Wilhelm Schencke

Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Schencke (January 9, 1869 – June 29, 1946) was a Norwegian historian and professor. He was a specialist in Semitic languages and the history of religion.

Biography Schencke was born at Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway. He was the son of the architect Friedrich Wilhelm Schencke (1832–1896) and Marie Edvardine Bøhm (1848–?). In 1902 he married Agnes Victoria (Lila) Schjøll (1881–1926).

Schencke received a theology degree in 1894 at the University of Kristiania but he chose to not become a priest. Theological dogmatism did not appeal to him, but he had a strong interest in Old Testament studies. After graduating, he studied religious history, Egyptology, and Semitic languages in Germany.

On July 1, 1914, Schencke was named Norway's first professor of religious history.

As a professor emeritus, Schencke lectured on the Quran and Egyptian texts. Schencke prepared the first translation of the Quran into Norwegian (over 30 years before Einar Berg's translation, published in 1980). The translation was only available as a handwritten manuscript, and it disappeared from the University of Oslo Library in the fall of 1946.