Johann David Michaelis

[1] At Halle he was influenced, especially in philosophy, by Siegmund J. Baumgarten (1706–1757), the link between the old Pietism and J. S. Semler, while he cultivated his strong taste for history under Chancellor Ludwig.

[3] His scholarship still moved along the old traditional lines, and he was also much exercised by certain religious scruples, with some seeing a conflict between his independent mind and that of submission to authority - encouraged by the Lutheranism in which he had been trained.

His linguistic work was hampered by the lack of manuscript material, which is felt in his philological writings, e.g., in his valuable Supplementa to the Hebrew lexicons (1784–1792).

He could not become such an Arabist as J. J. Reiske; and, though for many years the most famous teacher of Semitic languages in Europe, neither his grammatical nor his critical work has left a permanent mark, with the exception perhaps of his text-critical studies on the Peshitta.

[3] In spite of his doctrinal writings—which at the time made no little noise, so that his Compendium of Dogmatic (1760) was confiscated in Sweden, and the Knighthood of the Polar Star was afterwards given him in reparation—it was the natural side of the Bible that really attracted him.

Michaelis arguably contributed the most in introducing the method of studying Hebrew antiquity as an integral part of ancient Eastern life.