Hermann Gunkel

1862-1932. German Protestant biblical scholar. Born at Springe (Hanover), he taught NT exegesis at Göttingen (1888), OT exegesis and history of Israelite literature at Halle (1889-93), Berlin (1894-1907), Giessen (1907-20), and Halle again (1920-27). He was a leading member of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (i.e., comparative religion school), and one of the first to develop the Form-Critical method in relation to the OT. His writings include Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (1895), studying popular mythology underlying biblical ideas of the beginning and end of the present world order, commentaries on Genesis (1901) and 1 Peter (1907), and the influential Die Psalmen (1926-28), in which the Psalms are dated and interpreted on the basis of classification according to literary form.