Hermann Hupfeld

Hermann Hupfeld (31 March 1796 – 24 April 1866) was a Protestant German Orientalist and Biblical commentator.

After studying for some time at Halle, he in 1824 settled as Privatdozent in philosophy at that university, and in the following year was appointed extraordinary professor of theology at Marburg.

From this charge, however, he successfully cleared himself, the entire theological faculty, including Julius Müller and August Tholuck, bearing testimony to his sufficient orthodoxy.

His earliest works in the department of Semitic philology (Exercitationes Aethiopicae, 1825, and De emendanda ratione lexicographiae Semiticae, 1827) were followed by the first part (1841), mainly historical and critical, of an Ausführliche Hebräische Grammatik, which he did not live to complete, and by a treatise on the early history of Hebrew grammar among the Jews (De rei grammaticae apud Judaeos initiis antiquissimisque scriptoribus, Halle, 1846).

Other writings are: The main, recent biography, which for the first time includes archival sources, of Hupfeld is For older works, see See E. Riehm, Hermann Hupfeld (Halle, 1867); W. Kay, Crisis Hupfeldiana (1865); and the article by A. Kamphausen in Band viii of Herzog-Hauck's Realencyklopädie (1900).