The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#5451
Walter Bauer
1877 - 1960 (83 years)
Walter Bauer was a German theologian, lexicographer of New Testament Greek, and scholar of the development of Early Christianity. Life Bauer was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, and raised in Marburg, where his father was a professor. He studied theology at the universities of Marburg, Strassburg, and Berlin. Bauer taught at Breslau and Göttingen, where he later died.
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Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda
1490 - 1573 (83 years)
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda was a Spanish humanist, philosopher, and theologian of the Spanish Renaissance. He is mainly known for his participation in a famous debate with Bartolomé de las Casas in Valladolid, Spain, in 1550–1551. The debate centered on the legitimacy of the conquest and colonization of America by the Spanish Empire and on the treatment of the Native Americans. The main philosophical referents of Ginés de Sepúlveda were Aristotle, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Roman law and Christian theology. These influences allowed him to argue for the cultural superiority and domination of the Spani...
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Johannes Bugenhagen
1485 - 1558 (73 years)
Johannes Bugenhagen , also called Doctor Pomeranus by Martin Luther, was a German theologian and Lutheran priest who introduced the Protestant Reformation in the Duchy of Pomerania and Denmark in the 16th century. Among his major accomplishments was organization of Lutheran churches in Northern Germany and Scandinavia. He has also been called the "Second Apostle of the North".
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Johann Jakob Herzog
1805 - 1882 (77 years)
Johann Jakob Herzog , was a Swiss-German Protestant theologian. Herzog studied theology at the University of Basel and Berlin, earning his doctorate at the University of Basel in 1830. In 1835-1846 he was a professor of historical theology at the Academy in Lausanne. Afterwards he served as a professor in Halle, and eventually , he settled at Erlangen as a professor of church history.
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C. F. W. Walther
1811 - 1887 (76 years)
Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther was a German-American Lutheran minister. He was the first president of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod and its most influential theologian. He is commemorated by that church on its Calendar of Saints on May 7. He has been described as a man who gave up his homeland for the freedom to speak freely, to believe freely, and to live freely, by emigrating from Germany to the United States.
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Habakkuk
626 BC - 600 BC (26 years)
Habakkuk, or Habacuc, who was active around 612 BCE, was a prophet whose oracles and prayer are recorded in the Book of Habakkuk, the eighth of the collected twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. He is revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
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Edwin Abbott Abbott
1838 - 1926 (88 years)
Edwin Abbott Abbott was an English schoolmaster, theologian, and Anglican priest, best known as the author of the novella Flatland . Biography Edwin Abbott Abbott was the eldest son of Edwin Abbott , headmaster of the Philological School, Marylebone, and his wife, Jane Abbott . His parents were first cousins.
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Wilhelm Herrmann
1846 - 1922 (76 years)
Johann Georg Wilhelm Herrmann was a Lutheran German theologian. Career Hermann taught at Halle before becoming professor at Marburg. Influenced by Kant and Ritschl, his theology was in the idealist tradition, seeing God as the power of goodness. Jesus was to be seen as an exemplary man. Even if Jesus never existed, according to Herrmann, his traditional portrayal was still valid. His book The Communion of the Christian God was seen as a highlight of nineteenth century Liberal Christianity, although he is also credited with preserving certain conservative ideals against liberal revisionism. ag...
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Francis Landey Patton
1843 - 1932 (89 years)
Francis Landey Patton was a Bermudan-American educator, Presbyterian minister, academic administrator, and theologian, and served as the twelfth president of Princeton University. Background, 1843–1871 Patton was born in Warwick Parish, Bermuda, to a family of Scottish descent. He attended Warwick Academy. As a child, the family relocated to Canada. Patton received collegiate education at the University of Toronto, followed by a theological education at Knox College, Toronto. He graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1865; was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in June 1865; was ...
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Adriaan Reland
1676 - 1718 (42 years)
Adriaan Reland was a noted Dutch Orientalist scholar, cartographer and philologist. Even though he never left the Netherlands, or visited the Holy Land, he made significant contributions to Middle Eastern and Asian linguistics and cartography, including Persia, Japan and the Holy Lands.
