CHRISTIAN WOLFF: GESAMMELTE WERKE

Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten’s "Unterricht von Auslegung der heiligen Schrift" is the outline of a lecture which he often gave on Biblical hermeneutics. Baumgarten became a central figure in the University of Halle’s theological faculty during the transition to the Enlightenment period, much loved for his commitment to teaching and increasingly well known as a scholarly author. His reputation for incredible erudition soon went beyond the field of theology: men such as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Voltaire recognised his abilities. The Unterricht represents a twofold innovation: the move from Latin into German and the departure from pietistic hermeneutics in the narrow sense, as well as the beginning of a strictly historical interpretation of the scriptures. S. J. Semler, who later contributed to the breakthrough of the historical-critical method, noted in 1781 that Baumgarten’s "Unterricht" was recognised as “the first scholarly outline of hermeneutics in German”.