Ernesti

Ernesti, JOHANN AUGUST, a celebrated classical and biblical critic, was born at Tennstädt, in Thuringia, 4th August 1707. He studied (from 1726) at Wittenberg and Leipzig, and, devoting himself to classical studies, became rector of the Thomas School at Leipzig in 1734, a post which he held till 1759, along with first a chair of Humanity (from 1742), and then that of Rhetoric (from 1756) in the university. Becoming professor of Theology in 1759, he resigned the chair of Rhetoric in 1770, and died 11th September 1781. He prepared editions of Homer, Callimachus, Polybius, Suetonius, and Tacitus, and of Xenophon's Memorabilia and Aristophanes' Clouds, and an excellent edition of Cicero (3d ed. 5 vols. 1776-77), to which he added a valu- able Clavis Ciceroniana, often re-edited. He was the founder of a true exegesis of Scripture by the laws of grammar and history, independent of dogmatic prepossessions. Of his Institutio Interpretis Novi Testamenti (1761) there are translations by Moses Stuart (1824) and Terrot (1833). His Anti-Muratorius (1755) is a polemic against Roman Catholicism. His Latin speeches (published as Opuscula Oratoria) gained him the name of the 'German Cicero.'