MICHAELIS, JOHANN DAVID

MICHAELIS, JOHANN DAVID, a celebrated biblical critic of Germany, was the eldest son of the distinguished Hebrew scholar Dr Christian Benedict Michaelis, professor in the university of Halle, and was born at that place on the 27th of February 1717. His father devoted him at an early age to an academical life; and with that view he received his elementary education in a celebrated Prussian seminary called the Orphan-house, at Glancke, in the neighbourhood of his native place. He commenced his academical career at Halle in 1733, and took his master's degree in the faculty of philosophy in 1739. In 1741 he visited England, where his superior knowledge of the oriental languages, which was considerably increased by his indefatigable researches in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, introduced him to the acquaintance, and gained him the esteem, of the first literary men of the day, with several of whom, particularly Bishop Louth, he afterwards kept up a regular correspondence. On his return to Halle, after an absence of fifteen months, he began to read lectures on the historical books of the Old Testament, which he continued after his removal to Göttingen in 1745. On the death of the chancellor Ludwig, whose lectures on German history laid the foundation of that peculiar knowledge of social law so admirably displayed in the Mosaïches Recht, Michaelis was appointed to catalogue the immense library of his former master. The result of his labours was published in 1745, and is considered an excellent specimen of such works. In 1746 he was appointed professor extraordi-

nary, and soon afterwards professor of philosophy, in the university of Göttingen, where he afterwards, in the capacity of professor of theology and oriental languages, rendered the highest services to this institution. The next year he obtained the place of secretary to the Royal Society there, of which he was director in 1761, and he was subsequently made aulic councillor by the court of Hanover. In 1764 his distinguished talents, and a publication relative to his plan for an expedition to Arabia, procured him the honour of being chosen a corresponding, and afterwards a foreign, member of the Academy of Inscriptions at Paris, of which class the institution admitted only eight; and in the same year he became a member of the society of Hærlum. In 1775 Count Hopkin, who eighteen years before had prohibited the use of his writings at Upsal, when he was chancellor of that university, prevailed upon the King of Sweden to confer upon him the order of the Polar Star as a national compensation. In 1786 he was raised to the distinguished rank of privy councillor of justice by the court of Hanover; and in 1788 he received his last literary honour by being unanimously elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London. His great critical knowledge of the Hebrew language, which he displayed in a new translation of the Bible and in other works, raised him to a degree of eminence almost unknown before in Germany; and his indefatigable labours were only equalled by his desire of communicating the knowledge he had acquired to the numerous students of all countries who frequented his admirable lectures, which he continued to deliver in half-yearly courses on various parts of the sacred writings, and on the Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac languages, to the last year of his life. He was forty-five years professor in the university of Göttingen, and during that long period he filled the chair with dignity, credit, and usefulness. He died on the 22d of October 1791, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.

The principal works of J. D. Michælis are, in oriental literature, grammars of the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic languages, Oriental u. exeget. Bibliothek, 1781-85, 23 vols.; Supplementa et emendationes ad Lexica-Hebraica, Göttingen, 1784. In history, geography, and chronology, Spicilegium Geographia Habrorum extera post Bochartum; several discourses on Jewish law and antiquities, mainly embodied in his masterpiece the Mossaisches Recht, 1770-5, 6 vols., and translated into English in 1814 by Dr. Alex. Smith, and entitled Commentaries on the Laws of Moses. His Introduction to the New Testament is familiar to the English reader through the well-known translation of Bishop Marsh.