WELLHAUSEN, JULIUS. – Protestant historian and philologist, born on 17 May 1844 in Hameln (Hannover), died on 7 January 1918 in Göttingen.
In 1872 he became full professor at Greifswald, but soon relinquished his chair because of the controversies provoked by his historical-exegetical writings; he then went to teach Oriental languages at Halle (1882); in 1885 to Marburg, and in 1892 to the University of Göttingen, as successor to P. de Lagarde.
W.’s name is intimately linked with the criticism Pentateuch (v.). Applying and developing the theory of sources already proposed by K. von Graf, he became
the leading exponent of the new hypothesis of the various documents. W. set forth his ideas in Geschichte Israels (Berlin 1878), which, revised, reappeared in 1883 under the titles Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (6th ed. 1905) and Die Komposition des Hexateuchs und der historischen Bücher des Alt. Test. (3rd ed. 1899). W.’s ideas were met with very lively criticism, but in general his theory was accepted within the rationalist school and often exaggerated. Only much later did people begin to call a number of his principles into question. Among W.’s other works on the Old Testament are: Der Text der Bücher Samuelis (Göttingen 1871); The book of Psalms in P. Haupt’s “polyglot” Bible (Leipzig 1895); Die kleinen Propheten (Berlin 1898); Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte (ibid. 1894; 8th ed. 1921).
W. subsequently devoted himself to the study of the New Testament, displaying the same independence of judgment in putting forward hypotheses. His ideas, however, met with very little success in this field. He supposed that the Gospels had a foundational text which, with various additions, would have constituted Mark. In the Gospel of John he identified a primitive writing that made use of Mark and Luke, subsequently reworked in such a way that it was no longer individual in its details. W. wrote the following works on the New Testament: Die Pharisäer und die Sadducäer (Greifswald 1874; 2nd ed. Hannover 1924); Das Evangelium Marci (Berlin 1903; 2nd ed. 1909); Das Evangelium Lucae (ibid. 1904); Das Evangelium Matthaei (ibid. 1904; 2nd ed. 1914); Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (ibid. 1905; 2nd ed. 1911); Das Evangelium Johannis (ibid. 1908). W. also made important contributions to Arabic history and philology. Here it is enough to mention Reste des arabischen Heidentums (in Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, III, Berlin 1887; 2nd ed. 1897); Medina vor dem Islam and Muhammeds Gemeindeordnung von Medina (Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, IV, ibid. 1889); Prolegomena zur ältesten Geschichte des Islam (Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, VI, ibid. 1899); Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz (ibid. 1902).