Wilhelm Abraham Teller

His first learned production was a Latin translation of Benjamin Kennicott's Dissertation on the State of the Printed Hebrew Text of the Old Testament (1756), which was followed the next year by an essay in which he expounded his own critical principles.

Here he pursued his exegetical, theological and historical researches, the results of which appeared in his Lehrbuch des christlichen Glaubens ("Textbook of Christian Faith", 1764).

This work caused some commotion, as much by the novelty of its method as by the heterodoxy of its matter, and more by its omissions than by its positive teaching, though everywhere the author sought to put theological doctrines in a decidedly modern form.

[1] In 1767 Teller, whose attitude had made his position at Helmstedt intolerable, accepted an invitation from the Prussian minister for ecclesiastical affairs to the post of provost of Cölln, with a seat in the Lutheran Supreme Consistory of Berlin.

[1] The Wollner Edict of 9 July 1788, for the enforcement of Lutheran orthodoxy, and Teller's action, as member of the consistorial council, in defiance of it (cf.