Jahn

Jahn, JOHANN, a Catholic biblical critic, was born at Tasswitz, in Moravia, in 1750. He became professor of Oriental Languages at Olmütz, and, in 1789, at the university of Vienna; but the unwonted boldness of his criticism, as that Job, Tobit, and Judith were didactic poems, and that the New Testament demoniacal possession was the result of natural disease, although not formally condemned, led in 1806 to his honourable retirement to a canonry of St Stephen's, Vienna. He died August 16, 1816. Jahn was an industrious writer, and his Einleitung ins Alte Testament (1792), Archæologia Biblica (1805; Eng. trans. by T. C. Upham, 1840), and Enchiridion Hermeneutice (1812) were works really remarkable for their time and circumstances. Besides these he published many manuals on the grammar of Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic, an edition of the Hebrew Bible (1806), and a commentary on the Messianic prophecies (1815).