Background
He was born at Saalfeld in the Electorate of Saxony on the 18th of December 1725, the son of a poor clergyman. He grew up in pietistic surroundings, which powerfully influenced him his life through, though he never became a Pietist.
(Geschichte denken Texte über die Grundlagen der historisc...)
Geschichte denken Texte über die Grundlagen der historischen Sinnbildung in der Neuzeit. Band 2 Ein in der Semler-Forschung bislang kaum berücksichtigtes Werk ist seine Schrift: Versuch einiger moralischen Betrachtungen über die vielen Wundercuren und Mirackel in den ältern Zeiten; zur Beförderung des immer bessern Gebrauchs der Kirchenhistorie aus dem Jahre 1767. In dieser Schrift bringt der Hallenser Theologe Johann Salomo Semler die Bedeutung der historischen Deutungsarbeit für seine theologische Theoriebildung prägnant auf den Begriff. Diese wichtige Schrift soll nun durch einen Nachdruck der Vergessenheit entrissen und der kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschung wieder besser zugänglich gemacht werden.
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critic historian biblical-commentator
He was born at Saalfeld in the Electorate of Saxony on the 18th of December 1725, the son of a poor clergyman. He grew up in pietistic surroundings, which powerfully influenced him his life through, though he never became a Pietist.
In his seventeenth year he entered the University of Halle.
Semler was a disciple of the rationalist Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten, whom he succeeded on his death in 1757 as head of the theological faculty. Seeking to study biblical texts scientifically, Semler evolved an undogmatic and strictly historical interpretation of Scripture that provoked strong opposition. He was the first to deny, and to offer substantial evidence supporting his denial, that the entirety of the text of Old and New Testaments was divinely inspired and fully correct. He challenged the divine authority of the biblical canon, which he reexamined in order to determine the sequence of composition of biblical books, their nature, and their manner of transmission. From this work he drew a crucial distinction between an earlier, Jewish form of Christianity and a later, broader form.
Despite his rationalist approach, however, Semler maintained that faith was a prerequisite for understanding religious matters, and he upheld this view in his rebuttal of 1779 to “Wolfenbüttel Fragments” by Hermann Samuel Reimarus. Semler’s method of textual criticism, which prepared the way for more extensive work during the 19th century, also made him aware of the diversity of answers to religious questions in the past and of the need to recognize varied theologies as avenues to the same truth. Among his works are several biblical commentaries and an edition of the works of the 2nd–3rd-century Christian theologian Tertullian.
The importance of Semler, sometimes called "the father of German rationalism", in the history of theology and the human mind is that of a critic of biblical and ecclesiastical documents and of the history of dogmas. He was not a philosophical thinker or theologian, though he insisted, with an energy and persistency before unknown, on certain distinctions of great importance when properly worked out and applied, e. g. the distinction between religion and theology, that between private personal beliefs and public historical creeds, and that between the local and temporal and the permanent elements of historical religion. His great work was that of the critic. He was the first to reject the equal value of the Old and New Testaments, the uniform authority of all parts of the Bible, the divine authority of the traditional canon of Scripture, the inspiration and supposed correctness of the text of the Old and New Testaments, and, generally, the identification of revelation with Scripture.
Though to some extent anticipated by the British deist, Thomas Morgan, Semler was the first to take due note of and use for critical purposes the opposition between the Judaic and anti-Judaic parties of the early church. He led the way in the task of discovering the origin of the Gospels, the Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Apocalypse. He revived previous doubts as to the direct Pauline origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews, called in question Peter's authorship of the first epistle, and referred the second epistle to the end of the 2nd century. He wished to remove the Apocalypse altogether from the canon. In textual criticism Semler pursued further the principle of classifying manuscripts in families, adopted by Richard Simon and Johann Albrecht Bengel. In church history Semler did the work of a pioneer in many periods and in several departments. Friedrich Tholuck pronounced him "the father of the history of doctrines, " and Ferdinand Christian Baur "the first to deal with that history from the true critical standpoint. " At the same time, it is admitted by all that he was nowhere more than a pioneer.
His concept of church has been contrasted with Friedrich Schleiermacher's.
(Geschichte denken Texte über die Grundlagen der historisc...)
