Christian Gottlob Wilke

Christian Gottlob Wilke (May 13, 1786 – November 10, 1854) was a German theologian born near Zeitz.

He studied philosophy and theology at the University of Leipzig, and from 1814 to 1819 served as a minister to a Saxon Landwehr installation. Afterwards he worked as a pastor in the hamlet of Hermannsdorf in the Erzgebirge.

In 1838 he settled in Dresden, where he published his first book, Der Urevangelist oder exegetisch kritische Untersuchung über das Verwandtschaftsverhältniß der drei ersten Evangelien (The Urevangelist, exegetical critical study on the relationship of the first three Gospels, 1838). In this work he asserted that the evangelist Mark was the "original evangelist" and was the source for the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. During the same time frame, philosopher Christian Hermann Weisse (1801-1866), independent of Wilke, came up with the same conclusion.

During the following years Wilke published a New Testament lexicon called Clavis Novi Testamenti Philologica (1840-41, not to confuse with a anterior book of same title by Christian Abraham Wahl), a book involving New Testament rhetoric titled Die neutestamentliche Rhetorik (1842–43) and an influential work on New Testament hermeneutics called Die Hermeneutik des Neuen Testaments (1843–44).

Trained as a Lutheran, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1846. Subsequently he moved to Würzburg, where he worked on revisions of his earlier publications.

References

• Wikisource translated biography @ Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie

Persondata
Name	Wilke, Christian Gottlob
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Date of birth	May 13, 1786
Place of birth
Date of death	November 10, 1854
Place of death