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,
#4251
Alexander Whyte
1836 - 1921 (85 years)
For the British colonial administrator, see Alexander Frederick Whyte Rev Alexander Whyte D.D.,LL.D. was a Scottish divine. He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1898.
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Michael Baius
1513 - 1589 (76 years)
Michael Baius was a Belgian theologian. He formulated the school of thought now known as Baianism. Life He was born at Meslin L'Eveque near Ath in Hainaut as Michel De Bay, the son of Jean de Bay, a farmer. De Bay studied humanities in Brugelette and in Enghien and in 1533 he began studying philosophy at the Grand College het Varken of Leuven University. From 1535 he also studied theology at the Pope Adrian VI College. He was an excellent student and was ordained a priest in 1542, and was appointed director of the Standonck-College in Leuven.
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Stanislaus Kostka
1550 - 1568 (18 years)
Stanisław Kostka S.J. was a Polish novice of the Society of Jesus. He is venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Stanislaus Kostka . He was born at Rostkowo, Przasnysz County, Poland, on 28 October 1550, and died in Rome during the night of 14–15 August 1568. He entered the Society of Jesus in Rome on his 17th birthday , and is said to have foretold his death a few days before it occurred.
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Franciscus Junius
1545 - 1602 (57 years)
Franciscus Junius the Elder was a Reformed scholar, Protestant reformer and theologian. Born in Bourges in central France, he initially studied law, but later decided to study theology in Geneva under John Calvin and Theodore Beza. He became a minister in Antwerp, but was forced to flee to Heidelberg in 1567. He wrote a translation of the Bible into Latin with Emmanuel Tremellius, and his Treatise on True Theology was an often used text in Reformed scholasticism.
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Rudolf Seydel
1835 - 1892 (57 years)
Rudolf Seydel was a German philosopher and theologian born in Dresden. In 1860 he received his habilitation at the University of Leipzig, where in 1867 he became an associate professor of philosophy. He was a disciple of Christian Hermann Weisse , and is remembered for his studies involving parallels between Buddhism and Christianity. Seydel died in Leipzig on December 8, 1892.
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Benedict Joseph Flaget
1763 - 1850 (87 years)
Benedict Joseph Flaget was a French-born Catholic bishop in the United States. He served as the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bardstown between 1808 and 1839. When the see was transferred to Louisville in 1839, he became Bishop of the Diocese of Louisville where he served from 1839 to 1850.
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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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Tommaso Martinelli
1827 - 1888 (61 years)
Tommaso Maria Martinelli was a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Prefect of the Congregation of Rites. Tommaso Martinelli was born in the parish of Sant'Anna, Lucca as the son of Cosma Martinelli and Maddalena Pardini. He was the brother of Cardinal Sebastiano Martinelli.
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Andrew Willet
1562 - 1621 (59 years)
Andrew Willet was an English clergyman and controversialist. A prolific writer, he is known for his anti-papal works. His views were conforming and non-separatist, and he appeared as a witness against Edward Dering before the Star-chamber. Joseph Hall eulogised Willet in Noah's Dove, and Thomas Fuller modelled 'the Controversial Divine' of his Holy State on him.
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George Stanley Faber
1773 - 1854 (81 years)
George Stanley Faber was an Anglican theologian and prolific author. He was a typologist, who believed that all the world's myths were corrupted versions of the original stories in the Bible, and an advocate of Day-Age Theory. He was a contemporary of John Nelson Darby. Faber's writings had an influence on Historicism and Dispensationalism.
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Friedrich Christoph Müller
1751 - 1808 (57 years)
Christoph Friedrich Müller was a theologian and cartographer in Schwelm. Mueller studied theology, mathematics, astronomy and the sciences. In addition, he learned four languages. He was pastor from 1776 in Bad Sassendorf, from 1782 in Unna, and from 1785 in Schwelm.
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Pope Zosimus
400 - 418 (18 years)
Pope Zosimus was the bishop of Rome from 18 March 417 to his death on 26 December 418. He was born in Mesoraca, Calabria. Zosimus took a decided part in the protracted dispute in Gaul as to the jurisdiction of the See of Arles over that of Vienne, giving energetic decisions in favour of the former, but without settling the controversy. His fractious temper coloured all the controversies in which he took part, in Gaul, Africa and Italy, including Rome, where at his death the clergy were very much divided.
