Henning Bernhard Witter

Henning Bernhard Witter (born April 7, 1683 in Hildesheim ; † May 8, 1715 ibid) was a German Lutheran theologian.

Witter attended the Hildesheim high school Andreanum and studied from 1701 in Jena in addition to theology, philology and mathematics. In 1704 he went to the University of Helmstedt , where he obtained his master's degree or doctorate in philosophy, and worked there until 1706. After a study trip, he returned to his home town of Hildesheim and was elected pastor at St. Pauli .

At the beginning of the 18th century, Witter recognized different narrative styles within the Mosaic scriptures (Gen 1 and Gen 2). The publication of his Genesis commentary ( Jura Israelitarum , Hildesheim 1711) triggered considerable criticism from representatives of the traditional interpretation of the Bible. Even Hermann von der Hardt , one of his Helmstedt teachers, who declared certain text passages of Genesis to be incompatible with the authorship of an individual, did not support Witter's thesis. She did not question Moses as the author, but assumed that Moses was drawing from different oral sources when he was writing Genesis. However, this was considered incompatible with the Lutheran Orthodox doctrine of inspiration .

Witter's real achievement is to have drawn attention to the distinctive features of the different narrative styles in Genesis. It led to an intensive text analysis u. a. by the French doctor Jean Astruc , who finally even believed he recognized the authorship of at least four different authors and saw Moses less as an author than as an editor, as the editor of various creation stories.

literature

• Thomas Wagner:  Witter, Henning Bernhard. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 23, Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 3-88309-155-3 , Sp. 1576-1578.

Web links

Mulzer, Martin: Witter, Henning Bernhard . In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.