HOBERG, GOTTFRIED. — German Catholic exegete, a leading figure during the period of modernism, born at Heringhausen (Westphalia) on 19 November 1857, died at Freiburg im Br. on 19 January 1924. Ordained a priest in 1881, he became an ordinary professor at Paderborn in 1887, and from 1893 to 1919 was an ordinary professor at Freiburg im Br.
All H.’s works are based on a solid philological formation; he insists on theological principles, and a strong personal character is discernible in him. He was always highly sensitive to the directives of ecclesiastical authority.
H. applied himself to the question of the Pentateuch DELITZSCH, FRIEDRICH (v.) and treated it in the traditional sense, in opposition to criticism. “The Pentateuch,” he explains, “results from the religious development of the people to whom Revelation was entrusted, beginning in the time of Moses and continuing until after the Babylonian exile. The basis of this development is the legislation of Moses, which, in terms of both bulk and importance, constitutes by far the greater part of the code of the ancient law.” He excludes the “double” narratives from the Pentateuch, judging them incompatible with biblical inerrancy. Likewise, for theological reasons, he considers an influence from the Code of Hammurabi impossible. The change in the names of God results from the fact that, in the time of the prophet Isaiah, the name of Yahweh was inserted more or less in those passages in which God was spoken of as the author of supernatural Revelation. Certain events narrated in the opening chapters of Genesis are to be understood as symbolic visions.
Works: Ibn Giunii de flexione (1885); De 1. Hieronymi ratione interpretandi (1886); Die Psalmen der Vulgata (1892, 2nd ed. 1906); Die Genesis (1899, 2nd ed. 1908); Die Fortschritte der biblischen Wissenschaft (1902); Die älteste lateinische Übersetzung des Buches Baruch (1902); Bibel und Babel (1904); Katechismus der biblischen Hermeneutik (1904, 2nd ed. 1922); Moses und der Pentateuch (1905); De Moyse Pentateuchi auctore (1906); Über die
Pentateuchfrage (1907); Bibel oder Babel? (1907); Liber Geneseos (1908); Katechismus der messianischen Weissagungen (1915); Die Einheitsschule (1917); he prepared the 5th edition of F. Kaulen’s Einleitung in die Hl. Schrift (1911 supplement).