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Marcus Jastrow
1829 - 1903 (74 years)
Marcus Jastrow was a German-born American Talmudic scholar, most famously known for his authorship of the popular and comprehensive Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature. He was also a progressive, early reformist rabbi.
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J. Oliver Buswell
1895 - 1977 (82 years)
James Oliver Buswell, Jr. was a Presbyterian theologian, educator and institution builder. Education Buswell was born in Burlington, Wisconsin. He received an A.B. from the University of Minnesota , a B.D. from McCormick Theological Seminary , an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and his Ph.D. from New York University .
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Ernst Fuchs
1903 - 1983 (80 years)
Ernst Fuchs was a German New Testament theologian and a student of Rudolf Bultmann. With Gerhard Ebeling he was a leading proponent of a New Hermeneutic theology in the 20th century. Life Fuchs was born in Heilbronn on 11 June 1903 He was nurtured in the Swabian culture of Esslingen and Cannstatt and attended minor seminaries in Schoental and Urach . His student years at Tübingen and Marburg during the heyday of dialectical theology were indelibly stamped by the theology of Karl Barth, the philosophy of M. Heidegger, and the NT studies of R. Bultmann, under whom he received his doctorate at...
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Philipp Spener
1635 - 1705 (70 years)
Philipp Jakob Spener was a German Lutheran theologian who essentially founded what would come to be known as Pietism. He was later dubbed the "Father of Pietism". A prolific writer, his two main works, Pia desideria and Allgemeine Gottesgelehrtheit , were published while he was the chief pastor in the Lutheran Church at Frankfurt. In 1691, he was invited to Berlin by the court of Brandenburg. Even in Berlin, Spener was at odds with the predominant Lutheran orthodoxy, as he had been all his life. Spener influenced the foundation of the University of Halle, but the theological faculty of anoth...
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Hyrum Smith
1800 - 1844 (44 years)
Hyrum Smith was an American religious leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the original church of the Latter Day Saint movement. He was the older brother of the movement's founder, Joseph Smith, and was killed with his brother at Carthage Jail where they were being held awaiting trial.
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Archibald Alexander
1772 - 1851 (79 years)
Archibald Alexander was an American Presbyterian theologian and professor at the Princeton Theological Seminary. He served for 9 years as the President of Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia and for 39 years as Princeton Theological Seminary's first professor from 1812 to 1851.
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Arnobius
255 - 327 (72 years)
Arnobius was an early Christian apologist of Berber origin during the reign of Diocletian . According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius, before his conversion, was a distinguished Numidian rhetorician at Sicca Veneria , a major Christian center in Proconsular Africa, and owed his conversion to a premonitory dream. However, Arnobius writes dismissively of dreams in his surviving book.
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Sabellius
200 - 300 (100 years)
Sabellius was a third-century priest and theologian who most likely taught in Rome, but may have been a North African from Libya. Basil and others call him a Libyan from Pentapolis, but this seems to rest on the fact that Pentapolis was a place where the teachings of Sabellius thrived, according to Dionysius of Alexandria, c. 260. What is known of Sabellius is drawn mostly from the polemical writings of his opponents.
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Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier
1718 - 1790 (72 years)
Nicolas-Sylvestre Bergier was a French Catholic theologian, known for his engagement with the atheist philosophes of eighteenth-century France. Life Bergier was born at Darney in Lorraine. After a course of theology in the University of Besançon, he received the degree of doctor, was ordained priest, and went to Paris to finish his studies. Returning to Besançon in 1748, he was given charge of a parish and later became president of the college of the city, which had formerly been under the direction of the Jesuits. As a result of his bestselling polemic Deism Refuted By Itself , Bergier was released from pastoral responsibilities by the French bishops in order to write full-time.
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Peter Waldo
1140 - 1217 (77 years)
Peter Waldo was the leader of the Waldensians, a Christian spiritual movement of the Middle Ages. The tradition that his first name was "Peter" can only be traced back to the fourteenth century. This has caused some historians, such as Jana Schulman, to see it as likely a later invention. He is considered a Proto-Protestant.
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Robert Barclay
1648 - 1690 (42 years)
Robert Barclay was a Scottish Quaker, one of the most eminent writers belonging to the Religious Society of Friends and a member of the Clan Barclay. He was a son of Col. David Barclay, Laird of Urie, and his wife, Lady Katherine Barclay. Although he himself never lived there, Barclay was titular governor of the East Jersey colony in North America through most of the 1680s.
