Emil Friedrich° Kautzsch

KAUTZSCH, EMIL FRIEDRICH° (1841–1910), German Protestant Bible critic and Semitist who as editor of a number of works on Bible and Semitic philology helped educate a generation of German theologians and biblicists. Born in Plauen, Saxony, he taught in Leipzig (until 1872), Basle (1872–80), Tuebingen (1880–88), and Halle (from 1888). Kautsch visited Ottoman Palestine in 1876 and 1904, which led him in 1877 to participate in founding the Deutscher Palästina Verein. From 1888 he was one of the editors of the influential Theologische Studien und Kritiken. In the area of Bible studies Kautzsch published a translation and commentary on the Book of Psalms (1893) and a dissertation on biblical poetry (1902). In collaboration with other scholars he wrote about the sources of Genesis (1888, with A. Solchin), the books of the Bible (1894), and Proverbs in the Polychrome Bible (1901, with A. Mueller). He helped edit Die Apokryphen und Pseudepigraphen des Alten Testaments … (1899) and Textbibel des Alten und Neuen Testaments (1900, 1911³). On the subject of Hebrew and Aramaic philology he edited the second to eighth editions of H. Scholz' Abriss der hebraeischen Laut-und Formenlehre (1874–99), and the 22^nd to 28^th editions of *Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1878–1908), and a valuable grammar of biblical Aramaic in 1902, based on a similar work of 1888. Kautzsch's literary activity also includes a study on the apostle Paul (1869), a history of the Moabites (1876, with A. Solchin), and the editorship of the tenth and 11^th editions of K.R. Hagenbach's Encyklopädie und Methodologie (1880–84). Kautzsch was an involved church member who attempted to bring the results of biblical scholarship to the wider German Protestant community.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.