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 Theology,
#3301
Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro
1677 - 1764 (87 years)
Friar Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro was a Spanish monk and scholar who led the Age of Enlightenment in Spain. He was an energetic popularizer noted for encouraging scientific and empirical thought in an effort to debunk myths and superstitions.
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Jeremiah Chaplin
1776 - 1841 (65 years)
Jeremiah Chaplin was a Reformed Baptist theologian who served as the first president of Colby College in Maine. Chaplin was born in Rowley, Massachusetts in 1776 to a Baptist family. He attended Brown University, a school with an historical Baptist affiliation, graduating in 1799 with a Bachelor of Arts. Chaplin spent a year at Brown as a tutor and pursued additional theological study to become a minister. To this end, he studied under Thomas Baldwin of the Second Baptist Church in Boston.
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Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler
1811 - 1877 (66 years)
Baron Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler was a German theologian and politician who served as Bishop of Mainz. His social teachings became influential during the papacy of Leo XIII and his encyclical Rerum novarum.
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Jean Pierre de Caussade
1675 - 1751 (76 years)
Jean Pierre de Caussade was a French Jesuit priest and writer. He is especially known for the work ascribed to him known as Abandonment to Divine Providence, and also his work with the Nuns of the Visitation in Nancy, France.
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Heinrich Abeken
1809 - 1872 (63 years)
Heinrich Abeken was a German theologian and Prussiann Privy Legation Councillor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin. Early life Abeken was born and raised in the city of Osnabrück as a son of a merchant, he was incited to a higher education by the example of his uncle Bernhard Rudolf Abeken. After finishing the college in Osnabrück, he moved in 1827 to visit the University of Berlin to study theology. He combined philosophical and philological studies and was interested in art and modern literature.
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Charles Williams
1886 - 1945 (59 years)
Charles Walter Stansby Williams was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic. Most of his life was spent in London, where he was born, but in 1939 he moved to Oxford with the university press for which he worked and was buried there following his early death.
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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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Samuel Przypkowski
1592 - 1670 (78 years)
Samuel Przypkowski was a Polish Socinian theologian, a leading figure in the Polish Brethren and an advocate of religious toleration. In Dissertatio de pace et concordia ecclesiae, published in 1628 in Amsterdam, he called for mutual tolerance by Christians. He was also a poet in Latin and Polish.
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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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William Lindsay Alexander
1808 - 1884 (76 years)
William Lindsay Alexander FRSE LLD was a Scottish church leader. Life He was born in Leith, the son of William Alexander, a wine merchant, and his wife, Elizabeth Lindsay. The only address given for his father appears in 1813 at 7 Blair Street off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh rather than Leith.
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Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec
1501 - 1584 (83 years)
Jérôme-Hermès Bolsec, also known as Hieronymus Bolsec was a French Carmelite theologian and physician, who became a Protestant and controversialist, later returning to the Catholic Church. Life A sermon which he preached at Paris aroused misgivings in Catholic circles regarding the soundness of his ideas, and Bolsec left Paris. Having separated from the Catholic Church around 1545, he took refuge at the Court of Renée, duchess of Ferrara, who was favourably disposed towards persons holding Protestant views. Here he married, and began the study of medicine around 1550, settling as a physician ...
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August Eduard Cunitz
1812 - 1886 (74 years)
August Eduard Cunitz was a French Protestant theologian. He studied at the University of Strasbourg, becoming a lecturer at the Protestant seminary in 1837. In 1857 he became an associate professor, followed by a full professorship in 1864. From 1872 onward, he held a similar position in the re-organized faculty of theology at the university.
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Said Nursî
1877 - 1960 (83 years)
Said Nursi , also spelled Said-i Nursî or Said-i Kurdî, and commonly known with the honorifics Bediüzzaman and Üstad among his followers, was a Kurdish Sunni Muslim theologian who wrote the Risale-i Nur Collection, a body of Qur'anic commentary exceeding six thousand pages. Believing that modern science and logic was the way of the future, he advocated teaching religious sciences in secular schools and modern sciences in religious schools.
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Heinrich Julius Holtzmann
1832 - 1910 (78 years)
Heinrich Julius Holtzmann , German Protestant theologian, son of theologian Karl Julius Holtzmann , was born at Karlsruhe, where his father ultimately became prelate and counsellor to the supreme consistory of the Evangelical State Church in Baden.
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Benedict Stattler
1728 - 1797 (69 years)
Benedict Stattler was a German Jesuit theologian, and an opponent of Immanuel Kant. He was a member of the German Catholic Enlightenment. Life Benedict Stattler was born at Kötzting, Bavaria. He was educated by the Benedictines of Niederaltaich Abbey. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at Landsberg in 1745 and, after the usual studies, taught philosophy and theology in Solothurn , Innsbruck, and Ingolstadt. He was ordained in 1759. In Ingolstadt, he continued to occupy the chair of theology even after the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773. In 1774, he also assumed the duties of parish priest of the Church of St.
