Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), an important nineteenth-century scholar, was an historian, linguist, and textual critic. He devoted his life to the study of the ancient and early medieval history of the Semitic peoples. His many works in this area provide the basis for all serious investigation into the rise of both Judaism and Islam.

Wellhausen's name will ever be associated with higher criticism of the Old Testament, the study of Hebrew and Greek scriptures from a purely scientific and a critical/historical point of view. He investigated the origin of the Hebrew bible, the Jews, and Judaism amidst the backdrop of the ancient Near Eastern empires of Assyria, Neo-Babylonia, Persia, and the Macedonian-Greek states of Seleucus and Ptolemy. Wellhausen remains a dominant influence on modern Hebrew biblical studies.

Julius Wellhausen was born in the northern German city of Hameln on May 17, 1844. His father was a Lutheran minister; Julius was...