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ERNESTI, JOHANN AUGUST (1707-1781)

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Originally appearing in Volume V09, Page 753 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ERNESTI, JOHANN See also:AUGUST (1707-1781) , See also:German theologian and philologist, was See also:born on the 4th of August 1707, at Tennstadt in Thuringia, of which See also:place his See also:father was pastor, besides being See also:superintendent of the electoral dioceses of Thuringia, Satz and See also:Sangerhausen. At the See also:age of sixteen he was sent to the celebrated Saxon See also:cloister school of See also:Pforta (Schulpforta). At twenty he entered the university of See also:Wittenberg, and studied afterwards at the university of See also:Leipzig. In 1730 he was made See also:master in the See also:faculty of See also:philosophy. In the following See also:year he accepted the See also:office of conrector in the See also:Thomas school of Leipzig, of which J. M. See also:Gesner was then See also:rector, an office to which Ernesti succeeded in 1734. He was, in 1742, named See also:professor extraordinarius of See also:ancient literature in the university of Leipzig, and in 1756 professor ordinarius of See also:rhetoric. In the same year he received the degree of See also:doctor of See also:theology, and in 1759 was appointed professor ordinarius in the faculty of theology. Through his learning and his manner of discussion, he co-operated with S. J. See also:Baumgarten of See also:Halle (1706-1757) in disengaging the current dogmatic theology from its many scholastic and mystical excrescences, and thus paved a way for a revolution in theology.

He died, after a See also:

short illness, in his seventy-See also:sixth year, on the ilth of See also:September 1781. It is perhaps as much from the impulse which Ernesti gave to sacred and profane See also:criticism in See also:Germany, as from the See also:intrinsic excellence of his own See also:works in either See also:department, that he must derive his reputation as a philologist or theologian. With J. S. See also:Semler he co-operated in the revolution of Lutheran theology, and in See also:conjunction with Gesner he instituted a new school in ancient literature. He detected grammatical niceties in Latin, in regard to the consecution of tenses which had escaped preceding critics. His canons are, however, not without exceptions. As an editor of the See also:Greek See also:classics, Ernesti hardly deserves to be named beside his Dutch contemporaries, Tiberius See also:Hemsterhuis (1685-1766), L. C. Valckenaer (1715-1785), See also:David Ruhnken (1723-1798), or his colleague J. J. See also:Reiske (1716-1774).

The higher criticism was not even attempted by Ernesti.

End of Article: ERNESTI, JOHANN AUGUST (1707-1781)

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ERNESTI, JOHANN CHRISTIAN GOTTLIEB (1756–1802)

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