Vatke, Johann Karl Wilhelm

Vatke, Johann Karl Wilhelm a Protestant theologian, was born at Behndorf, Saxony, March 14, 1806. He studied theology and philosophy at Halle, Gottingen, and Berlin, and was privat-docent in theology at the latter place in 1830. His publication of Die Religion des Alten Testaments (1835) excited the wrath of the late professor Hengstenberg to such a degree that he declared, in Wilhelm Vatke, Peter von Bohlen, and David Friedrich Strauss, the antichrist has appeared, with three heads. Vatke was in 1837 appointed professor in extraordinary, and died April 19, 1882, doctor of theology. Besides the work mentioned already, in which Vatke shows himself to be the forerunner of writers like Wellhausemn, Kuenen, Reuss, and others, who regard the prophets as older than the law and the Psalms as more recent than both, he published Die menschliche Freiheit in ihrem Verhaltniss zur Siinde und zur gottlichen Gnade (1884). In philosophy Vatke belonged to the left wing of the Hegelian school. See Benecke, Wilhelm Vatke (Bonn, 1883). (B.P.)