Franz Delitzsch

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Franz Delitzsch

Franz Julius Delitzsch (* February 23, 1813 in Leipzig ; † March 4, 1890 ibid) was a German Evangelical Lutheran theologian with a focus on Old Testament exegesis and an activist of Christian mission to the Jews . He is considered to be an outstanding expert on the Hebrew language .

family

Delitzsch was born as the son of the small trader, manual worker and day laborer Johann Gottfried Delitzsch and Susanna Rosina, née. Müller born in Leipzig. He was the youngest of his parents' three children, including the only one to survive early infancy.

On March 4, 1813 Delitzsch was baptized in the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig with the first name "Franz Julius". One of his godparents is the junk goods dealer in the baptismal register of the Nikolaigemeinde, at that time: "Meubler", called Franz Julius Hirsch, from whom Delitzsch got his first name.

The fact that Delitzsch was able to attend school and university despite the small circumstances from which he came is thanks to the Jewish antiquarian Lewy Hirsch, whom he calls his “benefactor from his youth”. The Jewish trader lived in the same house and was close to the Delitzsch family.

There is speculation that he is hiding behind the godfather Franz Julius Hirsch. Further speculations are that he was the biological father of Franz Delitzsch. These speculations belong to a broader group of rumors that (in different ways) suggest Jewish ancestry. Delitzsch himself always rejected them all. The background to these rumors was certainly Delitzsch's extraordinarily good knowledge of Hebrew and rabbinical literature and his great interest in the mission to the Jews. His “benefactor” Lewy Hirsch was also baptized under Delitzsch's influence and took the name “Theodor”, which speaks against the fact that he is identical with the godfather Franz Julius Hirsch.

Franz Delitzsch's eldest son Johannes Delitzsch (1846–1876) was also a theologian. Another of his sons is the well-known Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch (1850–1922), who sparked the Babel-Bible dispute .

Life

Gravestone of Franz Delitzsch and his wife in the Leipzig south cemetery

After studying theology , plans for an appointment in Leipzig came to nothing. Thereupon the Delitzsch well-meaning Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg launched the one for the replacement of the Old Testament professorship in Breslau . However, this was just as impossible as an appointment to Königsberg , although the Prussian minister of culture Johann Albrecht Friedrich von Eichhorn and the respective local authorities, in Königsberg v. a. Isaak August Dorner , Delitzsch were fond. The reason for this was his sympathy for the separated Lutherans .

In the meantime, Delitzsch had been appointed associate professor for the Old Testament at the University of Leipzig (1844), a few years later he was called to Rostock (1846), from there to Erlangen (1850) and finally back to Leipzig (1867). Since 1850 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . Delitzsch was considered a great connoisseur of rabbinical literature .

In 1871 Delitzsch founded the Evangelical Lutheran Central Association for Mission under Israel (today: Evangelical Lutheran Central Association for the Encounter between Christians and Jews ).

Under his influence, some Leipzig pastors founded the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum in 1886 with the aim of promoting mission to the Jews on a theological and scientific basis throughout the world. Through his studies and research carried out at the institute, he gained recognition from both Christian and Jewish scholars. His missionary endeavors in particular repeatedly led to irritation among Jewish scholars, especially among the representatives of the “ Science of Judaism ”.

Franz Delitzsch is buried in the Leipziger Südfriedhof (1st section).

plant

Delitzsch is considered one of the most important Old Testament exegetes of the 19th century: comprehensively taught, an expert on rabbinical literature, an exegete who combined biblical-theological interpretation with philological meticulousness.

One of Delitzsch's priorities was to make the New Testament known to the Jews. For this reason, he worked for 51 years on a translation of the New Testament into Hebrew, which was published as Berit chadascha in 1877 .

One wish of his numerous students was that they never write a book that did not end up glorifying Jesus Christ . One of his students was the later internationally known theology professor Ernst von Dobschütz (1870–1934) in Halle (Saale) .

With his colleague Carl Friedrich Keil , Delitzsch published the large-scale Keil-Delitzsch series , the leading Old Testament commentary in the 19th century, for decades . Outside of this series, his important Genesis commentary appeared in its fifth edition in 1887 . Shortly before his death, he made his son Friedrich promise to republish his psalms commentary. This was published as the 5th, revised edition in 1894. The reprint (6th edition from 1984) was also sold out within a short time.

Honors

Since 1927 there has been a memorial plaque at Friedrichstrasse 7 in Erlangen for Franz Delitzsch and his son Friedrich (the house where he was born), who lived there from 1850 to 1867. In addition, the Institutum Judaicum Delitzschianum was founded in 1948 as part of the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster and named after Delitzsch.

Publications (selection)

  • Handwritten finds: The Erasmic distortions of the text of the Apocalypse (Leipzig 1861)
  • System of biblical psychology (Dörffling and Francke, 2nd ed. Leipzig 1861)
  • Hoheslied and Koheleth (Dörffling and Francke, Leipzig 1875)
  • Berit chadascha , Hebrew translation of the New Testament, 1877 (on which Delitzsch had worked for over fifty years)
  • Rohling's Talmud Jew illuminated , Leipzig 1881 (Delitzsch's evidence of August Rohling's forgeries and distortions)
  • Latest dream faces of the anti-Semitic prophet. 1883.
  • The Hebrew New Testament of the British and Foreign Bible Society. A contribution to Hebrew Philosophy (Dörffling and Franke, Leipzig 1883) - digitized in the digital library Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
  • New commentary on Genesis , with a foreword by Prof. Dr. Siegfried Wagner, Gießen / Basel (Brunnen) 1999 (reprint of the Leipzig edition [Dörffling and Franke] 1887).
  • Messianic prophecies in a historical sequence , with a preface by Dr. Gerhard Maier , Gießen / Basel (Brunnen) 1992. (Reprint of the first edition Leipzig [Faber] 1890).
  • Die Psalmen , Gießen / Basel (Brunnen) 2005 (reprint of the fifth, edited edition Leipzig [Dörffling and Franke] 1894).
  • (Moritz Drechsler), August Hahn, Franz Delitzsch: The Prophet Isaiah. Vol. 3, 1857, von Delitzsch only contains concluding remarks on Isa. 40 f .: pp. 361-416 online at archive.org

literature

bibliography

  • A detailed bibliography is available from: Siegfried Wagner: Franz Delitzsch. Pp. 470-494.

Web links

Commons : Franz Delitzsch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Franz Delitzsch  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For this section cf. Wagner: Franz Delitzsch. 1991, p. 9 ff.
  2. ↑ so z. B. Paul de Lagarde : Jews and Indo-Europeans. Mittheilungen II, 1887, 332
  3. ↑ See in detail: Rudolf Smend, Franz Delitzsch - Aspects of Life and Work , 2009, 347 f.
  4. ↑ Prof. Dr. phil. et Lic. theol. Johannes Delitzsch ( Memento from August 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (short biography)
  5. ^ Member entry by Franz Julius Delitzsch (with a link to an obituary) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 25, 2017.
  6. ^ Website of the Institutum
  7. ^ Gerhard Maier : Foreword to Franz Delitzsch: Messianic Prophecies. P. 6: "Germany is unlikely to have produced anyone who could ever surpass the Hebraist Delitzsch".
personal data
SURNAME Delitzsch, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Delitzsch, Franz Julius (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Lutheran theologian and professor
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH March 4, 1890
Place of death Leipzig