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Encyclopedia Britannica



MICHAELIS, JOHANN DAVID (1717-1791)

This article appears in Volume V18, Page 361 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: MIC-MOL
MICHAELIS, JOHANN DAVID (1717-1791) , German biblical scholar and teacher, a member of a family which had the
chief
  part in maintaining that solid discipline in Hebrew and the
cognate languages which distinguished the university of
Halle
  in the period of Pietism. Johann Heinrich Michaelis (16681738) was the
chief
  director of A. H. Francke's Collegium orientale theologicum, a
practical
  school of biblical and oriental philology 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 (168o1764), the father of Johann David, who was likewise influential as professor at
Halle
 , and a sound scholar, especially in Syriac. J. D. Michaelis was trained for academical life under his father's eye. At Halle he was influenced, especially in philosophy, by Sigmund J. Baumgarten (17061757), the link between the old Pietism and J. S. Semler, while he cultivated his strong taste for history under Chancellor Ludwig. In 17391740 he qualified as university lecturer. One of his dissertations was a defence of the antiquity and divine authority of the vowel-points in Hebrew. His scholarship still moved in the old traditional lines, and he was also much exercised by religious scruples, the conflict of an independent mind with that submission to authority at the expense of reason encouraged by the Lutheranism in which he had been trained. A visit to England in 17411742 lifted him out of the narrow groove of his earlier education. In passing through Holland he made the acquaintance of Albert Schultens (16861750), whose influence on his philological views became all-powerful a few years later. At Halle Michaelis felt himself out of place, and in 1745 he gladly accepted an invitation to Gottingen as privatdozent. In 1746 he became professor extraordinarius, in 1750 ordinarius, and in Gottingen he remained till his death in 1791.
His intellect was active in many directions; universal learning indeed was perhaps one of his foibles. Literaturemodern as well as ancientoccupied his attention; one of his works was a translation of four parts of Clarissa; and translations of some of the then current English paraphrases on biblical books manifested his sympathy with a school which, if not very learned, attracted him by its freer air. His oriental studies were reshaped by diligent perusal of the works of Schultens; for the Halle school, with all its learning, had no conception of the principles on which a fruitful connexion 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 (17841792).1 He could not become such an Arabist as J. J. Reiske (17161774); and, though for many years the most famous teacher of Semitic languages in Europe, he had little of the higher philological faculty, and neither his grammatical nor his
critical
 
work
  has left a permanent mark, with the exception perhaps of his text-
critical
  studies on the Peshitta.2 His tastes were all for such studies as 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, in whose footsteps he followed in the Spicilegium geographiae hebraeorum exterae post Bochartum (17691780); and to his impulse we owe the famous Eastern expedition conducted by Carsten
Niebuhr
 . In spite of his doctrinal writingswhich at the time made no little noise, so that his Compendium of Dogmatic (176o) was confiscated in Sweden, and the
knighthood
  of the North
Star
  was afterwards given him in reparationit was the natural side of the Bible that really attracted him, and no man did more to introduce the modern method of studying Hebrew antiquity as an integral part of ancient Eastern life.
The personal character of Michaelis can be read between the lines
i By a strange fortune of war it was the occupation of Gottingen by the French in the Seven Years' War, and the friendly relations he formed with the officers, that procured him the Paris MS. from which he edited Abulfeda's description of Egypt.
2 Curae in actus apostolorum syriacos (1755).of his autobiography with the aid of the other materials collected by J. M. Hassencamp (174 -1797) the editor (J. D. Michaelis Lebensbeschreibung, &c., 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's Praelec-Hones with important additions (17581762), his German translation of the Bible with notes (17731792), his Orientalische and exegetische Bibliothek (17751785) and Neue O. and E. Bib. (17861791), his Mosaisches Recht (17701771) and his edition of E. Castle's Lexicon syriacum (17871788). His Litterarischer Briefwechsel (17941796) contains much that is interesting for the history of learning in his time.


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