SCHULTENS. Three Dutch Orientalists of this name have an honourable place among the scholars of the 18th century. The first and most important, Albert Schultens (1686-1750), was born at Groningen in 1686. He studied for the church at Groningen and Leyden, applying himself specially to Hebrew and the cognate tongues. His dissertation on The Use of Arabic in the Interpretation of Scripture (1706) indicates the point of view which prevailed with the school of Arabists of which he was founder, and which differentiates his aims from those of Reiske (q.v.). After a visit to Reland in Utrecht, he returned to Groningen (1708); then, having taken his degree in theology (1709), he again went to Leyden, and devoted himself to the study of the MS. collections there till in 1711 he became pastor at Wassenaer. Parochial work was little to his taste, and in 1713 he took the Hebrew chair at Franeker, which he held till 1729, when he was transferred to Leyden as rector of the collegium theologicum, or seminary for poor students. From 1732 till his death (at Leyden on 26th January 1750) he was professor of Oriental languages at Leyden. Schultens was the chief Arabic teacher of his time, and in some sense a restorer of Arabic studies, but he differed from Reiske and De Sacy in mainly regarding Arabic as a handmaid to Hebrew. His chief work was to vindicate the value of comparative study of the Semitic tongues against those who, like Gousset, regarded Hebrew as a sacred tongue with which comparative philology has nothing to do. Schultens, on the other hand, certainly went much too far in his appeals to Arabic for the interpretation of the Old Testament; the laws of comparative Semitic philology were not yet known, so that the comparison of roots was often guesswork, and the value of the ...exegetical tradition in Hebrew was not accurately determined. Hence he did not leave so much of permanent value for Hebrew grammar and lexicography as might have been expected from his learning; but the systematic illustration of phrases and modes of thought from Arabic literature, e.g., in his Liber Jobi, has a higher value, which has been too much overlooked in the reaction against the extravagances of the school he founded.
Albert’s son, John James Schultens (1716-1778), became professor at Herborn in 1742, and afterwards succeeded to his father’s chair. He was in turn succeeded by his son, Henry Albert Schultens (1749-1793), a man of great parts, who, however, left comparatively little behind him, having succumbed to excessive work while preparing an edition of Meidani, of which only a part appeared posthumously (1795).
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