The New International Encyclopædia/Wellhausen, Julius

WELLHAUSEN, vĕl'hou-zen, Julius (1844—). A German Oriental and biblical scholar. He was born at Hameln, and studied under Ewald at Göttingen. He became professor at Greifswald in 1872, but resigned because of theological disagreement with his conservative colleagues. He then became professor at Halle (1882), at Marburg (1885), and at Göttingen (1892). As an Old Testament scholar Wellhausen holds a unique position for his work in literary criticism and historical reconstruction. One of his earliest books, Pharisäer und Sadducäer (1874), is the classic treatise upon that subject. The most important of his other biblical writings are: Text der Bücher Samuels (1871); Geschichte Israels (1878), expanded into Prologomena zur Geschichte Israels (1883; 3d ed. 1886; Eng. trans., Edinburgh, 1883, 1891); Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte (1894; 4th ed. 1901); Die Composition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alten Testaments (1885, 1889); Die kleinen Propheten (1902), a remarkably fruitful critical brochure; The Book of Psalms (in Sacred Books of the Old Testament, Leipzig, 1895; Eng. trans., 1898). In his later career Wellhausen has devoted himself especially to early Arabic literature, where he has achieved fundamental results, most of which are contained in Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, including Reste des arabischen Heidenthums (last ed. 1897); Medina vor dem Islam (1889); Prolegomena zur ältesten Geschichte des Islams (1899); he has also published Muhammed in Medina (1882), a translation of Wakidi; Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz (1902). His latest work is in the New Testament field, Das Evangelium Marci (1903).