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Julius Wellhausen (May 17, 1844 - January 17, 1918), was a German biblical scholar and Orientalist.

He was born at Hameln on the Weser, Westphalia.

Having studied theology at the University of G�ttingen under Georg Heinrich August Ewald, he established himself there in 1870 as Privatdozent for Old Testament history. In 1872 he was appointed professor ordinarius of theology at Greifswald. Resigning in 1882 for reasons of conscience, he became professor extraordinarius of oriental languages in the faculty of philology at Halle, was elected professor ordinarius at Marburg in 1885, and was transferred to G�ttingen in 1892 where he stayed until his death.

Wellhausen was famous for his critical investigations into Old Testament history and the composition of the Hexateuch, the uncompromising scientific attitude he adopted in testing its problems bringing him into antagonism with the older school of biblical interpreters. He is perhaps most well-known for the Documentary hypothesis; this synthesis of a century of scholarly examination of the Torah came to the conclusion that the five books were a redaction of four originally independent texts, dating from several centuries after the time of Moses, their traditional author. Wellhausen's hypothesis remained the dominant paradigm for Pentateuchal studies until the latter quarter of the 20th century, when it began to be challenged by scholars who saw more and more hands at work in the Torah, ascribing them to periods even later than Wellhausen had proposed.

The best known of his works are:

• De gentibus et familiis Judaeis (G�ttingen, 1870)
• Der Text der B�cher Samuelis untersucht (G�ttingen, 1871)
• Die Phariseer und Sadduc�er (Greifswald, 1874)
• Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (Berlin, 1882; Eng. trans., 1885; 5th German edition, 1899; first published in 1878 as Geschichte Israels)
• Muhammed in Medina (Berlin, 1882)
• Die Komposition des Hexateuchs und der historischen B�cher des Alten Testaments (1889, 3rd ed. 1899)
• Israelitische und j�dische Geschichte (1894, 4th ed. 1901)
• Reste arabischen Heidentums (1897)
• Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz (1902)
• Skizzen und Vorarbeiten (1884-1899)
• new and revised editions of Friedrich Bleek's Einleitung in das Alte Testament (4-6, 1878-1893).

In 1906 appeared Die christliche Religion, mit Einschluss der israelitisch-j�dischen Religion, in collaboration with A J�licher, Adolf Harnack and others. He also did useful and interesting work as a New Testament commentator. He published Das Evangelium Marci, �bersetzt und erkl�rt in 1903. Das Evangelium Matth�i and Das Evangelium Lucae in 1904 and Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien in 1905.

See also

• References

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