HITZIG, FERDINAND (1807-1875)

This article appears in Volume V13, Page 540 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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HITZIG, FERDINAND (1807-1875) , German biblical critic, was born at Hauingen, Baden, where his father was a pastor, on the 23rd of June 1807. He studied theology at Heidelberg under H. E. G. Paulus, at

Halle

under Wilhelm Gesenius and at Gottingen under Ewald. Returning to Heidelberg he became Privatdozent in theology in 1829, and in 1831 published his Begriff der Kritik am Allen Testamente praktisch ervrtert, a study of Old Testament criticism in which he explained the

critical

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors)

principles of the grammatico-historical school, and his Des Propheten Jonas Orakel uber Moab, an exposition of the 15th and 16th chapters of the book of Isaiah attributed by him to the prophet Jonah mentioned in 2 Kings xiv. 25. In 1833 he was called to the university of Zurich as professor ordinarius of theology. His next

work

WORK

was a commentary on Isaiah with a translation (Ubersetzung u. Auslegung des Propheten Jesajas), which he dedicated to Heinrich Ewald, and which Hermann Hupfeld (17961866), well known as a commentator on the Psalms (1855-1861), pronounced to be his best exegetical

work

WORK

. At Zurich he laboured for a period of twenty-eight years, during which, besides commentaries on The Psalms (18351836; 2nd ed.; 18631865), The

Minor

Prophets (1838; 3rd ed., 1863), Jeremiah (184r; 2nd ed., 1866), Ezekiel (1847), Daniel (185o), Ecclesiastes (1847), Canticles (1855), and Proverbs (1858), he published a monograph, Uber Johannes Markus u. seine Schriften (1843), in which he maintained the chronological priority of the second gospel, and sought to prove that the

Apocalypse

was written by the same author. He also published various treatisesof archaeological

interest

INTEREST

, of which the most important are Die Erfindung des Alphabets (184o), Urgeschichte u. Mythologie der Philistder (1845), and Die Grabschrift des Eschmunezar(1855). After the death of Friedrich Umbreit (17951860), one of the founders of the well-known Studien and Kritiken, he was called in 1861 to succeed him as professor of theology at Heidelberg. Here he wrote his Geschichte des Volkes

Israel

ISRAEL (Hebrew for " God strives " or " rules "; see Gen. xxxii. 28; and the allusion in Hosea xii. 4)

(1869-187o), in two parts, extending respectively to the end of the Persian domination and to the fall of Masada, A.D. 72, as well as a work on the Pauline epistles, Zur Kritik Paulinischer Briefe (187o), on the Moabite Stone, Die Inschrift des Mescha (187o), and on Assyrian, Sprache u. Sprachen Assyriens (1871), besides revising the commentary on Job by Ludwig Hirzel (1802-1841), which was first published in 1839. He was also a contributor to the Monatsschrift des wissenschaftlichen Vereins in Zurich, the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, the Theologische Studien u. Kritiken, Eduard Zeller's Theologische Jahrbucher, and Adolf Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift fur wissenschaftliche Theologie. Hitzig died at Heidelberg on the 22nd of January 1875. As a Hebrew philologist he holds high rank; and as a constructive critic he is remarkable for acuteness and sagacity. As a historian, however, some of his speculations have been considered fanciful. " He places the cradle of the . Israelites in the south of Arabia, and, like many other critics, makes the historical times begin only with Moses " (F. Lichtenberger, History of German Theology, p. 569).
His lectures on biblical theology (Vorlesungen iiber biblische Theologie u. messianische Weissagungen) were published in 188o after his death, along with a portrait and biographical sketch byy his pupil, J. J. Kneucker (b. 1840), professor of theology at Heidelberg. See Heinrich Steiner, Ferdinand Hitzig (1882); and Adolf Kamphausen's article in Herzog-Hauck's Realencyklopddie.
HIUNG-NU, HIONG-NU, HEUNG-NU, a people who about the end of the 3rd century B.C. formed, according to Chinese records, a powerful empire from the Great

Wall

WALL (O. Eng. weal, weall, Mid. Eng. wal, wane, adapted from Lat. vallum, rampart; the
original
- ORIGINAL
O. Eng. word for a wall was wag or tenth)
WALL, RICHARD (1694-1778)

of China to the Caspian. Their ethnical affinities have been much discussed; but it is most probable that they were of the Turki stock, as were the Huns, their later western representatives. They are the first Turkish people mentioned by the Chinese. A theory which seems plausible is that which assumes them to have been a heterogenous collection of Mongol, Tungus, Turki and perhaps even Finnish hordes under a Mongol military caste, though the Mongolo-Tungus

element

ELEMENT (Lat. elementum)

probably predominated. Towards the close of the 1st century of the Christian era the Hiung-nu empire broke up. Their subsequent history is obscure. Some of them seem to have gone westward and settled on the Ural river. These, de Guiques suggests, were the ancestors of the Huns, and many ethnologists hold that the Hiung-nu were the ancestors of the modern Turks.
See Journal Anthropological Institute for 1874; Sir H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols (1876188o) ; 6th Congress of Orientalists, Leiden, 1883 (Actes, part iv. pp. 177-195) ; de Guiques, Histoire generale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mongoles, et des autres Zartares occidentaux (17561758).

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