HUPFELD, Hermann (1796-1866), an eminent Orientalist and Biblical commentator and critic, was born March 31, 1796, at Marburg, where he studied philosophy and theology from 1813 to 1817; in 1819 he became a teacher in the gymnasium at Hanau, but in 1822 he resigned that appointment. After studying for some time under Gesenius at Halle, he in 1824 “habilitated” in philosophy at that university, and in the following year he was appointed professor extraordinarius of theology at Marburg. There he received the ordinary professorships of Oriental languages and of theology in 1827 and 1830 respectively; thirteen years later he removed as successor of Gesenius to Halle. In 1865 he was accused by some theologians of the Hengstenberg school, before the minister of public worship, of having taught exegesis in a sense inconsistent with the recognized character of the Old Testament as a divine revelation. From this charge, however, he successfully vindicated himself, the entire theological faculty, including J. Müller and Tholuck, bearing testimony to his essential orthodoxy. He died at Halle April 24, 1866....
His earliest works in the department of Semitic philology {Exercitationes Aethiopicae, 1825, and De emendanda ratione lexicographies Semiticae, 1827) were followed by the first part (1841), mainly historical and critical, of an Ausführliche Hebräische Grammatik, which he did not live to complete, and by a “program” on the early history of Hebrew grammar among the Jews {De rei grammaticae apud Judaeos initiis antiquissimisque scriptoribus, 1846). His principal contribution to Biblical literature, a valuable though prosaic exegetical and critical Uebersetzung u. Auslegung der Psalmen, began to appear in 1855, and was completed in 1861 (2d ed. by Riehm, 1867-1871). Other writings are Ueber Begriff u. Methode der sogenannten biblischen Einleitung (1844); De primitiva et vera festorum apud Hebraeos ratione (1851-1864); Die Quellen der Genesis von neuem untersucht (1853), in which he dissects that book into an original writing, or “Urschrift,” by the older Elohist, and the contributions by the younger Elohist and by the Jehovist respectively, the work of the “redactor” having been comparatively trifling; Die heutige theosophische u. mythologische Theologie u. Schrifterklärung (1861); and various contributions to the Studien u. Kritiken, to the Journal of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, and to the Neue Evangelische Kirchenzeitung. See Riehm, Hermann Hupfeld (1867).
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