ROHLING, AUGUST. — Catholic exegete, who became embroiled in two prolonged controversies, one “antisemitic,” the other “millenarian”; born on 15 February 1839 in Neuenkirchen (Westphalia), died in Salzburg on 21 January 1931. Ordained a priest in 1863, he obtained his doctorate (Das Abschiedslied des Moses) in Jena in 1867; he was a professor in Münster in 1871 and in Milwaukee in 1874. Professor of the Old Testament in Prague from 1876, in 1899 he was relieved of his teaching duties and lived as a simple priest in Gorizia, Freiberg, and Salzburg (Austria).
An equitable judgment of R. is difficult. It is certain, however, that he must not be regarded solely as an “antisemitic agitator” (as S. L. Lieben does, in Jüd. Lex., IV [1928], cols. 1468 ff.); nor is there any need to conceal or diminish his professional merits as an exegete (as J. Deutsch does, in Jew. Enc., X [1907], p. 442). His Biblical Commentaries according to Catholic Principles, published in Münster (Psalms, 1871; Isaiah, 1872; Daniel, 1876; Proverbs, 1879), are commendable works, on a level with the Semitic philology of the time; the same is true of his version of certain biblical books, published in 1873–74 under the pseudonym “Ibar.” Indeed, these commentaries make it regrettable that the controversies diverted R. from promoting biblical scholarship as he might have done during the 92 years of his life.
On the antisemitic controversy, V. Enc. Cutt., I, col. 1500. R. explicitly connects the millenarian controversy with the other. SCOTELLUS (v.) he admitted a conversion of the damned, or rather believed that Christ would return to reign visibly from Jerusalem over a fully redeemed humanity. R. conceives this humanity as endlessly (or without temporal limit) making its pilgrimage; in it would be manifested all the earthly glory of the prophecies of the Old Testament that promise a new paradise. R. gives the prophecies a more spiritual fulfillment and stigmatizes as “Pharisees” the theologians who admit the eternity of the pains of Hell, thereby closing heaven to the majority of humanity; they weaken the promise and are responsible for the present-day apostasy of the masses. He condemns “erroneous scholasticism”; the fault of the rabbis was that they were “Judaic scholastics.” In neither of the controversies does R. seem to have been an “ignoramus” (as P. Delitzsch, H. L. Strack, and certain Judaic authors maintain), but rather to have succumbed to his violent and stubborn character, which blinded him.
His Talmudjude is deplorable, perhaps the worst antisemitic work ever written by a Catholic, in absolute contradiction to the principles of justice and charity. Even today it provides a mine of material for pernicious antisemitic movements. On the other hand, it is also regrettable that the work should be used for anti-Catholic purposes; for example, D. Jacob, in Enc. Jud., II (1928), cols. 1017–18, dates its publication to 1874 and places it within an outbreak of “Catholic-Christian” antisemitism, solemnly inaugurated by a speech of Pius IX in 1872. But the work was published in 1871, and the work born of R.’s personal passion cannot be placed on the same level as the feelings of the Pontiff toward the defenders of his dispossession.
Despite his attacks on certain theses of Catholic theology and his rebellion against non-infallible Roman decrees, R. always upheld papal infallibility and showed great devotion to the Madonna: “he supported the advisability of defining the Assumption as early as 1907.” After 1907 he seems to have ceased all literary activity.
Millenarian works: Der Zukunftsstaat (1894, placed on the Index in 1897); Ein uneches Indevdehret (1898, a vehement reply to the decree); Auf nach Sion! (1901, several editions); Die Alleinherrschaft des Glaubens (1903); Schell und Stuffer (1903); Die ewige Menschheit (1906); Die Zukunft der Menschheit als Gattung nach der Lehre der Kirchenväter (1907).