in his philological writings, e.g., in his valuable Supplementa to the Hebrew lexicons (1784–1792). He could not become such an Arabist as J. J. Reiske
Johann Jakob Reiske
Johann Jakob Reiske was a German scholar and physician. He was a pioneer in the fields of Arabic and Byzantine philology as well as Islamic numismatics.-Biography:Reiske was born at Zörbig, in Electoral Saxony....
; and, though for many years the most famous teacher of Semitic languages
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a group of related languages whose living representatives are spoken by more than 270 million people across much of the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa...
in Europe, neither his grammatical nor his critical work has left a permanent mark, with the exception perhaps of his text-critical studies on the Peshitta
Peshitta
The Peshitta is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition.The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from the Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD...
.
His tastes were all for history, antiquities, and especially geography and natural science. He had in fact started his university course as a medicinae cultor, and in his autobiography he half regrets that he did not choose the medical profession. In geography he found a field hardly touched since Samuel Bochart
Samuel Bochart
Samuel Bochart was a French Protestant biblical scholar, a student of Thomas Erpenius and the teacher of Pierre Daniel Huet...
, in whose footsteps he followed in the Spicilegium geographiae hebraeorum exterae post Bochartum (1769–1780); and to his impulse we owe the famous Royal Danish expedition to Arabia Felix (Yemen) conducted by Carsten Niebuhr
Carsten Niebuhr
Carsten Niebuhr or Karsten Niebuhr , a German mathematician, cartographer, and explorer in the service of Denmark, is renowned for his travels on the Arabian peninsula.-Biography:...
and Peter Forsskål
Peter Forsskål
Peter Forsskål, sometimes spelled Pehr Forsskål, Peter Forskaol, Petrus Forskål or Pehr Forsskåhl, was a Swedish explorer, orientalist, naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus.-Early life:...
. In spite of his doctrinal writings—which at the time made no little noise, so that his Compendium of Dogmatic (1760) was confiscated in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
, and the Knighthood of the North Star was afterwards given him in reparation—it was the natural side 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...
that really attracted him, and no man did more to introduce the method of studying Hebrew antiquity as an integral part of ancient Eastern life.
The personal character of Michaelis can be read between the lines of his autobiography with the aid of the other materials collected by J. M. Hassencamp
Johann Matthäus Hassencamp
Johann Matthäus Hassencamp was a German Orientalist and Protestant theologian born in Marburg.He studied philology, mathematics, theology and philosophy at the Universities of Marburg and Göttingen. Afterwards he continued his studies in France, Holland and England, followed by a return to...
(1743–1797) the editor (J. D. Michaelis Lebensbeschreibung, etc., 1793). The same volume contains a full list of his works. Besides those already mentioned it is sufficient to refer to his New Testament Introduction (the first edition, 1750, preceded the full development of his powers, and is a very different book from the later editions), his reprint of Robert Lowth
Robert Lowth
Robert Lowth FRS was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar.-Life:...
's Praelectiones with important additions (1758–1762), his German translation of the Bible with notes (1773–1792), his Orientalische und exegetische Bibliothek (1775–1785) and Neue O. und E. Bib. (1786–1791), his Mosaisches Recht (1770–1771) (quite influenced by Montesquieu's L'esprit des lois of 1748) and his edition of Edmund Castell
Edmund Castell
Edmund Castell was an English orientalist.He was born at Tadlow, in Cambridgeshire. At the age of fifteen he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, gaining his BA in 1624-5 and his MA in 1628. Appointed Professor of Arabic in 1666, with the full title 'Sir Thomas Adams Professor of Arabic'. He...
's LCXI con syriacum (1787–1788). His Litterarischer Briefwechsel (1794–1796) contains much that is interesting for the history of learning in his time.
Family
- Michaelis great uncle Johann Heinrich Michaelis (1668–1738) was the chief director of A.H. FranckeAugust Hermann FranckeAugust Hermann Francke was a German Lutheran churchman.-Biography:Born at the German city Lübeck, Francke was educated at the gymnasium in Gotha before he studied at the universities of Erfurt and Kiel - where he came under the influence of the pietist Christian Kortholt - and finally Leipzig...
's Collegium orientale theologicum, a practical school of Biblical and Oriental philologyPhilologyPhilology 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...
then quite unique, and the author of an annotated Hebrew Bible and various exegetical works of reputation, especially the Adnotationes uberiores in hagiographos (1720). - In his chief publications J. H. Michaelis had as fellow-worker his sister's son Christian Benedikt Michaelis (1680–1764), the father of Johann David, who was likewise influential as professor at the University of Halle, and a sound scholar, especially in SyriacSyriac languageSyriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...
. - Michaelis' daughter CarolineKaroline SchellingCaroline Schelling, née Michaelis, widowed Böhmer, divorced Schlegel was a noted German intellectual.She was born at Göttingen, the daughter of the orientalist Michaelis....
played an important role in early German RomanticismRomanticismRomanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
as the wife of critic August Wilhelm von SchlegelAugust Wilhelm von SchlegelAugust Wilhelm Schlegel was a German poet, translator, critic, and a foremost leader of German Romanticism. His translations of Shakespeare made the English dramatist's works into German classics.-Life and work:Schlegel was born at Hanover, where his father, Johann Adolf Schlegel, was a Lutheran...
and later of philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph SchellingFriedrich Wilhelm Joseph SchellingFriedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
.