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Samuel Prideaux Tregelles
1813 - 1875 (62 years)
Samuel Prideaux Tregelles was an English biblical scholar, lexicographer, Christian Hebraist, textual critic, and theologian. Life Tregelles was born at Wodehouse Place, Falmouth, of Quaker parents, but he himself was for many years in communion with the Plymouth Brethren and then later in life became a Presbyterian . He was the son of Samuel Tregelles and his wife Dorothy and was the nephew of Edwin Octavius Tregelles. He was educated at Falmouth classical school from 1825 to 1828.
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Crawford Howell Toy
1836 - 1919 (83 years)
Crawford Howell Toy , American Hebrew scholar, was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He graduated at the University of Virginia in 1856, and studied at the University of Berlin from 1866 to 1868. From 1869 to 1879 he was professor of Hebrew in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary , and in 1880 he became professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages at Harvard University, where until 1903 he was also Dexter lecturer on biblical literature.
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Nicolaas Beets
1814 - 1903 (89 years)
Nicolaas Beets was a Dutch theologian, writer and poet. He published also under the pseudonym Hildebrand. Life Nicolaas Beets was born in Haarlem, the son of a pharmacist. From 1833 till 1839 he studied theology at the university of Leiden where he received his doctorate.
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George Salmon
1819 - 1904 (85 years)
George Salmon FBA FRS FRSE was a distinguished and influential Irish mathematician and Anglican theologian. After working in algebraic geometry for two decades, Salmon devoted the last forty years of his life to theology. His entire career was spent at Trinity College Dublin.
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John A. Mackay
1889 - 1983 (94 years)
John A. Mackay was a Presbyterian theologian, missionary, and educator. He was a strong advocate of the Ecumenical Movement and World Christianity. Early life and education John A. Mackay was born on May 17, 1889, in Inverness, Scotland, the eldest of five children. The family attended the Free Presbyterian Church, a very small denomination. At the age of 14 at a communion service at Rogart, Scotland, Mackay had a profound religious experience that influenced the remainder of his life.
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Louis de Montfort
1673 - 1716 (43 years)
Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, TOSD was a French Catholic priest known for his preaching and his influence on Mariology. He was made a missionary apostolic by Pope Clement XI. Montfort wrote a number of books which went on to become classic Catholic titles and influenced several popes. His most notable works regarding Marian devotions are contained in Secret of the Rosary and True Devotion to Mary.
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Richard Simon
1638 - 1712 (74 years)
Richard Simon CO , was a French priest, a member of the Oratorians, who was an influential biblical critic, orientalist and controversialist. Early years Simon was born at Dieppe. His early education took place at the Oratorian college there, and a benefice enabled him to study theology at Paris, where he showed an interest in Hebrew and other Oriental languages. He entered the Oratorians as novice in 1662. At the end of his novitiate he was sent to teach philosophy at the College of Juilly. But he was soon recalled to Paris, and employed in preparing a catalogue of the Oriental books in the l...
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Hendrik Kraemer
1888 - 1965 (77 years)
Hendrik Kraemer was a lay missiologist and figure in the ecumenical movement from Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands. He encouraged the Dutch to allow the spread missionary activities outside of the Dutch East India Company-restricted area in eastern Indonesia to the rest of the archipelago.
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Peter Martyr Vermigli
1499 - 1562 (63 years)
Peter Martyr Vermigli was an Italian-born Reformed theologian. His early work as a reformer in Catholic Italy and his decision to flee for Protestant northern Europe influenced many other Italians to convert and flee as well. In England, he influenced the Edwardian Reformation, including the Eucharistic service of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. He was considered an authority on the Eucharist among the Reformed churches, and engaged in controversies on the subject by writing treatises. Vermigli's Loci Communes, a compilation of excerpts from his biblical commentaries organised by the topics o...
