Johann Gottfried Eichhorn

Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (October 16, 1752, Dörrenzimmern – June 27, 1827, Göttingen) was a German Protestant theologian of the Enlightenment and an early orientalist. He was a member of the Göttingen School of History.

Born at Dörrenzimmern (now part of the city of Ingelfingen), in the Principality of Hohenlohe-Oehringen, Eichhorn was educated at the state school in Weikersheim, where his father was superintendent, at the gymnasium at Heilbronn and at the University of Göttingen (1770–1774), studying under Johann David Michaelis. In 1774 he received the rectorship of the gymnasium at Ohrdruf, in the duchy of Saxe-Gotha.

In 1775 he was made professor of Oriental languages at the Faculty of Theology at Jena University. His published habilitation lecture was about "monetary matters of the early Arabs (De rei numariae apud Arabas initiis)" on the basis of the chronicle of Makin ibn al-'Amid. Later he edited the "Briefe über das arabische Münzwesen" by Johann Jacob Reiske. As a supplement to it he compiled the first commentated bibliography of Islamic numismatics in 1786 with more than 100 pages. It is still a reference tool for numismatic literature prior to this date. He also edited some historical works of the Reiske, who died 1774. Eichhorn was acquainted with him from time of his study in Göttingen.

During his professorship in Jena he wrote his seminal Introduction to the Old Testament (Einleitung in das Alte Testament) which was a breakthrough in the historical understanding of the Pentateuch. In 1776 he founded the first important journal for Oriental studies, the Repertorium für biblische und morgenländische Litteratur, which he edited until 1788.

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