Friedrich Eduard König

Friedrich Eduard König (November 15, 1846 – February 10, 1936, Bonn) was a German Lutheran divine and Semitic scholar.

Biography He was born at Reichenbach im Vogtland and was educated at the University of Leipzig (1867–71). Afterwards, he worked as a religious instructor at the Royal Realgymnasium in Döbeln (1871–76) and at the Thomasschule zu Leipzig (1876–79). He then became a lecturer (1879) and an associate professor of theology (1885) at the University of Leipzig. In 1888 he became a full professor at Rostock and in 1900 at the University of Bonn, where, as a theologian attacking Panbabylonism, he became involved in the so-called "Babel-Bible Dispute".

Published works As a linguist he attempted to apply the phonetic and physiological methods of modern philology to Hebrew and Ethiopic in such works as Gedanke, Laut und Accent als die drei Factoren der Sprachbildung (1874) – Thought, sound, and accent: as the three factors of language formation comparatively and physiologically represented in Hebrew. Neue Studien über Schrift: Aussprache und allgemeine Formenlehre des Aethiopischen (1877) – New studies on Scripture: pronunciation and general morphology of Ethiopian. Historisch-kritisches Lehrgebäude der Hebräischen Sprache, 3 books, (1881–97) – Historical-critical teaching of the Hebrew language.

Among his innumerable publications are also: The Religious History of Israel (1885); translation of Die Hauptprobleme der Altisraelitischen Religionsgeschichte (1884). Einleitung in das Alte Testament (1893). The exiles' book of consolation contained in Isaiah XL-LXVI : a critical and exegetical study; translated from the German by J.A. Selbie (1899). The Emphatic State in Aramaic (1901) In: The American Journal of Semitic Language Vol. 17, No. 4, Jul., 1901. Neueste Prinzipien der alttestamentlichen Kritik (1902). Bible and Babylon : Their Relationship in the History of Culture, translated by William Turnbull (1903). Pilter Kessinger Publishing Company 2006, ; translation of Bibel und Babel : eine kulturgeschichtliche Skizze (1902). Die Gottesfrage und der Ursprung des Alten Testaments (1903). Ahasver der ewige Jude nach seiner ursprünglichen Idee und seiner literarischen Verwertung betrachtet (1907). Geschichte des Reiches Gottes bis auf Jesus Christus (1908). Hebräisches und aramäisches Wörterbuch zum Alten Testament (1910) Geschichte der alttestamentlichen Religion, kritisch dargestellt (1912).