Baethgen, Friedrich Wilhelm Adolf

BAETHGEN, bêth´gen, FRIEDRICH WILHELM ADOLF: Protestant theologian; b. at Lachem (a village near Hameln, 25 m. s.w. of Hanover) Jan. 16, 1849; d. at Rohrbach (a village near Heidelberg) Sept. 6, 1905. He studied at Göttingen and Kiel, and served in the German army in the war against France, 1870-71. He was in Russia, 1873-76; in Berlin, 1876-77, and in the British Museum, 1878. He became privat-docent at Kiel in 1878, and associate professor of theology in 1884. From 1881 to 1884 he was also adjunctus ministerii in Kiel. In 1888 he was called to Halle in the same capacity, but in the following year was appointed regular professor of theology at Greifswald, where he also became counselor and member of the Pomeranian consistory. In 1895 he was called to Berlin. He was the author of Untersuchungen über die Psalmen nach der Peschita (Kiel, 1878); Sindban oder die sieben weisen Meister (Leipsic, 1879); Syrische Grammatik des Mar Elias von Tirhan herausgegeben und übersetzt (1880); Anmuth und Würde in der alltestamentlichen Poesie (Kiel, 1880, a lecture); Fragmente syrischer und arabischer Historiker herausgegeben und übersetzt (Leipsic, 1884); Evangelienfragmente der griechische Text des Cureton’schen Syrers wiederhergestellt (1885); Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte: der Gott Israels und die Götter der Heiden (Berlin, 1888); Die Psalmen, übersetzt und erklärt (Göttingen,1897); and Hiob übersetzt (1898); in addition to preparing the second edition of Riehm’s Handwörterbuch des biblischen Altertums (2 vols., Bielefeld, 1893-94).