KITTEL, GERHARD.— Protestant biblical theologian, b. Breslau 23 Sept. 1888, d. Tübingen 11 July 1948. He studied theology and Oriental languages in Berlin, Tübingen and Halle; in 1913 he obtained his habilitation at Kiel. He resumed it in 1917 at Leipzig, where on 24 March 1921 he was promoted extraordinary professor of New Testament and late Judaism; but already on 5 Aug. 1921 he was elected ordinary professor of the same subject at Greifswald, whence on 1 Oct. 1926 he moved to Tübingen as ordinary professor of New Testament theology. From 1939 to 1943 he lectured in Vienna. He was arrested on 3 May 1945 and taken to the Balingen camp and later, by concession, transferred to the abbey of Beuron.
Originator and director of the Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (5 vols.: A–O, Stuttgart 1932–51; continued under the direction of G. Friedrich); he also directed the journal Deutsche Theologie (1934 ff.), and, succeeding its founder, the Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament. His works on the origins of Christianity and on Jewish and Hellenistic studies are most useful, in which K. vindicates the originality of primitive Christianity (cf. G. Messina, in Biblica, 15 [1934], pp. 113 ff.).
Devoting himself to the study of rabbinic texts, together with his teacher Israel I. Kahan he prepared an edition and translation of the midrash Sifré; he began the collection Rabbinische Texte (1933 ff.), recently resumed. Yet, a decidedly Lutheran theologian, he conceived the opposition between Judaism and Christianity in an irreducibly rigid manner, proposing that, after emancipation, the Jews now dispersed among the peoples should be reduced to a kind of gér: citizens deprived of general rights but “esteemed in their own [rights].” He even deemed it opportune to invite believing Jews to submit as to a divine activity. Yet not even the works composed under this influence are devoid of scholarly value; e.g., the Forschungen zur Judenfrage (1937 ff.) and the article in Theol. Lit. Zeitung, 69 (1944), cols. 10–20, contain useful collections of ancient Jewish inscriptions and studies thereon.
K. cannot be accused of promoting vulgar Nazi (i.e., racial) antisemitism. He was not a member of A. Rosenberg’s Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage. His ecclesiastical stance was not connected with the Deutsche Christen but rather with the Confessing Church, loyal to its persecuted “bishop.” He joined the Hitler party, but did not become its slave. His way of considering the Jewish question was quite different from the official political line. His premature death, conditioned by the special, especially psychological, sufferings of his arrest, was a most grave loss to international biblical scholarship.
Other works by K. on primitive Christianity: Oden Salomos (1914); Jesus und die Rabbinen (1914); Jesus als Seelsorger (1917); Rabbinica: Paulus im Talmud, Die Macht auf dem Haupt, Runde Zahlen (1920); Sifré zu Deut., fasc. 1 (1922), illustrates the environment of nascent Christianity; Urchristentum-Spätjudentum-Hellenismus (1926); Jesus und die Juden (1926); Die Probleme des palästinensischen Spätjudentums und das Urchristentum (1926); Die Lebenskräfte der ersten christlichen Gemeinden (1926); Die Religionsgeschichte und das Urchristentum (1932); Die Genealogia der Pastoralbriefe, in Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 20 (1921), pp. 49–69; Die Stellung des Jakobus zu Judentum und Heidenchristentum, ibid., 30 (1931), pp. 145–57; Christus und Imperator. Das Urteil der ersten Christenheit über den Staat (1939); Der geschichtliche Ort des Jakobusbriefes, in Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 41 (1942), pp. 71–105. On the Jewish question: Die Judenfrage. Mit 3 Beilagen: Antwort an M. Buber. Kirche und Judenchristentum (2nd ed. 1933); Ein theologischer Briefwechsel (1934), with K. Barth.