RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Bath Kol Baum
was rector in 1893-94, until 1900, when he went to Berlin as professor of Old Testament exegesis, a chair which he still holds. In theology he is an adherent of the historical school of investigation, and seeks to elucidate the religion of the Old Testament by other Semitic faiths. He has written: Translationis antiques arabicce libri J obi qua supersunt nunc primum edita (Leipsic, 1870); Eulogius und Alvar, ein Abschnitt spanischer Kirchengeschichte aus der Zeit der Maurenherrschaft (1872); Jahve et Moloch, sive de ratione inter deum Israelitarum et Molochum intercedente (1874); Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte (2 vols., 1876- 1878); Die Geschichte des alttestamentlichen Priesterthums untersucht (1889); August Dillmann (1895); Einleitung in die Biicher des Alten Testaments (1901); and Esmun-Asklepios (Giessen, 1906).
BAXTER, BRUNO: A modern Biblical critic, of the most extreme radicalism; b. at Eisenberg (35 m. s. of Halle), in the duchy of Altenburg, Sept. 6, 1809; d. at Rixdorf, near Berlin, Apr. 15, 1882. He was educated in Berlin precisely in Hegel's most brilliant period. He took his place at first in the conservative wing of the Hegelian school, of which his teacher Marheineke was the leader, and reviewed the Leben Jesu of David Friedrich Strauss, who had been his fellow student, unfavorably, accusing Strauss of " entire ignorance of what criticism means." He undertook also to defend Marheineke's position by issuing (1836-38) the Zeitschrift fiir spekulative Theologie. In 1838 he published the Kritik der Geschichte der Offenbarung (2 vols., Berlin). A year later Altenstein, minister of public worship and instruction, appointed him to a position in the University of Bonn, and his prospects seemed promising. But he was already in a fair way to break with his past, as shortly appeared in his Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte des Johannes (Bremen, 1840) and Kritik der evangelischen Geschichte der Synoptiker (3 vols., Leipsic, 1841), which went beyond Strauss, and, adopting the theory of Wilke that Mark is the original gospel, derived the whole story, not, with Strauss, from the imagination of the primitive Christian community, but from that of a single mind. This extreme carrying out of Hegelian principles naturally aroused wide-spread excitement. Eichhorn, who had succeeded Altenstein as minister, put the question to the Prussian universities whether the holder of such views could be allowed to teach. The answers were not unanimous; but Bauer injured his own cause by a still more amazing and reckless onslaught on traditional theology (Theologische Schamlosigkeiten, in the Hallische Jahrbucher fiir deutsche Wissenschaft, Nov., 1841), and was deprived of his academic post in March, 1842. His literary activity continued incessant. Living on his small estate at Rixdorf, he poured forth a succession of volumes on the history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between 1843 and 1849. In 1850 he came back to his old field, and in the next three years had renewed his attack on the gospels and included the Acts and the Pauline epistles, considering even the four admitted by the Tubingen school as second-century Western prod-
ucts. In the place of Christ and Paul, to him Philo, Seneca, and the Gnostics appeared the real creative forces in the evolution of Christian conceptions. He continued his attempts to prove the connection between Greco-Roman philosophy and Christianity in Christus und die Cdsaren (Berlin, 1877). Here he places the genesis of the Christian religion practically as late as the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and the original gospel in that of Hadrian, after which " clever men " were busy for some forty years in the composition of the Pauline epistles. Only the framework of the new religion was Jewish; its spirit came from further west; Christianity is really " Stoicism becoming dominant in a Jewish metamorphosis." Bauer left practically no followers in Germany for such remarkable theories. His fantastic hypercriticism found a home for a time in Holland with Allard Pierson, Naber, and Loman; and still later it made some attempts to gain a foothold in Switzerland with Steck's assault upon Galatians. (J. Haussleiter.)
Bibliography: Holtzmann, in Protestantische Kirchenzeitung, 1882, pp. 540-545; F. C. Baur, Kirchengeschichte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Leipsic, 1862; O. Pfleiderer, Die Entwicklung der protestantischen Theologie in Deutschland seit Kant, pp. 295-297, Freiburg, 1891. On the teaching of Bauer and the opposition it aroused consult E. Bauer, Bruno Bauer und seine Gegner, Berlin, 1842; O. F. Gruppe, Bruno Bauer und die akademische Lehrfreiheit, ib. 1842.
BAUER, WALTER FELIX: German Protestant ; b. at Konigsberg Aug. 8, 1877 From 1895 to 1900 he studied at the universities of Marburg, Berlin, and Strasburg, and since 1903 has been privat-docent for church history at the University of Marburg. He has written Mundige und Unmiindige bei dem Apostel Paulus (Marburg, 1902) and Der Apostolos der Syrer in der Zeit von der Mitte des vierten Jahrhunderts bis zur Spaltung der syrischen Kirche (Giessen, 1903).
BAUM, baum, HENRY MASON: Protestant Episcopalian; b. at East Schuyler, N. Y., Feb. 24, 1848. He was educated at the Hudson River Institute, Claverack, N. Y., but did not attend a college. He received his theological training at De Lancey Divinity School, Geneva, N. Y., and was ordained to the priesthood in 1870. He was successively rector of St. Peter's Church, East Bloomfield, N. Y. (1870-71), missionary to Allen's Hill, Victor, Lima, and Honeoye Falls, N. Y. (1871- 1872), rector of St. Matthew's Church, Laramie City, Wyo. (1872-73), in charge of St. James's Church, Paulsborough, N. J. (1873-74), rector of St. Matthew's Church, Lambertville, N. J. (1875-76), and rector of Trinity Church, Easton, Pa. (1876-80). From 1880 to 1892 he was editor of The Church Review, and in 1901 founded the Records of the Past, which he edited until 1905. He has taken a keen interest in the preservation of the antiquities of the United States, and was the author of the act passed by the Senate in 1904 for the protection of these archeological remains. In that year he also founded the Institute of Historical Research at Washington, and has since been its president. In theology he is a firm believer in the historical accuracy of the Bible. He has written Rights and Duties of Rectors, Church Wardens, and Vestrymen in
Baum Baur