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Gichtel THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 488 Gifftheil against false church service, especially in Luther anism. After his return to Germany he addressed to his native city a letter filled with violent accu sations against the clergy, whereupon he was im prisoned, deprived of all civic rights, and exiled. In 1665 he began his wanderings, and after a short stay at the residence of Pistorius, a Pietistic preacher of Gersbach in Baden, he went to Vienna to settle some business affairs of Weltz. In 1667 he re turned to Zwolle, where Breckling employed him as chaplain, leader of the choir, and porter, but he became involved in Breckling's dissensions with his congregation and the consistory, and was exiled from Zwolle and the whole province of Upper Yesel. He spent the remainder of his life quietly in Amsterdam, winning many converts to his views. At first he earned his living by translating and proof-reading, but renounced even this work as in compatible with the trust which leaves all care to God. Gichtel was opposed to sects of his time such as Quakers, Mennonites, and Labadists, nor was it his desire to found a sect. Violent dissensions arose among his followers, and at last only two of his friends remained-Isaak Passavant and Johann Wilhehn Ueberfeld. After Gichtel's death, Ueber feld became the leader of his Dutch adherents, while his followers in Hamburg and Altona were headed by Johann Otto Gliising. Gichtel's wri tings were regarded by them as equal to the Bible, and he himself was considered an elect instrument of God. Traces of the sect were also found in Ber lin, Magdeburg, and Nordhausen. In Amsterdam Gichtel became acquainted with the works of Bohme, which he declared to be on a par with the Bible, and his ideas were molded by his study of this mystic, especially his discourses on the struggle between the love and the wrath of God, on creation, on the fall of Lucifer and Adam. Like all the radical mystics of his period, he main tained a polemical attitude toward the established Church and toward the Reformation, which in his opinion had contented itself with the destruction of popery without putting anything better in its place, while with B6hme he shared the combination of Pietism and a mystical conception of nature. From his general contempt of learned writings were excepted only works on science " because of the light of nature." Gichtel strove to reduce the ideas of B6hme to practicality, and for this reason he rejected marriage, regarding it as unchastity in the sight of God and as a perversion of the original order of creation, advocating the priesthood of Mel chisedeck, and believing that man by prayer and absorption into the death and blood of Jesus might offer his soul as a sacrifice for others. With others, especially with Alhardt de Raedt, a former pro fessor of theology in Haderwijk, and with the finan cial aid of Coenraad van Beuningen, mayor of Amsterdam, Gichtel published the first complete edition of B6hme's works (Amsterdam, 1682). His own writings have been collected in seven volumes under the title of Theosophia practica (Leyden, 1722). (A. HEGLER t.) K. HOLL. BIBLIOGRAPHY: A life is contained in G. C. A. iron Harless, Jakob Bohme and die Alchymisten, Leipsie, 1882; and the Theoaophia practica, Leyden, 1722, contains both his works and a sketch of his life. Consult also: Ersch and Gruber, Eacbkloptidie, section 1, lxY. 437 eqq.; ADB, ix. 147-150
GIDEON (Septuagint, Gedeon, also called Jerubbaal) : One of the " Judges of Israel." He was a son of Joash, and one of the great liberators of Israel. He made an end of the predatory excursions of the Midianites, who, like modern Arabs, regularly invaded the country before the harvest and carried away the produce. Judges vi.-viii. gives in detail his call in his native city Ophrah (the modern Far'ata, southwest from Nablus?), his experience, his preparation for the fight, his victory gained with help of a small band by surprising the enemy, his pursuit of the enemy over the Jordan and his second victory over the Midianite kings. On theocratic principles he refused the royal crown offered to him, a fact apparently confirmed by the ancient parable of Jotham. With the booty he made an ephod (Yahweh-image or oracle-dress, see Eraon), which according to the narrator caused the destruction of his house, through his son Abimelech, who killed the seventy sons of Gideon after the father's death. The name Jerubbaal is explained from a national standpoint vi. 31-32. Robertson Smith reads the verse differently (Rel. of Sem., pp. 162-163) as " the man who wars with Baal (provided Baal is a god) must die before (the next) morning." There are Arabic parallels for this. Originally the name may have meant: " Great or strong is the Lord (Yahweh or Baal?)." In order not to mention Baal, the name was afterward called Jerubboaheth (II Sam. xi. 21).
In this narrative Gideon appears a hero of royal stature, devoted to his people, of bold, enduring fortitude and yet humble before God and free from vain ambition before men. Criticism has made it probable that the narrative which treats of him is a composite from different sources and contains besides the interpolations of the Deuteronomic redactor and later additions. Distinction is made between two main sources which the redactor of the book combined. To one narrative belong the history of Abimelech (chap. ix.) and viii. 4-21 (except the numbers in v. 10); and to the other (estimated as somewhat later) belong vi. 2-6a, 13-25; viii. 1-3, 24-27a. The section attributed to the first can not be an older version of the events recorded vi. 2-viii. 3. One would rather suppose that the stories of two campaigns of Gideon, a westJordanic and East-Jordanic, are united in the present narrative. .Since in both narratives the house of Abiezer is especially mentioned, Studer and Wellhausen have supposed that the campaign of Gideon according to the original record was undertaken as a family blood-feud (viii. 18-19), whereas the reinforcements of, the other tribes and the lessening of the force to 300 are later additions. But the characteristic narratives vii. 1 sqq. are certainly not by the redactor, and seem to, have good parentage. While the religious motive appears in these narratives, there is no reason for regarding them as much later than the time they treat. That Gideon's achievement was regarded as memorable and as one of God's greatest deeds of deliverance is' shown by Iaa. IX. 4, X. 26; Pa, 1XXXIIi. 11. C. VON ORELLI.