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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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Ferdinand Janner
1836 - 1895 (59 years)
Ferdinand Janner was a German theologian from Hirschau in the Upper Palatinate. Biography Janner completed his schooling at the Latin school of Amberg. After his graduation there, he studied theology at Würzburg and Regensburg, He was ordained a priest on 13 August 1858.
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John Eadie
1810 - 1876 (66 years)
John Eadie was a Scottish theologian and biblical critic. Life He was born at Alva in Stirlingshire . Having studied the arts curriculum at the University of Glasgow, he studied for the ministry at the Divinity Hall of the United Secession Church, a dissenting body which, on its union a few years later with the Relief Church, adopted the title the United Presbyterian Church.
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Ignaz Feigerle
1795 - 1863 (68 years)
Ignaz Feigerle was a Catholic theologian and bishop of the Diocese of Sankt Pōlten. Life Feigerle studied at Frintaneum in Vienna. In 1825 he became Professor for Pastoral theology at the Palacký University of Olomouc. In 1829 he moved to the University of Vienna, where he became Rector in 1846. In 1851 he became Bishop of St. Pölten. In 1858 he founded Hippolytus, a scholarly journal, which was edited by Matthäus Binder and Anton Kerschbaumer.
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Henry Ware
1764 - 1845 (81 years)
Henry Ware was a preacher and theologian influential in the formation of Unitarianism and the American Unitarian Association in the United States. Born in Sherborn, Massachusetts , Ware was educated at Harvard College, earning his A.B. in 1785. He was from 1787 to 1805 the minister of the First Parish in Hingham, Massachusetts. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1804. In 1805 he was elected to the Hollis Chair at Harvard, precipitating a controversy between Unitarians and more conservative Calvinists. He took part in the formation of the Harvard Divinity S...
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Joseph Galien
1699 - Present (327 years)
Joseph Galien OP was a Dominican professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Avignon, meteorologist, physicist, and writer on aeronautics. Biography Born at Saint-Paulien, near Le Puy-en-Velay in southern France, Galien entered the Dominican Order at Le Puy. He studied philosophy and theology at the Dominican institution in Avignon with such success that he was sent to Bordeaux as professor of philosophy as early as 1726. From the year 1745 on he held the chair of theology at Avignon, and from 1747 the chair of philosophy. He seems to have resigned his professorship in 1751 to devote his energies entirely to the study of meteorology and physics.
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Friedrich Spitta
1852 - 1924 (72 years)
Friedrich Spitta was a German Protestant theologian. Biography Spitta was born at Wittingen, Lower Saxony, the son of German hymn writer Karl Johann Philipp Spitta and brother of Philipp . Friedrich studied at the universities of Göttingen and Erlangen, where he was a pupil of Johann Christian Konrad von Hofmann. In the course of time he became professor ordinarius and university preacher at St. Thomas, Strasbourg. In 1901 he was appointed university rector. In 1919 he was named a professor at the University of Göttingen.
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Peter Binsfeld
1545 - 1598 (53 years)
Peter Binsfeld was a German auxiliary bishop and theologian. Peter, a son of a farmer and craftsman, was born in the village of Binsfeld in the rural Eifel region, located in the modern state of Rhineland-Palatinate; he died in Trier as a victim of the bubonic plague. Binsfeld grew up in the predominantly Catholic environment of the Eifel region.
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Johannes Piscator
1546 - 1625 (79 years)
Johannes Piscator was a German Reformed theologian, known as a Bible translator and textbook writer. He was a prolific writer, and initially moved around as he held a number of positions. Some scholarly confusion as to whether there was more than one person of the name was addressed in a paper by Walter Ong.
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Wolfgang Musculus
1497 - 1563 (66 years)
Wolfgang Musculus was a Reformed theologian of the Reformation. Life Born in the village of Duss , in a German-speaking area , Musculus was a lover of song and of knowledge, of languages, Humanism and religion. The oral tradition of his songs is still found in the churches of the Reformation.
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Johann Timotheus Hermes
1738 - 1821 (83 years)
Johann Timotheus Hermes was a German poet, novelist and Protestant theologian. Life Provenance Johann Timotheus Hermes was born in Petznick, a small village near Stargard in Western Pomerania. His father was a Protestant pastor. His mother, Lukrezia, was the daughter of another Protestant pastor, Heinrich Becker from Rostock.
