- Karl Heinrich Graf
Karl Heinrich Graf (
February 28 ,1815 -July 16 ,1869 ), GermanOld Testament scholar andorientalist , was born atMulhausen inAlsace .He studied Biblical
exegesis and oriental languages at theUniversity of Strassburg under E Reuss, and, after holding various teaching posts, was made instructor in French and Hebrew at the Landesschule of Meissen, receiving in 1852 the title of professor.Graf was one of the chief founders of Old Testament criticism. In his principal work, "Die geschichtlichen Bücher des Alten Testaments" (1866), he sought to show that the priestly legislation of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers is of later origin than the book of Deuteronomy. He still, however, held the accepted view, that the
Elohist ic narratives formed part of the "Grundschrift" and therefore belonged to the oldest portions of thePentateuch .The reasons urged against the contention that the priestly legislation and the Elohistic narratives were separated by a space of 500 years were so strong as to induce Graf in an essay, "Die sogenannte Grundschrift des Pentateuchs", published shortly before his death, to regard the whole "Grundschrift" as post-exilic and as the latest portion of the Pentateuch. The idea had already been expressed by
Edouard Guillaume Eugène Reuss , but since Graf was the first to introduce it into Germany, the theory, as developed byJulius Wellhausen , has been called theGraf-Wellhausen hypothesis .Graf also wrote, "Der Segen Moses Deut. 33" (1857) and "Der Prophet Jeremia erklärt" (1862). See TK Cheyne, "Founders of Old Testament Criticism" (1893); and
Otto Pfleiderer 's book translated into English by JF Smith as "Development of Theology" (1890).----
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