PALMER, CHRISTIAN DAVID FRIEDRICH:
German Lutheran divine; b. at Winnenden (17 m. n.e. of Stuttgart) Jan. 27, 1811; d. at Tubingen May 29, 1875. He was educated at Schonthal and Tubingen; after three years of pastoral work as an assistant in the country, he came back to the university as a lecturer (1836). In Jan., 1838, he was named assistant of the Predigerinstitut, and in the following autumn appointed second deacon of Tubingen; he was deacon at Marbach (1839—13), then returned to his former position, to be promoted in 1848 to the office of first deacon, and in 1851 to that of pastor and dean. He began his literary career soon after graduation by contributing to various periodicals. A pamphlet called forth by the Pietistic controversy, An Freunde und Feirule des Pietismus (1839), is deserving of mention; and he also took part vigorously in the discussions about a new liturgy and hymn-book for the church of Wurttemberg. He was specially interested in homiletics, in which field he issued a revised edi-
RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Palm Sunday
Palmer
tion of the Evangelische Homiletik (Stuttgart, 1842), and a new and important Evangelische Katechetik (1844). He was chosen in 1852 to fill the chair of ethics and practical theology at Halle, which he held for nearly twenty-two years, teaching in this period nearly every branch of practical theology, as well as Protestant church law. His deep scientific interest in his subjects, his wide and varied reading, his combination of personal conviction with perfect fairness to opposing views made his lectures strikingly useful. He was rector of the university in 1857 and 1858. In spite of all his varied activities, however, he found time for much important literary work. He added to his earlier publications Evangelische Pddagogik (1853-54), taking a middle course between a godless pseudohumanism and an exaggerated pietism; Evangelische Pastoraltheologie (1860); Die Moral oles Christenthums (1864), a work which offers the results of thoroughly scientific thought in language free from the narrowness of theological formulae; Evangelische Hymnologie (1865); two volumes of sermons, Ein Jahrgang evangelischer Predigten (1857), and Predigten aus neuerer Zeit (Tubingen, 1874); Geistliches und Weltliches fur gebildete christliche Leser (1873). From 1856 he was one of the editors of the Jahrbiicher fur deutsche Theologie. His theological and ecclesiastical standpoint was that of the moderate school which, under Nitzsch's leadership, had its best period in his days — a sound Bible faith and an Evangelical church doctrine without narrow limitations. He was opposed to rationalism and to ecclesiastical scholasticism, and is to be counted among those who, though following Schleiermacher in the main, sought a deeper penetration into the inner meaning of Scripture and a fuller, more intense application of its teachings to human life.
(J. KNAPPf.) Bibliography: Worte der Erinnerung an Dr. Palmer, Tubingen, 1875; K. Weizsacker, in. Jahrbiicher fur deutsche Theologie, iii (1875), 353-370.
PALMER, EDWARD HENRY: English orientalist; b. at Cambridge Aug. 7, 1840; murdered by the Bedouins in the Wady Sudr, Desert of Al-Tih, Sinaitic peninsula, Aug. 11, 1882. He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and graduated in 1867; went with the British Ordnance Sinai Survey Expedition in 1868-69; and in 1869-70, in company with C. F. Tyrwhitt Drake, explored the Desert of Al-Tih and Moab, having acquired perfect familiarity with the language and manners of the Bedouins. On his return he was appointed Lord Almoner's professor of Arabic at Cambridge, in 1871. At the outbreak of the war between Egypt and England in 1882, he volunteered to dissuade the Bedouins of the peninsula from rising against England and to induce them to oppose the rebels; but he and his companions were taken and shot by a force acting under the Turkish governor at Nahl. Palmer was a remarkable linguist, and performed very valuable services to literature. His works, bearing directly upon Biblical and religious studies, were, The Negeb, or South Country of Scripture and the Desert of El Tih (London, 1871) ; The Desert of the Exodus; Journeys on Foot in the Wilderness of the Forty Years' Wandering (2 vols., Cambridge, 1871);