The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
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List of the most influential people in Religious Studies,
#2751
Swami Satprakashananda
1888 - 1979 (91 years)
Swami Satprakashananda was an Indian philosopher, monk of the Ramakrishna Order, and religious teacher. Biography Swami Satprakashananda was born in Dhaka in April 1888 in what has been described as a "pious Hindu family". His premonastic name was Harish, and his father died when he was young. Harish joined the Ramakrishna Order in 1924 in Dhaka after postgraduate work at the University of Calcutta. He had been initiated by Swami Brahmananda in 1908, later receiving monastic orders from Swami Shivananda in 1927. Satprakashananda served for a time as an associate editor of Prabuddha Bharata...
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Willem Muurling
1805 - 1882 (77 years)
Willem Muurling was a Dutch theologian who was a native of Bolsward. He was father-in-law to theologian Abraham Kuenen . He studied theology at Utrecht, and from 1832 to 1837, served as a pastor in Stiens. Afterwards, he taught classes at the Rijksatheneum in Franeker, relocating to the University of Groningen in 1840, where he was as a professor of theology.
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Julius Rupp
1809 - 1884 (75 years)
Julius Friedrich Leopold Rupp was a Prussian Protestant theologian. He founded the first Free Protestant Congregation in Königsberg, which rejected all state or church control and believed in absolute freedom of conscience for its members.
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John of Salisbury
1110 - 1180 (70 years)
John of Salisbury , who described himself as Johannes Parvus , was an English author, philosopher, educationalist, diplomat and bishop of Chartres. Early life and education Born at Salisbury, England, he was of Anglo-Saxon rather than of Norman extraction, and therefore apparently a clerk from a modest background, whose career depended upon his education. Beyond that, and that he applied to himself the cognomen of Parvus, meaning "short" or "small", few details are known regarding his early life. From his own statements it is gathered that he crossed to France about 1136, and began regular stu...
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Auguste Lecerf
1872 - 1943 (71 years)
Auguste Lecerf was a French Reformed pastor of the Église réformée de France and a partly autodidact neo-Calvinist theologian. From 1927 onwards, he was dogmatics professor at the Protestant Faculty of Theology in Paris. As a specialist in Jean Calvin, he authored several books and articles on Reformed dogmatics.
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Leonhard Ragaz
1868 - 1945 (77 years)
Leonhard Ragaz was a Swiss Reformed theologian and, with Hermann Kutter, one of the founders of religious socialism in Switzerland. He was influenced by Christoph Blumhardt. He was married to the feminist and peace activist Clara Ragaz-Nadig.
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Johann Wilhelm Baier
1647 - 1695 (48 years)
Johann Wilhelm Baier was a German theologian in the Lutheran scholastic tradition. He was born at Nuremberg, and died at Weimar. He studied philology, especially Oriental, and philosophy at Altdorf from 1664 to 1669, in which year he went to Jena and became a disciple of the celebrated Johannes Musäus, the representative of the middle party in the Syncretistic Controversy, whose daughter he married in 1674. Taking his doctor’s degree the same year, in 1675 he became professor of church history at the university, and lectured with great success on several different branches of theology.
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Joseph Solomon Delmedigo
1591 - 1655 (64 years)
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo , also known as Yashar Mi-Qandia , was a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist. Born in Candia, Crete, a descendant of Elia del Medigo, he moved to Padua, Italy, studying medicine and taking classes with Galileo in astronomy. After graduating in 1613 he moved to Venice and spent a year in the company of Leon de Modena and Simone Luzzatto. From Venice he went back to Candia and from there started traveling in the near East, reaching Alexandria and Cairo. There he went into a public contest in mathematics against a local mathematician. From Egypt he moved to Istanbul, there he observed the comet of 1619.
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Robert Lowth
1710 - 1787 (77 years)
Robert Lowth was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar. Life Lowth was born in Hampshire, England, Great Britain, the son of Dr William Lowth, a clergyman and Biblical commentator. He was educated at Winchester College and became a scholar of New College, Oxford in 1729. Lowth obtained his BA in 1733 and his Master of Arts degree in 1737. In 1735, while still at Oxford, Lowth took orders in the Anglican Church and was appointed vicar of Ovington, Hampshire, a position he retained until 1741, w...