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Henry Cadbury
1883 - 1974 (91 years)
Henry Joel Cadbury was an American biblical scholar, Quaker historian, writer, and non-profit administrator. Life A graduate of Haverford College, Cadbury was a Quaker throughout his life, as well as an agnostic. Forced out of his teaching position at Haverford for writing an anti-war letter to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, in 1918, he saw the experience as a milestone, leading him to larger service beyond his Orthodox Religious Society of Friends. He was offered a position in the Divinity School at Harvard University, from which he had received his Ph.D., but he first rejected its teacher...
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James Henley Thornwell
1812 - 1862 (50 years)
James Henley Thornwell was an American Presbyterian preacher, slaveowner, and religious writer from the U.S. state of South Carolina during the 19th century. During the American Civil War, Thornwell supported the Confederacy and preached a doctrine that claimed slavery to be morally right and justified by the tenets of Christianity. But contrary to many proponents of slavery, he preached that the African American population were people created in the image of God just like whites and that they should call slaves their brothers. He became prominent in the Old School Presbyterian denomination in the south, preaching and writing on theological and social issues.
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Gottlob Christian Storr
1746 - 1805 (59 years)
Gottlob Christian Storr was a German Protestant theologian, born in Stuttgart. He was the son of theologian Johann Christian Storr and the older brother of naturalist Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr .
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Ernest Barnes
1874 - 1953 (79 years)
Ernest William Barnes was a British mathematician and scientist who later became a liberal theologian and bishop. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was Master of the Temple from 1915 to 1919. He was made Bishop of Birmingham in 1924, the only bishop appointed during Ramsay MacDonald's first term in office. His modernist views, in particular objection to Reservation, led to conflict with the Anglo-Catholics in his diocese. A biography by his son, Sir John Barnes, Ahead of His Age: Bishop Barnes of Birmingham, was published in 1979.
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H. Wheeler Robinson
1872 - 1945 (73 years)
Henry Wheeler Robinson, known as H. Wheeler Robinson was a British theologian. Career H. Wheeler Robinson was educated at Regent's Park Baptist College, then still in London, the University of Edinburgh, Mansfield College, Oxford, and the Universities of Marburg and Strasbourg. He began his ministry at Pitlochry and then at St Michael's, Coventry. In 1926, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity honoris causa from the University of Edinburgh.
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Marcin Czechowic
1532 - 1613 (81 years)
Martin Czechowic was a Polish Socinian minister, Protestant reformer, theologian and writer. Life Born in Zbąszyń on the German border, Czechowic received a humanistic education in Poznań and at the University of Leipzig .
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John McLeod Campbell
1800 - 1872 (72 years)
John McLeod Campbell was a Scottish minister and Reformed theologian. In the opinion of one German church historian, contemporaneous with Campbell, his theology was a highpoint of British theology during the nineteenth century. James B. Torrance ranked him highly on the doctrine of the atonement, placing Campbell alongside Athanasius of Alexandria and Anselm of Canterbury. Campbell took his cue from his close reading of the early Church Fathers, the historic Reformed confessions and catechisms, John Calvin, Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians, and Jonathan Edwards' works.
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Campegius Vitringa
1659 - 1722 (63 years)
Campegius Vitringa Sr., or Kempe Vitringa was a Dutch Protestant theologian and Hebraist. His youngest of four children was Campeius Vitringa . Vitringa, a follower of Johannes Cocceius, was a supporter of prophetic theology. He was educated at the universities of Franeker and Leiden, and became professor of Oriental languages at the former in 1681. When locating prophetic outcomes, he would associate events to the near rather than the far-off future, placing a distinct focus on the period of the Maccabees . Like Joseph Mede , Vitringa believed wholeheartedly that the Millennium was yet to come, but did not expect any immediate changes.
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Georg Christian Adler
1734 - 1804 (70 years)
Georg Christian Adler was a German scholar. Adler was born in Brandenburg, and studied theology at the University of Halle. In 1755, he was appointed preacher in Arnis, Schleswig; in 1758 in Sarau; and in 1759 in Altona. He remained in Altona, where he became provost in 1791, and died in 1804.
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Johann Karl Wilhelm Vatke
1806 - 1882 (76 years)
Johann Karl Wilhelm Vatke, known as Wilhelm Vatke was a German Protestant theologian, born in Behnsdorf, near Magdeburg. After acting as Privatdozent in Berlin, he was appointed in 1837 professor extraordinarius.
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