Head of the Tübingen school of rationalist divines, born near Stuttgart; distinguished by his scholarship and his labours in Biblical criticism and dogmatic theology; his dogmatic treatises were on the Christian Gnosis, the Atonement, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, while his Biblical were on certain epistles of Paul and the canonical Gospels, which he regarded as the product of the 2nd century; regarded Christianity of the Church as Judaic in its origin, and Paul as distinctively the first apostle of pure Christianity (1792-1861).