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Heinrich Philipp Konrad Henke
1752 - 1809 (57 years)
Heinrich Philipp Konrad Henke , German theologian, best known as a writer on church history, was born at Hehlen, Brunswick-Lüneburg. He was the father of historian Ernst Ludwig Theodor Henke . He received his education at the gymnasium in Braunschweig and at the University of Helmstedt. Until 1809, he was associated with the University of Helmstedt, named as an associate professor of philosophy in 1777 and of theology the following year. In 1780, he was chosen as a full professor of theology. During his tenure at Helmstedt, he was appointed abbot of Michaelstein Abbey and vice-president of th...
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Alois Emanuel Biedermann
1819 - 1885 (66 years)
Alois Emanuel Biedermann was a Swiss Protestant theologian. He was a prominent dogmatician of the so-called "Young Hegelian" school of thought, and an important advocate of "free Christianity" in Switzerland.
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W. W. Prescott
1855 - 1944 (89 years)
William Warren Prescott was an administrator, educator, and scholar in the early Seventh-day Adventist Church. Biography Prescott's parents were part of the Millerite movement. W. W. Prescott graduated from Dartmouth College in 1877 and served as principal of high schools in Vermont, and published and edited newspapers in Maine and Vermont prior to accepting the presidency of Battle Creek College . While still president of Battle Creek College he helped found Union College and became its first president in 1891. In 1892 he assumed the presidency of the newly founded Walla Walla College in Washington.
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Joseph Rickaby
1845 - 1932 (87 years)
Joseph John Rickaby, SJ was an English Jesuit priest and philosopher. Life Rickaby was born in 1845 in Everingham, York. He received his education at Stonyhurst College, and was ordained in 1877, one of the so-called Stonyhurst Philosophers, along with Richard F. Clarke, Herbert Lucas, and his own brother, John Rickaby. a significant group for neo-scholasticism in England. At the time he was at St Beuno's, he was on friendly terms with Gerard Manley Hopkins; they were ordained on the same day.
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Immanuel Tremellius
1510 - 1580 (70 years)
Immanuel Tremellius was an Italian Jewish convert to Christianity. He was known as a leading Hebraist and Bible translator. Life He was born at Ferrara and educated at the University of Padua. He was converted about 1540 to the Catholic faith through Cardinal Pole but embraced Protestantism in the following year, before going to Strasbourg to teach Hebrew.
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Leonardus Lessius
1554 - 1623 (69 years)
Leonardus Lessius was a Flemish moral theologian from the Jesuit order. Life At the age of thirteen the young Leonard won the Brecht scholarship to the University of Leuven. This university is the main place he will be identified with for the next fifty years. In 1567 he matriculated in an arts department called Le Porc , during the final oral exam he was merited the title of primus. He joined the Jesuits in 1572, and after theological studies in Rome under Francisco Suarez and Robert Bellarmine, he became professor of theology at the University of Leuven. In his early teaching years, he was involved in the predestination theological debate that was raging in Leuven in 1587–88 .
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Karl Fezer
1891 - 1960 (69 years)
Karl Fezer , was a German Lutheran theologian. Biography After his training Fezer was initially a curate in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, then head pastor in Stuttgart and Tübingen. From 1926 to 1959 he was the Professor for Practical Theology at the University of Tübingen. He was Chair of the Protestant Seminary there from 1931 to 1959 while simultaneously Rector of the University from 1933 to 1959. For a short time he was the head of the German Christians movement which sought to institute Nazi racial policies in the German Protestant Church. He petitioned for membership in the Nazi Party in May 1933.
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Gerald of Wales
1146 - 1220 (74 years)
Gerald of Wales was a Cambro-Norman priest and historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and wrote extensively. He studied and taught in France and visited Rome several times, meeting the Pope. He was nominated for several bishoprics but turned them down in the hope of becoming Bishop of St Davids, but was unsuccessful despite considerable support. His final post was as Archdeacon of Brecon, from which he retired to academic study for the remainder of his life. Much of his writing survives.
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Dominic Barberi
1792 - 1849 (57 years)
Dominic Barberi, CP was an Italian theologian and Passionist priest who was prominent in spreading Catholicism in England. He contributed to the conversion of John Henry Newman. In 1963, he was beatified by Pope Paul VI.
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Samuel Rutherford
1600 - 1661 (61 years)
Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish Presbyterian pastor and theologian and one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly. Life Samuel Rutherford was born in the parish of Nisbet , Roxburghshire, in the Scottish Borders, about 1600. Nothing certain is known as to his parentage, but he belonged to the same line as the Roxburghs of Hunthill and his father is believed to have been a farmer or miller. A brother was school-master of Kirkcudbright, and was a Bible Reader there, and another brother was an officer in the Dutch army.