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Günther Bornkamm
1905 - 1990 (85 years)
Günther Bornkamm was a German New Testament scholar belonging to the school of Rudolf Bultmann and a Professor of New Testament at the University of Heidelberg. Under Adolf Hitler, he opposed the nazification of the Protestant churches and their unification into the movement of the 'German Christians'. His post-war fame as a scholar rested on his effort to separate fiction from facts in his reconstruction of Jesus' life and in his subsequent treatment of the gospel of Matthew. His brother was the ecclesiastical historian and Luther scholar .
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Wilhelm Bousset
1865 - 1920 (55 years)
Wilhelm Bousset was a German theologian and New Testament scholar. He was of Huguenot ancestry and a native of Lübeck. His most influential work was Kyrios Christos, an attempt to explain the origins of devotion to Christ as the product of second century Hellenistic forces, and is still the most widely influential academic work on early Christology, even if its conclusions are not supported by modern scholarship.
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John Fisher
1469 - 1535 (66 years)
John Fisher was an English Catholic bishop, cardinal, and theologian. Fisher was also an academic and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He is honoured as a martyr and saint by the Catholic Church.
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Austin Farrer
1904 - 1968 (64 years)
Austin Marsden Farrer was an English Anglican philosopher, theologian, and biblical scholar. His activity in philosophy, theology, and spirituality led many to consider him one of the greatest figures of 20th-century Anglicanism. He served as Warden of Keble College, Oxford, from 1960 to 1968.
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Johann Jakob Wettstein
1693 - 1754 (61 years)
Johann Jakob Wettstein was a Swiss theologian, best known as a New Testament critic. Biography Youth and study Johann Jakob Wettstein was born in Basel. Among his tutors in theology was Samuel Werenfels , an influential anticipator of modern critical exegesis. While still a student, Wettstein began to direct his attention to the special pursuit of his life, the text of the Greek New Testament. A relative, Johann Wettstein, who was the university librarian, gave him permission to examine and collate the principal manuscripts of the New Testament in the library, and he copied the various readi...
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Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale
1947 - 1984 (37 years)
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a Sikh militant. He was the leading figure of the Khalistan movement, although he did not personally advocate for a separate Sikh nation. He was the fourteenth jathedar or leader, of the prominent orthodox Sikh religious institution Damdami Taksal. An advocate of the Anandpur Sahib Resolution, he gained significant attention after his involvement in the 1978 Sikh-Nirankari clash. In the summer of 1982, Bhindranwale and the Akali Dal launched the Dharam Yudh Morcha , with its stated aim being the fulfilment of a list of demands based on the Anandpur Sahib Resolution to create a largely autonomous state within India.
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Joseph Hubert Reinkens
1821 - 1896 (75 years)
Joseph Hubert Reinkens was the first German Old Catholic bishop. Biography He was born at Burtscheid in the Rhine Province, the son of a gardener. In 1836, on the death of his mother, he took to manual work in order to support his numerous brothers and sisters, but in 1840 he was able to go to the gymnasium at Aachen, and he afterwards studied theology at the universities of Bonn and Munich. He was ordained priest in 1848, and in 1849 graduated as doctor in theology. He was soon appointed professor of ecclesiastical history at Breslau, and in 1865 he was made rector of the university. During...
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Caesarius of Arles
470 - 542 (72 years)
Caesarius of Arles , sometimes called "of Chalon" from his birthplace Chalon-sur-Saône, was the foremost ecclesiastic of his generation in Merovingian Gaul. Caesarius is considered to be of the last generation of church leaders of Gaul who worked to promote large-scale ascetic elements into the Western Christian tradition. William E. Klingshirn's study of Caesarius depicts Caesarius as having the reputation of a "popular preacher of great fervour and enduring influence". Among those who exercised the greatest influence on Caesarius were Augustine of Hippo, Julianus Pomerius, and John Cassian...
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John of Shanghai and San Francisco
1896 - 1966 (70 years)
John of Shanghai and San Francisco was a prominent Eastern Orthodox ascetic and hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia who was active in the mid-20th century. He was a pastor and spiritual father of high reputation and a reputed wonderworker to whom were attributed powers of prophecy, clairvoyance and healing. He is often referred to as "St. John the Wonderworker".
