Ewald, GEORG HEINRICH AUGUST VON, the famous Orientalist, was born 16th November 1803, at Göttingen, where his father was a cloth-weaver. From 1820 he studied at the university, under Eichhorn, theology and philology, devoting himself especially to the oriental languages; in 1823-24 he was a teacher at the gymnasium at Wolfenbüttel; in the latter year he published his first work, Die Komposition der Genesis, and was appointed a theological tutor in his own university of Göttingen. After this he became in 1827 an extraordinary professor, and in 1831 ordinary professor of Philosophy, and in 1835 nominal professor of Oriental Languages. For his share in the protest of the seven Göttingen professors against the annulling of the Hanoverian constitutional law he was deprived of his chair by a rescript of the 12th December 1837; and after spending some months in England he was called to a chair at Tübingen, where he remained for ten years and a half. He was ennobled by the king of Württemberg in 1841, and in 1848 was recalled to Göttingen, where he spent the remainder of his life. In consequence of his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the
Prussian government, he was at his own request pensioned off in 1867. His earlier works, chiefly devoted to the grammar and metres of the oriental languages, include De Metris Carminum Arabicorum (1825), Versuch über einige ältere Sanskritmetra (1827), Grammatica Critica Linguae Arabicae (2 vols. 1831-33), and his Kritische Grammatik der hebräischen Sprache (1827), which he reproduced in an abbreviated form in his Grammatik der hebräischen Sprache (1835, 3d ed. 1838), and with greater fullness of detail in his Ausführliches Lehrbuch der hebräischen Sprache (8th ed. Gött. 1870). The scientific results of his travels are partly contained in his Abhandlungen zur orientalischen und biblischen Litteratur (1832), and in his Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes. The rich fruit of his lifelong study of the Old Testament is stored in Die Dichter des Alten Bundes (2d ed. 3 vols. 1866-67; Eng. trans. of Psalms, 2 vols. 1880-81, of Job, 1882), Die Propheten des Alten Bundes (2d ed. 3 vols. 1867-68; Eng. trans. 5 vols. 1875-81), Beiträge zur Geschichte der ältesten Auslegung und Spracherklärung des Alten Testaments (3 vols. 1844), and finally in his magnificent masterpiece, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (3d ed. 7 vols. 1864-68; Eng. trans. in 8 vols. 1867-86), with the supplement, Die Alterthümer des israelitischen Volkes (3d ed. 1866; Eng. trans. 1876). To the study of the New Testament Ewald contributed his Jahrbücher der biblischen Wissenschaft (12 parts, 1849-65), Die drei ersten Evangelien (1850), Die Sendschreiben des Apostels Paulus (1857), Die Johannischen Schriften (2 vols. 1862), Uebersetzung und Erklärung aller Bücher des Neuen Testaments (7 vols. 1870-72). Of his other works the most noteworthy are his Erklärung der grossen phönizischen Inschrift in Sidon (1856), Ueber die phönizischen Ansichten von der Weltschöpfung (1857), Die Sibyllinischen Bücher (1858), Das vierte Ezrabuch (1863), Sprachwissenschaftliche Abhandlungen (1861-71), Abhandlung zur Zerstreuung der Vorurtheile über das alte und neue Morgenland (1872), Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott (3 vols. 1871-75). In his scientific studies, Ewald followed his own way. His hand was against every man, and he was impatient of contradiction. He was an equally vigorous adversary of the 'Tübingen School' and of the orthodoxy of Hengstenberg and Delitzsch. In the prefaces and postscripts of his books, and in his year-books for biblical science, he frequently took occasion to express his uncompromising views on the political and ecclesiastical questions of the day, and frequently shows an entirely unjustifiable severity in criticising those from whom he differed. From 1869 he represented Hanover in the Reichstag, and was a decided opponent of the ambition of Prussia. He died of an affection of the heart, 4th May 1875. An autobiography, which he wrote in the last months of his life, was still unprinted in 1889. A monument was erected by his disciples over his grave at Göttingen. Ewald brought to the interpretation of the Hebrew prophets a spirit akin to their own—Hase describes him as a prophet with backward gaze. His patriotism and courage, his poetic fire and energy, his spiritual insight and marvellous power of sympathetically reproducing primitive experiences by the divinations of genius, and the indefatigable industry with which he applied his perspicacity and insight to understand the Hebrew nation and its sacred literature have secured for him the highest place among the biblical scholars of his century. See two admirable critical papers on the life and work of Ewald by Professor Cheyne, in the Expositor, third series, vol. iv. (1886).