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William Park Armstrong
1874 - 1944 (70 years)
William Park Armstrong was a theologian and New Testament scholar who is best known for his work at Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography William Park Armstrong was born in Selma, Alabama, the son of William Park and Alice Armstrong and studied at Princeton University, earning his bachelor's degree at the age of 20. He would later earn his M.A. from Princeton and a B.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary before studying in Europe. He studied at the German Universities of Marburg, Berlin, and Erlangen, before finally finishing his studies at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1900 he was ordained into the Presbyterian Church .
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Joseph Langen
1837 - 1901 (64 years)
Joseph Langen was a German theologian and priest, who was instrumental for the German Old Catholic movement. Langen was born at Cologne, studied at Bonn, and was ordained priest for the Roman Catholic Church in 1859. He was nominated professor extraordinary at the University of Bonn in 1864, and a professor in ordinary of the exegesis of the New Testament in 1867—an office which he held till his death. He was one of the band of professors who in 1870 supported Döllinger in his resistance to the Vatican decrees, and was excommunicated along with Döllinger, Johann Nepomuk Huber, Johann Friedrich, Franz Heinrich Reusch, Joseph Hubert Reinkens and others, for refusing to accept them.
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David Beaton
1494 - 1546 (52 years)
David Beaton was Archbishop of St Andrews and the last Scottish cardinal prior to the Reformation. Career Cardinal Beaton was the sixth and youngest son of eleven children of John Beaton of Balfour in the county of Fife, and his wife Mary, daughter of Sir David Boswell of Balmuto. The Bethunes of Balfour were part of Clan Bethune, the Scottish branch of the noble French House of Bethune. The Cardinal is said to have been born in 1494. He was educated at the universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, and in his sixteenth year was sent to Paris, where he studied civil and canon law. In 1519 King ...
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Wolfgang Friedrich Gess
1819 - 1891 (72 years)
Wolfgang Friedrich Gess was a German Lutheran theologian. Life Gess was a teacher of theology in Basel from 1850 to 1864. After that, he became Professor of Systematic Theology in Göttingen, and frpom 1871 in Breslau. In 1879 he succeeded the deceased General Superintendent in Posen, Friedrich Cranz . Gess entered upon his duties in April 1880 and as general superintendent of the Old Prussian, he headed the Church province of Posen until 1884. He was succeeded by Johannes Hesekiel, and settled down in Wernigerode.
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Hugh James Rose
1795 - 1838 (43 years)
Hugh James Rose was an English Anglican priest and theologian who served as the second Principal of King's College, London. Life Rose was born at Little Horsted in Sussex on 9 June 1795 and educated at Uckfield School, where his father was Master, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was conferred the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1817, but missed a fellowship. He was then President of the Cambridge Union Society for the Michaelmas term of 1817. Having been ordained to the diaconate in 1818, he was appointed to a cure in Buxted, Sussex, in 1819. He married Anne Cuyler and was priested later that year.
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Francis Alison
1705 - 1779 (74 years)
Francis Alison was a leading minister in the Synod of Philadelphia during The Old Side-New Side Controversy Biography Early life and education Alison was born in Donegal, Ireland and studied at the University of Glasgow. It appears he arrived in the United States in 1734 or 1735 in order to help the fledgling Presbyterian Church as a minister. He was ordained a full-fledged minister in 1737 and served the New London congregation.
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Daniel Williams
1643 - 1716 (73 years)
Daniel Williams was a British benefactor, minister and theologian, within the Presbyterian tradition, i.e. a Christian outside the Church of England. He is known largely for the legacy he left which led to the creation of Dr Williams's Library, a centre for research on English Dissenters.
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Pierre d'Ailly
1350 - 1420 (70 years)
Pierre d'Ailly was a French theologian, astrologer and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Academic career D'Ailly was born in Compiègne in 1350 or 1351 of a prosperous bourgeois family. He studied in Paris at the Collège de Navarre, receiving the licentiate in arts in 1367 and the master’s a year later, and was active in university affairs by 1372. D'Ailly taught the Bible in 1375 and the Sentences of Peter Lombard in 1376–1377, and received the licentiate and doctorate in theology in 1381. He was affiliated with the university, serving as rector in 1384; among his pupils were Jean Gers...
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Leonard Hodgson
1889 - 1969 (80 years)
Leonard Hodgson was an Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, historian of the early Church and Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1958. Early life Hodgson was the son of Walter Hodgson , a shorthand writer to the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and of his wife Lillias Emma, a daughter of William Shaw of County Durham. He was educated at St Paul's School, London, and Hertford College, Oxford, where he took a second in Classical Moderations in 1910, a first in Greats in 1912 and a first in Theology in 1913. He then trained for the ministry at St...
