RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Knapp Kneucker
with A. H. Niemeyer, the direction of the Francke foundations, comprising the orphan-house, the Latin school, and the Bible and Missionary Institute. In spite of failing health he administered his laborious offices for more than four decades with great fidelity and success. Though diffident and reserved, Knapp was a popular teacher, and his lectures on the Old and New Testaments, as well as on Christian doctrine, were largely attended. When Tholuck visited him toward the close of his life, he produced a bundle of letters from former students, remarking, " Here is my comfort, in the letters of those in whom the scattered seed first began to spring up during their professional experiences." As a writer Knapp turned mainly to exegesis. His principal works are a translation of the Psalms, with notes (Halle, 1776; 3d ed., 1789); an excellent edition of the New Testament (1797; 5th ed., 1840); and the collection of treatises, Scripta, varii arguments maximam partem exegetici atque historici (2 vols., 1805; 2d ed., 1824). Posthumous were Vorlesungen uber die Christliche Glaubenslehre (ed. K. Thilo, 2 parts, 1827; En^. transl., Lectures on Christian Theology, 2 vols., New York, 1831- 1833) ; and Biblische Glaubenslehre vornehmlich zum praktischen Gebrauch (ed. E. F. Guerike, Halle, 1840); and Beitrdge zur Lebensgeschichte August Gottlieb Spangenbergs (ed. O. Frick, 1884). Mention may be made of two popular anonymous tracts, Was soil ich thun, dass ich selig werde? (1806); and Anleitung zu einem gottseligen Leben (1811). In collaboration with I. L. Schulze and A. H. Niemeyer he edited the review, Frankens Stiftungen (3 vols., Halle, 1792-96). In this he published, among other things, Spener's Leben, Verdienste und Streitigkeiten (vol. i., pp. 79-114); Speners und Frankens Klagen iiber die Mangel der Religionslehrer (vol. ii., pp. 33-84, 161-220); and Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (vol. ii., pp. 305- 333). Knapp collaborated in the Beschreibung des Halleschen Waisenhauses (Halle, 1799), and also edited Missionsberichte (Halle, 1799-1824).
(Georg Muller.)
Bibliography: P. Tschackert, in ABB, xvi. 266-267; H. Holtzmann and R. Zopffel, Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirchenwesen, p. 600. Brunswick, 1888; F. Vigouroux, Dictionnaire de la Bible, iii. 1910-11, Paris, 1903.
KNEELAND, ABNER: American editor and deistic writer; b. at Gardner, Mass., Apr. 6, 1774; d. at Farmington, la., Aug. 27, 1844. He was first a Baptist, then a Universalist minister, but ultimately became a deist. After editing universalist periodicals in Philadelphia and New York, he went to Boston and founded there in 1831 the Investigator. For views expressed in this paper he was tried for blasphemy before the supreme court at Boston in 1836 and sentenced to imprisonment for a short time. His works include: The New Testament in Greek and English (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1822); Lectures on the Doctrine of Universal Salvation (1824); and A Review of the Evidences of Christianity (New York, 1829).
Bibliography: The trial is reviewed in his own Review of the Trial, Conviction and Final Imprisonment of A.
Kneeland, Boston, 1838; C. G. Greene, Read and Judge, ib. 1834; S. D. Parker, Report of the Arguments of the
Attorney . at the Trials of A. Kneeland, ib. 1834;
Cosmopolite, Review of the Prosecution against A. Kneeland, ib. 1853.
KNEELING. See Worship.
KNEELING CONTROVERSY IN BAVARIA: An
incident of Bavarian ecclesiastical politics under the ministry of Karl von Abel between 1838 and 1845. King Ludwig I. (1825-48), an arbitrary ruler, particularly in the later years of his reign, longed for the restoration of the old glory of the Roman Church, and appointed Abel, an outspoken Roman Catholic reactionary, minister for the interior. As such he aimed blow after blow at the Protestants. On Aug. 14, 1838, an order of the war department required all soldiers, regardless of confession, to kneel in the mass and likewise if they happened to be on guard duty when the host was carried by in the Corpus Christi procession. Numerous petitions for the revocation of the order were sent to the supreme consistory and the council of state, but proved fruitless, Abel persuading the king that plots of the liberal opposition were concealed in all Protestant complaints. The consistory remained silent till 1843, but then, incited by the increasing arrogance of Abel and the determined resistance of the Protestants, they represented that the act required of the latter was for them a sin. An attempt was made to annul the order by legislative action but failed. Even J. J. I. von Dollinger defended it, claiming that kneeling was, for the Protestant soldier, merely a motion of the body having nothing to do with faith and conscience, and a vehement literary controversy was carried on between G. C. A. von Harless (q.v.) and other Protestants and Roman Catholic theologians. The first modification of the offensive order exempted Protestant soldiers from attending Roman Catholic services, and in Dec, 1848, its more objectionable requirements were annulled by the personal intervention of the king, who finally listened to other counselors than Abel and learned the true import of the opposition and its serious character. Abel's administration was overthrown in 1847 The entire movement benefited the Protestant Church more than it advanced the Roman. (E. Dorn.)
Bibliography: E. Dorn, in Beitrage zur bayerischen Kirchengeschichte, v., parts 1-2, Erlangen, 1899; K. Fuchs, Annalen der protestantischen Kirche in . . Bayern, Munich, 1839; G. Eilers, Betrachtungen und Urtheile des E. L. von Asters uber die . . Parteibewegungen unseres Jahrhunderts, Saarbriicken, 1859; G. Thomasius, Das Wiedererwachen des evangelischen Lebens in der lutherischen Kirche Bayerns, Erlangen, 1867.
KNEUCKER, kneik'er, JOHANN JAKOB: German Protestant; b. at Tauberbischofsheim (19 m. s.w. of Wiirzburg) Feb. 12, 1840. He studied in Heidelberg, 1861-65, where he became privatdocent in 1873. In 1880 he was appointed associate professor of Old-Testament exegesis and Semitic languages in Heidelberg. He was also engaged in pastoral work from 1865 to 1904, holding the pastorate of Eppelheim, near Heidelberg, for the last twenty-one years of this period. In theology he belongs to the critical school, and besides editing F. Hitzig's Vorlesungen uber biblische Theologie und messianische Weissagungen des Alten Testaments (Carlsruhe, 1880), has written Siloah, Quell, Teich
Knight Knoke