Paulus, HEINRICH EBERHARD GOTTLÖB, one of the pioneers of German rationalism, was born at Leonberg, near Stuttgart, 1st September 1761. His father's scepticism about the resurrection was cured effectually by a promised appearance of his wife after death, and not unnaturally was succeeded by an eager belief in spiritual visions which brought about his deposition from the office of Diakonus. The son studied at the Tübingen seminary, travelled in England, Holland, and France, and was called in 1789 to the chair of Oriental Languages at Jena, which he exchanged in 1793 for that of Theology. Here he produced his laborious but little read Philologisch-kritischer und historischer Commentar über das Neue Testament (4 vols. 1800-4); Clavis über die Psalmen (1791); Clavis über den Jesaias (1793). In 1803 he accepted the chair of Theology at Würzburg, next filled scholastic offices at Bamberg, Nuremberg, and Ansbach, and again in 1811 accepted a chair as professor of Church History at Heidelberg. Here he died, August 10, 1851. Of his numerous works the most important were his Leben Jesu, als Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristenthums (2 vols. 1828), and Exegetisches Handbuch über die drei ersten Evangelien (3 vols. 1830-33). His chief critical principle is an assertion of the impossibility of the supernatural, and the miracles of Christ he therefore explained as due to a variety of mistaken opinions and errors in narration—a series of exegetical miracles postulated to get rid of the historical. Paulus lived long enough to see his own rationalistic theory of Scripture give place to the more scientific mythical theory of Strauss, and that in its turn shaken to its foundations on the one hand by the Tübingen school, on the other by Neander and his school.
See Paulus' Skizzen aus meiner Bildungs- und Lebensgeschichte zum Andenken an mein 50-jähriges Jubiläum (1839), and Reichlin-Meldegg's Paulus u. s. Zeit (1853).