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Pope Innocent II
1100 - 1143 (43 years)
Pope Innocent II , born Gregorio Papareschi, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 14 February 1130 to his death in 1143. His election as pope was controversial and the first eight years of his reign were marked by a struggle for recognition against the supporters of Anacletus II. He reached an understanding with King Lothair III of Germany who supported him against Anacletus and whom he crowned as Holy Roman emperor. Innocent went on to preside over the Second Lateran council.
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Robert Newton Flew
1886 - 1962 (76 years)
Robert Newton Flew was an English Methodist minister and theologian, and an advocate of ecumenism among the Christian churches. Family and education Robert Newton Flew was born at Holsworthy, Devon, on 25 May 1886, the older son of Josiah Flew , a Wesleyan Methodist minister, and his wife, Florence Jones . Originally from Portland, Dorset, the family moved during Flew's childhood to Wiltshire and Warwickshire, and then to the suburbs of London. There Flew won a scholarship in 1897 to the independent school Christ's Hospital, followed by a "postmastership" to Merton College, Oxford, where he read classics and theology.
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John Brown
1784 - 1858 (74 years)
John Brown was a Scottish minister and theologian, known for his exegesis as a preacher. Life The grandson of John Brown of Haddington, he was born at Whitburn, Linlithgowshire. He studied at Glasgow university, and afterwards at the divinity hall of the Burgher branch of the Secession church at Selkirk, under George Lawson. In 1806 he was ordained minister of the Burgher congregation at Biggar, Lanarkshire, where he laboured for sixteen years. While there he had a controversy with Robert Owen the socialist.
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Galusha Anderson
1832 - 1918 (86 years)
Galusha Anderson was an American theologian and university president. Biography Anderson was born at Bergen, Genesee County, New York. His father was of Scotch descent and a strict Presbyterian. At a young age he converted to the Baptist faith and was determined to become a minister. Anderson was educated at the University of Rochester, graduating with high honors in 1854, and the Rochester Theological Seminary, graduating in 1856. His ministry began as pastor of the Baptist Church in Janesville, Wisconsin. After two years, he moved to St. Louis to be the pastor of Second Baptist Church.
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Claudius Buchanan
1766 - 1815 (49 years)
Claudius Buchanan FRSE was a Scottish theologian, an ordained minister of the Church of England, and an evangelical missionary for the Church Missionary Society. He served as Vice Provost of the College of Calcutta in India.
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Felix Fabri
1441 - 1502 (61 years)
Felix Fabri was a Swiss Dominican theologian. He left vivid and detailed descriptions of his pilgrimages to Palestine and also in 1489 authored a book on the history of Swabia, entitled Historia Suevorum.
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Nicolaus von Amsdorf
1483 - 1565 (82 years)
Nicolaus von Amsdorf was a German Lutheran theologian and an early Protestant reformer. As bishop of Naumburg , he became the first Lutheran bishop in the Holy Roman Empire. Biography He was born in Torgau, on the Elbe.
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Bernardino Ochino
1487 - 1564 (77 years)
Bernardino Ochino was an Italian, who was raised a Roman Catholic and later turned to Protestantism and became a Protestant reformer. Biography Bernardino Ochino was born in Siena, the son of the barber Domenico Ochino, and at the age of 7 or 8, in around 1504, was entrusted to the order of Franciscan Friars. From 1510 he studied medicine at Perugia.
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Erich Sauer
1898 - 1959 (61 years)
Erich Sauer was a German dispensationalist Christian theologian associated with the Plymouth Brethren. His various books have sold around one million copies. Early life Sauer was born in Berlin in 1898, his mother was already a Christian and he attended Open Brethren congregations.
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Emil Fuchs
1874 - 1971 (97 years)
Emil Fuchs was a German theologian, the son of Georg Friedrich Fuchs and Auguste Louise Wilhelmine Lonni Hauss. A religious socialist, Fuchs was one of the first Lutheran pastors to join the Social Democratic Party of Germany. As a devoted pacifist, he later joined the Religious Society of Friends . He was a Fellowship holder at Woodbrooke College , Selly Oak, Birmingham from 1934 to 1935.
