Christian Frederick Matthaei (4 March 1744 – 26 September 1811) was a German palaeographer, classical philologist, and professor at the universities of Wittenberg and Moscow.
[1] After studying theology, philosophy, and classical philology in Leipzig with Johann Jakob Reiske and Johann August Ernesti, he left for Moscow in 1772, where he spent twelve years as a high school teacher and then as a professor of classical philology at Moscow University.
[1] He returned to Germany in 1784, and in 1789 he took a position as professor of Greek at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, where he was appointed rector three years later.
[1][2] Between 1782 and 1788 Matthaei prepared an edition of the Greek New Testament, faced with the Latin Vulgate translation, which was published in Riga in 12 volumes between 1782 and 1788.
[1][3] For this edition he collated some seventy manuscripts, as well as the biblical citations in the writings of John Chrysostom.