Bickell, Gustav

BICKELL, GUSTAV: German Roman Catholic theologian and Orientalist; b. at Cassel July 7, 1838; d. at Vienna Jan. 15, 1906. In 1862 he became privat-docent of Semitic and Indo-Germanic philology at Marburg, and in the following year went in the same capacity to Giessen. Two years later he became a convert to Roman Catholicism, was ordained priest in 1866, and from 1867 to 1874 taught Oriental languages in the academy of Münster, where he was appointed associate professor in 1871. From 1874 to 1891 he was professor of Christian archeology and Semitic languages in the University of Innsbruck, and from the latter year until his death was professor of Semitic philology at the University of Vienna. He wrote: De indole ac ratione versionis Alexandrinæ in interpretando libro Jobi (Marburg, 1862); Sancti Ephraemi Syri carmina Nisibena (Leipsic, 1866); Grundriss der hebräischen Grammatik (2 vols., 1869–70; Eng. transl. by S. I. Curtiss, 1877); Gründe für die Unfehlbarkeit des Kirchenoberhauptes (Münster, 1870); Conspectus rei Syrorum literariæ (1871); Messe und Pascha (1872, Eng. transl. by W. F. Skene, Edinburgh, 1891); Sancti Isaaci Antiocheni opera omnia (2 vols., Giessen, 1873); Kalilag und Damnag, alte syrische Uebersetzung des indischen fürstenspiegels (text and translation, Leipsic, 1876); Metrices biblicæ regulæ exemplis illustratæ (Innsbruck, 1879); Synodi Brixinenses sæculi quindecimi (1880); Carmina Veteris Testamenti metrica (1882); Dichtungen der Hebräer (1882); Koheleths Untersuchung über den Wert des Daseins (1884); and Das Buch Job nach Anlass der Strophik und der Septuaginta auf seine ursprüngliche Form zurückgeführt und im Versmasse des Urtextes übersetzt (Vienna, 1894).