WUTZ, FRANZ XAVER. - Philologist and scholar of biblical textual criticism, b. in Eichstätt on 21 Oct. 1882, d. there on 19 March 1938. Ordained a priest in 1911, W. spent almost his entire life in the seminary of Eichstätt, as a professor of exegesis.
The dissertation, which he presented to the theological faculty of Munich in 1910, on the Liber interpretationis nominum Hebraicorum of St. Jerome, became the basis of an imposing work on the Onomastica sacra, which he published in 2 large vols.: I: Quellen und System der Onomastika; II: Texte der Onomastika und Register, in Texte und Untersuch. zur Gesch. der altkirist. Lit., 3rd series, XI, 1 and 2 (Leipzig 1914-15). In other works, among which particular mention should be made of Die Psalmen textkritisch untersucht (Munich 1925); Die Transkriptionen von der Septuaginta bis zu Hieronymus (2 vols., Stuttgart 1925-33); Systematische Wege von der Septuaginta zum hebräischen Urtext (ibid. 1937), W. concerned himself especially with a hypothetical restoration of a Hebrew text older than the Masoretic one through comparison with the ancient versions. He maintained that the Greek translators used a Hebrew text already transcribed in Greek. The complexity of the system devised, together with the silence of the ancient writers on the matter, has greatly dampened much of the enthusiasm that manifested itself in some quarters at the appearance of W.'s theory, which was also accepted by distinguished scholars (R. Kittel, M. Ginsburger, J. Götzberger). There has been no lack of rather severe criticism of this bold attempt to revive an old hypothesis of O. G. Tychsen, which is very little probable. Posthumously there appeared brief commentaries on Job (Stuttgart 1939) and on the Song of Songs (ibid. 1940).
Angelo Penna