KAULEN, FRANZ PHILIPP. — German Catholic exegete, of broad theological, philological, and historical culture and rigorously conservative, born in Düsseldorf on 20 March 1827, died in Bonn on 11 July 1907. Ordained a priest in 1850, he became a repetitor in theology at Bonn in 1859 and received his doctorate at Würzburg (1862) with a dissertation on Jonah; he was privat-docent (1863), associate professor (1880), and full professor (1883) of the Old Testament at Bonn. In 1882 he was appointed Domestic Prelate of His Holiness and in 1903 a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission; but in that same year he had to leave teaching because of a cerebral hemorrhage. During the first phase of his teaching, in the period of the Kulturkampf, he rendered valuable service to the Catholic cause, conducting all the theological lectures at the University of Bonn together with Flosz and Th. Simar.
His principal exegetical work, first published in 1876 and subsequently issued in five editions (the last edited by G. Hoberg) up to 1911, is the Einleitung in die Hl. Schrift des Alten und Neuen Testamentes. Traditional material is presented there abundantly; but modern problems are for the most part merely touched upon, so that the work’s characteristic is its firm adherence to the line of traditional principles. Another major work concerns the Vulgate: Geschichte der Vulgata (1868), followed by Sprachliches Handbuch zur Vulgata (2nd ed., 1904); his distinction between the authentic character of the Vulgate in general, abstracting from particular manuscripts and editions, and the official character of the Sixto-Clementine edition deserves note. A third distinguished work occupied him from 1880 to 1901, namely the 2nd edition of the Kirchenlexikon of H. J. Wetzer and B. Welte.
Other publications: Linguae Mandschuricae institutiones (1856); Die Sprachverwirrung zu Babel (1861); Liber Ienae (1862); Aphorismen über katholische Behandlung der Bibel (under a pseudonym, 1862); Assyrien und Babylonien nach den neuesten Entdeckungen (5th ed., 1899); Die Altertümer des Flavius Josephus (3rd ed., 1892); Der biblische Schöpfungsbericht (1902).