Johann Gottfried Eichhorn - Achievements in Theology

Achievements in Theology

Eichhorn has been called "the founder of modern Old Testament criticism." He recognized its scope and problems, and began many of its most important discussions. "My greatest trouble," he says in the preface to the second edition of his Einleitung, "I had to bestow on a hitherto unworked field--on the investigation of the inner nature of the Old Testament with the help of the Higher Criticism (not a new name to any humanist)." His investigations led him to the conclusion that "most of the writings of the Hebrews have passed through several hands." He took for granted that all the supernatural events related in the Old and New Testaments were explicable on natural principles. He sought to judge them from the standpoint of the ancient world, and to account for them by the superstitious beliefs which were then generally in vogue. He did not perceive in the biblical books any religious ideas of much importance for modern times; they interested him merely historically and for the light they cast upon antiquity.

He regarded many books of the Old Testament as spurious, questioned the genuineness of the First and Second letters of Peter and the Epistle of Jude, denied the Pauline authorship of the First and Second letters to Timothy and to Titus. He suggested that the canonical gospels were based upon various translations and editions of a primary Aramaic gospel, but did not appreciate as sufficiently as David Strauss and the Tübingen critics the difficulties which a natural theory has to surmount, nor did he support his conclusions by such elaborate discussions as they deemed necessary.