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Friedrich Bleek
1793 - 1859 (66 years)
Friedrich Bleek , was a German Biblical scholar. Life At 16 Bleek's father sent him to the gymnasium at Lübeck, where he became so interested in ancient languages that he abandoned his idea of a legal career and resolved to devote himself to the study of theology. After spending some time at the university of Kiel, he went to Berlin, where, from 1814 to 1817, he studied under De Wette, Neander and Schleiermacher. So highly were his merits appreciated by his professors — Schleiermacher was accustomed to say that he possessed a special charisma for the science of Introduction — that in 1818 afte...
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Johann Christoph Döderlein
1746 - 1792 (46 years)
Johann Christoph Döderlein or Doederlein was a German Protestant theologian. As professor of theology at Jena from 1782, he was celebrated for his varied learning, for his eloquence as a preacher, and for the important influence he exerted in guiding the transition movement from strict orthodoxy to a freer theology. His most important work Institutio theologi christiani nostris temporibus accommodata was published in 1780.
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Hans Meiser
1881 - 1956 (75 years)
Hans Meiser was a German Protestant theologian, pastor and from 1933 to 1955 the first 'Landesbischof' of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria. Today Meiser's political stance between 1933 and 1945 is intensely studied and debated within the parameters of Germany's Culture of Remembrance. In his unsuccessful attempt to maintain his 'landeskirche' and its independence he decided to make several compromises with the Nazi state. His attitude towards Judaism is also controversial in light of studies of the Shoah.
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Cornelis Tiele
1830 - 1902 (72 years)
Cornelis Petrus Tiele was a Dutch theologian and scholar of religions. Life Tiele was born at Leiden. He was educated at Amsterdam, first studying at the Athenaeum Illustre, as the communal high school of the capital was then named, and afterwards at the seminary of the Remonstrant Brotherhood.
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Christian David
1692 - 1751 (59 years)
Christian David was a German Lutheran missionary, writer and hymnwriter. He travelled as a missionary of the Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine, the Moravian Church, to Greenland and to Native Americans. He is known as the author of hymn stanzas that were included in "Sonne der Gerechtigkeit" in 1932.
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Nahum Norbert Glatzer
1903 - 1990 (87 years)
Nahum Norbert Glatzer was an Austrian and American scholar of Jewish history and philosophy from antiquity to mid 20th century. Life Glatzer was born in Lemberg, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . At the start of World War I his family moved westward to Bodenbach in Silesia where Norbert attended Gymnasium. At age 17, his father sent him to study with Solomon Breuer in Frankfurt, Germany with the intention that he would become a Rabbi. After encountering the circle of Jewish intellectuals, including Franz Rosenzweig, around Rabbi Nehemiah Anton Nobel he decided against the rabbinate. ...
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Gustav Baron
1847 - 1914 (67 years)
Gustav Baron was Croatian theologian, university professor and rector of the University of Zagreb. He studied theology in Vienna and Zagreb. He was ordained for a priest in 1873. He received his Ph.D in 1876 at the Faculty of Theology of the Royal University of Franz Joseph I. He was professor and chair of the Archiepiscopal Gymnasium in Zagreb. He became a docent at the Faculty of Theology in 1877, and a full professor in 1881. He served as the dean of the faculty in two mandates.
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Martin Delrio
1551 - 1608 (57 years)
Martin Anton Delrio SJ was a Dutch Jesuit theologian. He studied at numerous institutions, receiving a master's degree in law from Salamanca in 1574. After a period of political service in the Spanish Netherlands, he became a Jesuit in 1580.
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Philip Nye
1595 - 1672 (77 years)
Philip Nye was a leading English Independent theologian and a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He was the key adviser to Oliver Cromwell on matters of religion and regulation of the Church.
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Christian Frederick Boerner
1683 - 1753 (70 years)
Christian Frederick Boerner , professor of theology at Leipzig. Boerner was born in Dresden, and lived most of his life in Leipzig. Boerner had two sons, Christian Frederic, and Frederic , who were both physicians.
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Joseph Mede
1586 - 1638 (52 years)
Joseph Mede was an English scholar with a wide range of interests. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he became a Fellow in 1613. He is now remembered as a biblical scholar. He was also a naturalist and Egyptologist. He was a Hebraist, and became Lecturer of Greek.
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Henry Preserved Smith
1847 - 1927 (80 years)
Henry Preserved Smith was an American biblical scholar. Smith was born in Troy, Ohio. He graduated at Amherst College in 1869 and studied theology in Lane Theological Seminary in 1869–1872, in Berlin in 1872–1874 and in Leipzig in 1876–1877. He was instructor in church history in 1874–1875, and in Hebrew in 1875–1876, and was assistant-professor in 1877-1879 and professor in 1879-1893 of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis in Lane Theological Seminary.
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