Adolph Ernst Knoch

Adolph Ernst Knoch (born December 19, 1874 in St. Louis , Missouri , † March 28, 1965 in Los Angeles ) was the author of numerous theological writings and Bible editor.

Life

Knoch was born in the German-speaking part of St. Louis as the son of Adolph Knoch, who had emigrated from Germany to the USA. One of his sisters, Addie, stayed behind in Germany. Knoch grew up bilingual: only German was spoken at home, and he only learned English at school. In 1885 the family moved to Los Angeles , where he graduated from high school in 1893 . One of the teachers reportedly told him that he had a talent for writing and that he should study great literature like Shakespeare or the Bible . Since he did not have any works by Shakespeare, the young bone read the family Bible.

During his school days and afterwards (around 20 years in total) he worked as a printer in his brother's company. As part of a print job, he met the “Open Brothers” . Your preacher McClure introduced him to this group. He joined them and was baptized .

Because of his interest in languages, he studied ancient Greek at the Los Angeles Bible Institute around 1900 in order to be able to read the New Testament in the original language. In 1901 the American Standard Version was published , but he was disappointed with it. During this time he began to develop his form of the concordant method of Bible translation .

At the "Open Brothers" he met Olive Hyde, who was also a devout teacher, whom he married in April 1903. Knoch started teaching Greek at the local YMCA . However, he increasingly discovered errors in traditional translations and stopped teaching Greek in the traditional Bible translation tradition because he did not want to pass on something he was no longer entirely convinced of. He began to systematically process the Biblical Greek and to write about his work.

On November 5, 1906, his son Ernest Oliver was born.

Ethelbert William Bullinger , editor of the magazine Things to Come in England , published some texts by Knoch from 1906 onwards. The Russian Vladimir Gelesnoff, who lives in the USA, read about it and got in touch with him. Together they then published the magazine Grace and Glory , which was discontinued after eight issues in 1909. Instead, the magazine Unsearchables Riches (Inexplicable Wealth), which has been published to this day, was published some time later , which had in particular the correct "cutting" of the word of God as its content ( dispensationalism ) and should conduct detailed word studies. Knoch was responsible for the Greek New Testament, while Gelesnoff worked on the Hebrew Old Testament .

Knoch subsequently published various books and writings. From 1915 he also worked on the concordant method. He used thousands of index cards on which all occurrences of every Greek word were listed.

After his brother had sold the print shop, Knoch worked there for a few years until the print shop was supposed to print war printed matter. He refused and was fired along with another employee (Herman Vogel) who bought a picture card printing company. Knoch worked there for a few more months before he decided to work full-time for his religious beliefs. Vogel later printed the Unsearchable Riches magazine and the Bible Concordant Version there , as is still the case today.

Knoch saw himself primarily as a compiler , as he could fall back on proven Greek experts such as George L. Rogers (Almont, Michigan ), Edward H. Clayton ( Sheffield , England) and Earl Taber and many others. Initially in several parts, beginning in 1919 with the Revelation (since the end times mood prevailed during the World War II), the concordant translation of the New Testament was published in full in 1926.

His wife died on September 7, 1926.

On a trip to Germany in 1931, Knoch visited some German evangelists with whom he was in contact, such as the widow of Ernst Ferdinand Ströter , director Heinrich skull and superintendent Wilhelm Israel vom Prophetic Word , August Dieterich and Willy Dick, the missionaries Carl Czerwinski and Fritz Gasser, the Preachers Heinrich Großmann and Max Springer as well as the editors of the overcomer (Wally von Bissing and Sigrid von Kanitz), who had read the translations of his articles.

On May 25, 1932 he married Sigrid Charlotte Clementine Marie Countess von Kanitz in Potsdam (* July 20, 1876 at Pansevitz Palace ; † January 12, 1967 in Los Angeles ). Sigrid Knoch subsequently translated her husband's articles for the German Inexplicable Wealth . Deviating from the original plan to return to the United States immediately, they decided to work in the house of Baroness Wally von Bissing on the German version of a concordant translation, which was then published in Berlin in 1939.

In 1939 Knoch was - like other US citizens - urged by the American embassy to return to the USA because of the impending war. There he was observed by the FBI during the Second World War because of his marriage to a German and his active contacts in Germany (file No. 100-20677; judgment: harmless).

In 1965, Knoch died at the age of 90.

theology

Central to the development of his theological convictions was the work on the Concordant Bible Translation . From this he drew the conclusion that some of the teachings he had learned from the “Open Brothers” could only be called “Biblical” because of what he believed to be inaccurate or incorrect Bible translations, and he refrained from them. This includes, for example, the doctrine of hell , so he later represented the universal reconciliation . Revised but in principle adopted the strong dispensationalism of the Brethren movement (developed by John Nelson Darby ), which was based on two different Gospels for the Jews and the Nations (Gr .: ethnos ). Ethelbert William Bullinger's point of view may also have had a certain influence . Knoch rejected the doctrine of the Trinity because he did not see the deity of Jesus Christ in the sense of being identical with God the Father as documented by the Bible. He also said that the soul dissolves at death, since the soul consists of the body and the spirit (soul sleep) and the doctrine of the immortal soul is an unbiblical teaching from Platonism ( total death theory ).

Fonts

• Concordant New Testament , Konkordanter Verlag, Pforzheim
• Concordant Literal New Testament , Concordant Publishing Concern (each together with a team of translators)
• God and his Christ
• The calendar of God , Konkordanter Verlag, Pforzheim
• The secret of the resurrection , Konkordanter Verlag, Pforzheim
• Evil - origin, purpose and goal in God's purpose , Konkordanter Verlag, Pforzheim

literature

• Hermann Rocke (ed.): God gave it - AE Knoch's life's work , 5th edition, Konkordanter Verlag, Pforzheim 2008

Web links

• God gave it - AE Knoch's life's work . A compilation by Hermann Rocke