Semler, JOHANN SALOMO, one of the most influential German theologians of the 18th century, was born 18th December 1725, at Saalfeld in Thuringia, and educated at Halle. After editing for a year the Coburg official Gazette, and lecturing on philology and history at Altdorf for six months, he was in 1752 appointed professor of Theology at Halle, where he taught with great success. He died at Halle on 14th March 1791. For many years he enjoyed a wonderful popularity as a teacher, and exercised so wide and profound an influence as pioneer of the historical method that he has been called the 'father of Biblical Criticism.' Yet, of course, he contributed little to the science; his chief merit is to have pointed out the way and indicated the right methods to those who came after. He was distinctively a rationalist, and one of the most influential in emancipating theology from the fetters of tradition. But he sincerely believed in revelation; and he lost favour through his opposition to the Wolfenbüttel Fragments, and his adverse criticism of the 'naturalism' or extreme rationalism of Bahrdt. Both friends and enemies found it difficult to reconcile his defence of revelation with his own critical freedom. In insisting on the distinction of the Jewish and Pauline types of Christianity he (possibly influenced by the deists Toland and Morgan) clearly anticipated a main position of the Tübingen school. As a thinker he was deficient in philosophical consistency and breadth of view; and as a writer he possessed no literary skill or grace. He wrote a vast number of books; but none is of much value at the present day. The more important were Apparatus ad liberam Veteris Testamenti Interpretationem (Halle, 1773), Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Kanons (4 vols. 1771-75), De Dæmoniæis (1760), Selecta Capita Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ (3 vols. 1767-69).
See his own Lebensbeschreibung (1781-82); Schmid, Theologie Semlers (1858); Tholuck, in his Vermischte Schriften; and for the influence of the Deists, an article by David Patrick on 'English Forerunners of the Tübingen School' in the Theological Review for 1877.