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% e yielded to Ernesti and some others . ** criticism , as applied to the Ifcxt of the Ohl Testament in Germany , lie was the father . Hie appearance of Kennicott ' s dissertations in 1752 , first direct-€ d his attention to it . He owed
to Kennicott , however , nothing more than this accidental impulse , and soon left him behind . When he first began to study due Old Testament , it was involved in the thick darkness of Buxtorfs
Rabbinical Chimeras . The light which might have dispersed it , had broken some time before on Halle , but no one perceived or improved it . A Bible had been
published there ifc 1720 , with y&-fi © us readings ; the self-contradictions of the Masora were pat * pable , and yet its infallibility was maintained by theologians , with all the stiffness of ai $ article of feith . Miclmelis fell into the
erfors of his predecessors ; in his two academical disputations in 1739—40 , And in his Hebrew Grammar in 1745 , he defends them with all the sopkistries which
** sed to be brought forward in their support , and would have retained them much longer had be continued at Halle , where a storm would have been raised
against any one who opposed them , from which even his liberty and life might net have been secure * ^ The ch ange of views which his journey to England and his re .
J&GV&l to Gottingen occasioned , though it did not directly affect these prejudices , prepared him to renounce them , and very soon fcftfc * the appearance of Kennitott ' s dissertations we find him i * vering critical lectures on the
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Old Testament . Of ttese he published a ^ pecimea in 1 T 5 $ , in hk ftC Xedture on the three most important Psaltns relating to tb # Messiah . ' * This Work it must b *
confessed bears markl of proceeding from one who was himself a learner * but at that time nothing had appeared in any language
that could be compared to it "for eruditfofi and novelty . The sub * ject was happily chosen to allay the terrors of the theologians , who feared that the collations of
the Old Testament would undo all their systems , as it strengthened the argument from prophecy ^ which the received readings had weakened . The results of his
subsequent studies are found in his © rientalisphe Bibliothek , being excluded from the notes to his translation by his designing those notes for the use of the unlearned .
They are a treasure of acute observations and ingenious conjectures , mixed with many emendations which will stand the test of time and subsequent discoveries .
If some of his conjectures appear unnecessary , if others are rendered improbable by the connection and by the period of Hebrew literature to which the emended
author belongs ^ yet they useful by showing interpreters where difficulties lie , which they may seek to remove by morejustifiable
means . ' * The criticism of the New Tes tament in Germany was in great measure perfected by hini . It was a subject in which hardly any German divine Had engaged , as late as the middle of the ISth
century . What a commotion was excited against the pious Bengelius * when he began to improve it ! How feeble and timid doe *
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Sittch of the Life 4 > f Michaetis . Gf
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1811, page 67, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2413/page/3/
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