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Joseph Henry Thayer
1828 - 1901 (73 years)
Joseph Henry Thayer was an American Biblical scholar from Boston, Massachusetts. Life Joseph Henry Thayer was born in 1828 in Boston. He graduated from Harvard University in 1850 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1857. From 1858 to 1864 he served as a pastor—first in Quincy, Massachusetts, then in Salem—and served as a chaplain of the 40th Massachusetts Volunteers in the Civil War. After the war, he returned to Massachusetts to become Professor of Sacred Literature at Andover Theological Seminary, where he taught until 1882. In 1884, he began teaching New Testament criticism at Harvard.
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Vincent Ferrer
1350 - 1419 (69 years)
Vincent Ferrer, OP was a Valencian Dominican friar and preacher, who gained acclaim as a missionary and a logician. He is honored as a saint of the Catholic Church and other churches of Catholic traditions.
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Martín de Azpilcueta
1492 - 1586 (94 years)
Martín de Azpilcueta , or Doctor Navarrus, was an important Spanish canonist and theologian in his time, and an early economist who independently formulated the quantity theory of money in 1556. Life He was born in Barásoain, Navarre, and was a relative of Francis Xavier. He obtained a degree in theology at Alcalá, then in 1518 he obtained a degree of doctor in canon law from Toulouse in France. Beginning in 1524, Azpilcueta served in several canon law chairs at the University of Salamanca. From 1538 to 1556, he taught at Coimbra University in Portugal, at the invitation of the kings of Portu...
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Harris Franklin Rall
1870 - 1964 (94 years)
Harris Franklin Rall , Ph.D. was the first president of Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado after it reopened in 1910 till 1915, and he also served as the Henry White Warren professor of Practical Theology. Rall later became president of Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois, and taught theology there. Rall was active in the social gospel movement, seeking to relate Christianity to the ills of society. Garrett named its lecture series after him.
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Leonidas Proaño
1910 - 1988 (78 years)
Leonidas Eduardo Proaño Villalba was an Ecuadorian prelate and theologian. He served as the bishop of Riobamba from 1954 to 1985. He was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize and is considered one of the most important figures in Ecuadorian liberation theology.
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Hermann Hupfeld
1796 - 1866 (70 years)
Hermann Hupfeld was a Protestant German Orientalist and Biblical commentator. He is known for his historical-critical studies of the Old Testament. He was born at Marburg, where he studied philosophy and theology from 1813 to 1817. In 1819 he became a teacher in the gymnasium at Hanau, but in 1822 resigned that appointment. After studying for some time at Halle, he in 1824 settled as Privatdozent in philosophy at that university, and in the following year was appointed extraordinary professor of theology at Marburg. There he received professorships of theology and Oriental languages in 1825 and 1827 respectively.
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Frederick Temple
1821 - 1902 (81 years)
Frederick Temple was an English academic, teacher and churchman, who served as Bishop of Exeter , Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury . Early life Temple was born in Santa Maura, one of the Ionian Islands, the son of Major Octavius Temple, who was subsequently appointed lieutenant-governor of Sierra Leone. On his retirement, Major Temple settled in Devon and contemplated a farming life for his son Frederick, giving him a practical training to that end.
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John Duncan
1796 - 1870 (74 years)
John Duncan , also known as 'Rabbi' Duncan, was a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, a missionary to the Jews in Hungary, and Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at New College, Edinburgh. He is best remembered for his aphorisms.
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Johannes Heinrich August Ebrard
1818 - 1888 (70 years)
Johannes Heinrich August Ebrard was a German Protestant theologian. Biography Born at Erlangen, he was educated in his native town and at Berlin, and after teaching in a private family became Privatdozent at Erlangen and then professor of theology at Zürich . In 1847 he was appointed professor of theology at Erlangen, a chair which he resigned in 1861; in 1875 he became pastor of the French reformed church in the same city.
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Isaac Backus
1724 - 1806 (82 years)
Isaac Backus was a leading Baptist minister during the era of the American Revolution who campaigned against state-established churches in New England. Little is known of his childhood. In "An account of the life of Isaac Backus" , he provides genealogical information and a chronicle of events leading to his religious conversion.
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Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen
1670 - 1739 (69 years)
Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen was a theologian of the pietist Halle School and a scholar and follower of August Hermann Francke. He was the second director of the Franckeschen Stiftungen, a collection of schools for orphans.
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