A German theologian and Orientalist, born at Dorrenzimmern, Franconia; a man of extensive scholarship; held the chair of Oriental languages in Jena, and afterwards at Göttingen; was the first to apply a bold rationalism to the critical treatment of the Scriptures; he was of the old school of rationalists, now superseded by the historico-critical; his chief works are a Universal Library of Biblical Literature, in 10 vols., Introductions to the Old and to the New Testament, each in 5 vols., and an Introduction to the Apocrypha (1752-1827).