Paul de Lagarde
Encyclopedia
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
German
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 orientalist
Oriental studies
Oriental studies is the academic field of study that embraces Near Eastern and Far Eastern societies and cultures, languages, peoples, history and archaeology; in recent years the subject has often been turned into the newer terms of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies...
. He also took some part in politics. He belonged to the Prussian
Kingdom of Prussia
The Kingdom of Prussia was a German kingdom from 1701 to 1918. Until the defeat of Germany in World War I, it comprised almost two-thirds of the area of the German Empire...
Conservative party
German Conservative Party
The German Conservative Party was a right-wing political party of the German Empire, founded in 1876.- Policies :It was generally seen as representing the interests of the German nobility, the East Elbian Junkers and the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union, and had its political stronghold...
, and was a violent antisemite. The bitterness which he felt appeared in his writings. His Deutsche Schriften (1878–81) became a nationalist text.
Biography
Paul de Lagarde was born in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
as Paul Bötticher; in early adulthood he legally adopted the family name of his maternal line out of respect to his great-aunt who raised him. At Berlin
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...
(1844–1846) and Halle
University of Halle-Wittenberg
The Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg , also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg within Saxony-Anhalt, Germany...
(1846–1847) he studied theology, philosophy and oriental languages.
In 1852 his studies took him to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. In 1854 he became a teacher at a Berlin public school, but this did not interrupt his biblical studies. He edited the Didascalia apostolorum syriace (1854) and other Syriac texts collected in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
and in Paris. In 1866 he received three years leave of absence to collect fresh materials, and in 1869 succeeded Heinrich Ewald
Heinrich Ewald
Georg Heinrich August Ewald was a German orientalist and theologian.-Life:Ewald was born at Göttingen where his father was a linen weaver. In 1815 he was sent to the gymnasium, and in 1820 he entered the University of Göttingen, where he studied with J.G. Eichhorn and T. C. Tychsen, specialising...
as professor of oriental languages at Göttingen
Göttingen
Göttingen is a university town in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Göttingen. The Leine river runs through the town. In 2006 the population was 129,686.-General information:...
.
Like Ewald, Lagarde was an active worker in a variety of subjects and languages; but his chief aim, the elucidation 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...
, was almost always kept in view. He edited the Aramaic translation (known as the Targum
Targum
Taekwondo is a Korean martial art and the national sport of South Korea. In Korean, tae means "to strike or break with foot"; kwon means "to strike or break with fist"; and do means "way", "method", or "path"...
) of the Prophets according to the Codex Reuchlinianus preserved at Carlsruhe
Carlsruhe
Carlsruhe is the name of several locations:*Karlsruhe, a city in Germany *Carlsruhe, Victoria, a town in Australia*Carlsruhe O/S and Bad Carlsruhe, German names of the village Pokój in Poland...
, Prophetae chaldaice (1872), the Hagiographa chaldaice (1874), an 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...
translation of the Gospels, Die vier Evangelien, arabisch aus der Wiener Handschrift herausgegeben (1864), a Syriac translation of the Old Testament Apocrypha
Apocrypha
The term apocrypha is used with various meanings, including "hidden", "esoteric", "spurious", "of questionable authenticity", ancient Chinese "revealed texts and objects" and "Christian texts that are not canonical"....
, Libri V. T. apocryphi syriace (1865), a Coptic
Coptic language
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
translation of the Pentateuch, Der Pentateuch koptisch (1867), and a part of the Lucian
Lucian
Lucian of Samosata was a rhetorician and satirist who wrote in the Greek language. He is noted for his witty and scoffing nature.His ethnicity is disputed and is attributed as Assyrian according to Frye and Parpola, and Syrian according to Joseph....
ic text of the Septuagint, which he was able to reconstruct from manuscripts for nearly half the Old Testament. Lagarde was easily the most renowned Septuagint scholar of the nineteenth century.
He devoted himself ardently to oriental scholarship, and published Zur Urgeschichte der Armenier (1854) and Armenische Studien (1877). He was also a student of Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, publishing Isaias persice (1883) and Persische Studien (1884). He followed up his Coptic studies with Aegyptiaca (1883), and published many minor contributions to the study of oriental languages in Gesammelte Abhandlungen (1866), Symmicta (1. 1877, ii. 1880), Semitica (i. 1878, ii. 1879), Orient alia (1879–1880) and Mittheilungen (1884). Mention should also be made of the valuable Onomastica sacra (1870; 2nd ed., 1887).
Lagarde's anti-Semitism laid the foundations for aspects of National Socialist
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
ideology, in particular that of Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
. He argued that Germany should create a "national" form of Christianity purged of Semitic elements (see Positive Christianity
Positive Christianity
Positive Christianity was a slogan of Nazi propaganda adopted at the NSDAP congress 1920 to express a worldview which is Christian, non-confessional, vigorously opposed to the spirit of "Jewish Materialism", and oriented to the principle of voluntary association of those with a common...
) and insisted that Jews were "pests and parasites" who should be destroyed "as speedily and thoroughly as possible".
He died at Göttingen.
External links
- http://copticlibrary.t35.com/bible/copticpentateuch/1.htm Der Pentateuch Koptisch Herausgegeben von PAUL DE LAGARDE.