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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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Andrew Melville
1545 - 1622 (77 years)
Andrew Melville was a Scottish scholar, theologian, poet and religious reformer. His fame encouraged scholars from the European continent to study at Glasgow and St. Andrews. He was born at Baldovie, on 1 August 1545, the youngest son of Richard Melville of Baldovie, and Geills, daughter of Thomas Abercrombie of Montrose. He was educated at the Grammar School, Montrose, and the University of St Andrews. He later went to France in 1564, and studied law at Poitiers. He became regent in the College of Marceon, and took part in the defence of Poitiers against the Huguenots. He then proceeded to Geneva, where he was appointed Professor of Humanity.
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Franz Jáchym
1910 - 1984 (74 years)
Franz Jáchym was an Austrian prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Coadjutor Bishop of Vienna from 1950–83, and as Titular Archbishop of Maronea. He graduated from the University of Vienna. After ordination, his served in a parish and the diocesan chancery before being appointed coadjutor bishop in 1950. Consecrated in May 1950 by Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, he served in that office until his retirement in 1983.
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Eduard Karl August Riehm
1830 - 1888 (58 years)
Eduard Karl August Riehm was a German Protestant theologian. He was born at Diersburg in Baden. He studied theology and philology at Heidelberg and later at Halle under Hermann Hupfeld, who persuaded him to include Arabic, Syriac and Egyptian. Entering the ministry in 1853, he was made vicar at Durlach soon afterwards, and became a licentiate in the theological faculty at Heidelberg. In 1854 he was appointed garrison-preacher at Mannheim for the Evangelical Church in Baden; and in 1858 he was licensed to lecture at Heidelberg, where in 1861 he was made professor extraordinarius. In 1862 he obtained a similar post at Halle, and in 1866 was promoted to the rank of professor ordinarius.
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Ernst Haenchen
1894 - 1975 (81 years)
Ernst Haenchen was a German Protestant theologian, professor, and Biblical scholar. Life Ernst Haenchen grew up as the youngest son of a government official along with his two siblings in the West Prussian county town Czarnikau. In 1914 he began studying theology at the Humboldt University of Berlin, which he had to interrupt in the same year after the outbreak of the First World War. The loss of his right leg as a result of a 1918 suffered war injury influenced his further career. In 1926 he first completed his studies in theology at the University of Tübingen. He gave up his first pastorate...
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Georg Heinrici
1844 - 1915 (71 years)
Carl Friedrich Georg Heinrici was a German Lutheran theologian best known for his studies involving the relationship of early Christianity with its Greek environment. Biography From 1862 to 1867 he studied theology and philosophy at the universities of Halle-Wittenberg and Berlin. In 1873 he became an associate professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Marburg, where during the following year, he attained a full professorship. In 1892 he succeeded Theodor Zahn as professor of New Testament exegesis at the University of Leipzig, where in 1911/12 he served as rector. From 1892 to...
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James L. Farmer Sr.
1886 - 1961 (75 years)
James Leonard Farmer Sr. , known as J. Leonard Farmer, was an American author, theologian, and educator. He was a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and an academic in early religious history as well as theology.
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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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Georg Calixtus
1586 - 1656 (70 years)
Georg Calixtus, Kallisøn/Kallisön, or Callisen was a German Lutheran theologian who looked to reconcile all Christendom by removing all differences that he deemed "unimportant". Biography Calixtus was born in Medelby, Schleswig. After studying philology, philosophy and theology at Helmstedt, Jena, Giessen, Tübingen and Heidelberg, he travelled through Holland, France and England, where he became acquainted with the leading reformers. On his return in 1614, he was appointed professor of theology at Helmstedt by the duke of Brunswick, who had admired the ability he displayed when a young man i...
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Thomas Gallus
1190 - 1246 (56 years)
Thomas Gallus of Vercelli , sometimes in early twentieth century texts called Thomas of St Victor, Thomas of Vercelli or Thomas Vercellensis, was a French theologian, a member of the School of St Victor. He is known for his commentaries on Pseudo-Dionysius and his ideas on affective theology. His elaborate mystical schemata influenced Bonaventure and The Cloud of Unknowing.
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Samuel Miller
1769 - 1850 (81 years)
Samuel Miller was a Presbyterian theologian who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary. Biography Samuel Miller was born in Dover, Delaware, on October 31, 1769. His father was the Rev. John Miller . Miller attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1789. He earned his license to preach in 1791, and the University of Pennsylvania awarded him a Doctorate of Divinity degree in 1804. From 1813 to 1849, he served as Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government at Princeton Theological Seminary, and was also integral in founding the institution.
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Edward Reynolds
1599 - 1676 (77 years)
Edward Reynolds was a bishop of Norwich in the Church of England and an author. He was born in Holyrood parish in Southampton, the son of Augustine Reynolds, one of the customers of the city, and his wife, Bridget.
