(Zabrze, 1873 -St. Louis, 1949) was a German-born American Jesuit scholar of Koine Greek and patristic literature.
Kleist attended school in Gleiwitz, then Beuthen, and in 1892 entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Bleijenbeek castle in Afferden, the Netherlands, after which he was sent to the United States.
Then, for four years, he lectured to the young Jesuits of the Buffalo Mission of the German Province, Missouri.
[2] In 1902, Kleist came to Saint Louis, where he worked on revising Kaegi's 1884 Greek primer.
It never gained widespread acceptance, though, and was later totally supplanted by the translations produced by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, which culminated in the publication of the New American Bible in 1970.