Cornelis Tiele

He was educated at Amsterdam, first studying at the Athenaeum Illustre, as the communal high school of the capital was then named, and afterwards at the seminary of the Remonstrant Brotherhood.

After steadily declining for a considerable period, this had increased its influence in the second half of the 19th century by widening the tenets of the Dutch Methodists, which had caused many of the liberal clergy among the Lutherans and Calvinists to go over to the Remonstrants.

[1] Tiele's zeal and power for work were as extraordinary as his vast knowledge of ancient languages, peoples and religions, upon which his researches, according to F. Max Müller, shed a new and vivid light.

[1] Other works by Tiele are: He was also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica, and the writer of the article "Religions" in the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1875).

In his time, Tiele was best known to English students by his Outlines and the Gifford Lectures On the Elements of the Science of Religion, delivered in 1896–1898 at Edinburgh University.

[5] Tiele has also been credited as the founder of the Dutch school of the comparative studies of religions, his influence suggested to be as significant as Max Muller.

He was also a fellow of at least fifteen learned societies in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and the United States.