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Sophrony
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Sophrony , known also as Elder Sophrony or Father Sophrony was an archimandrite and one of the noted ascetic Christian monks of the twentieth century. He is best known as the disciple and biographer of Silouan the Athonite and compiler of Silouan's works, and as the founder of the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Maldon, Essex, England.
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Edward Welchman
1665 - 1739 (74 years)
Edward Welchman was an English churchman, known as a theological writer. He was Archdeacon of Cardigan from 1727. Life The son of John Welchman, of Banbury, Oxfordshire, he was born in 1665. He matriculated as a commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, on 7 July 1679. He was one of the choristers of Magdalen College in that university from 1679 till 1682. He proceeded B.A. on 24 April 1683, was admitted a probationer fellow of Merton College in 1684, and commenced M.A. on 19 June 1688.
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Francis Ellingwood Abbot
1836 - 1903 (67 years)
Francis Ellingwood Abbot was an American philosopher and theologian who sought to reconstruct theology in accord with scientific method. His lifelong romance with his wife Katharine Fearing Loring forms the subject of If Ever Two Were One, a collection of his correspondence and diary entries.
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Otto Bardenhewer
1851 - 1935 (84 years)
Bertram Otto Bardenhewer was a German Catholic patrologist. His Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur is a standard work, re-issued in 2008. For Bardenhewer, a patrologist was not a literary historian of the Church Fathers, but a historian of dogmatic definitions.
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Jonathan Paul
1853 - 1931 (78 years)
Jonathan Anton Alexander Paul was a German Pentecostal minister, writer, theologian, and Bible scholar and translator. Paul graduated from the Studium der Theologie in the University of Greifswald and pastored in Pomerania. He was member of the Gnadauer Verband, an evangelical movement within the Evangelical Church in Germany and supported youth activities, social ministry among workers, and pietistic conversion.
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Michael Baumgarten
1812 - 1889 (77 years)
Michael Baumgarten was a German Protestant theologian. Baumgarten was born at Haseldorf in Schleswig-Holstein. Life He studied at Kiel University , and became professor ordinarius of theology at Rostock . A liberal scholar, he became widely known in 1854 through a work, Die Nachtgesichte Sacharjas. Eine Prophetenstimme aus der Gegenwart, in which, starting from texts in the Old Testament and assuming the tone of a prophet, he discussed topics of every kind.
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Johann Friedrich Flatt
1759 - 1821 (62 years)
Johann Friedrich Flatt was a German Protestant theologian and philosopher. Life Johann Friedrich Flatt was born in Tübingen. His brother, Karl Christian Flatt , was also a theologian. He studied philosophy and theology in Tübingen, afterwards continuing his education in Göttingen. In 1785 he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Tübingen, where in 1792 he was appointed an associate professor of theology. In 1798 he succeeded Gottlob Christian Storr as a full professor of theology at Tübingen.
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Karl Christian Ulmann
1793 - 1871 (78 years)
Karl Christian Ulmann was a Baltic German theologian. From 1810 to 1814, he studied theology at the University of Dorpat , then continued his education at the universities of Jena and Göttingen. From 1817 to 1834, he served as pastor at St. Peters Capelle-Kremon. From 1835 to 1842, he was a professor of theology at Dorpat, where in 1839-1841 he was university rector. In 1844 he returned to Riga as an officer of the Livland Oberlandschulbehörde.
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Johann Friedrich
1836 - 1917 (81 years)
Johann Friedrich was a German theologian. He was prominent as a leader of the Old Catholics. Biography He was born at Poxdorf in Upper Franconia, and was educated at Bamberg and at the University of Munich. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1859. In 1865, he was appointed extraordinary professor of theology. In 1867, he was appointed to the Academy of Sciences. He was a pupil of Ignaz von Döllinger.
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Georg Benedikt Winer
1789 - 1858 (69 years)
Georg Benedikt Winer , German Protestant theologian, known for his linguistic studies of the New Testament. Theologically, Winer was an "anti-trinitarian". Life He studied theology at Leipzig, where in 1819 he began work as a curator at the Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig. In 1823 he became a full professor of theology at the University of Erlangen, then in 1832 returned to Leipzig, where he worked in a similar role as in Erlangen. On several separate occasions he served as dean to the theological faculty, and in 1842 was named university rector.
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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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Jan Ridderbos
1879 - 1960 (81 years)
Jan Ridderbos was a minister in the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and since 1912 professor of Old Testament at the Theological College in Kampen. Jan Ridderbos is the father of Herman Nicolaas Ridderbos, later professor in Kampen, and Nicolaas Herman Ridderbos, later a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
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