the authenticity of the gospel, and had published his Probabilia only to draw attention to the subject, and to call forth a more complete defence of its genuineness. Bretschneider remarks in his autobiography that the publication of this work had the effect of preventing his appointment as successor to Karl Christian Tittmann (1744–1820) in Dresden, the minister Detlev von Einsiedel (1773–1861) denouncing him as the slanderer of John (Johannisschander). His greatest contribution to the science of exegesis was his Lexicon Manuale Graeco-Latinum in libros Novi Testamenti (1824, 3rd ed. 1840). This work was valuable for the use which its author made of the Greek of the Septuagint, of the Old and New Testament Apocrypha, of Josephus, and of the apostolic fathers, in illustration of the language of the New Testament. In 1826, he published Apologie der neuern Theologie des evangelischen Deutschlands. Hugh James Rose had published in England (1825) a volume of sermons on the rationalist movement (The State of the Protestant Religion in Germany), in which he classed Bretschneider with the rationalists; and Bretschneider contended that he himself was not a rationalist in the ordinary sense of the term, but a rational supernaturalist. Some of his numerous dogmatic writings passed through several editions. An English translation of his Manual of the Religion and History of the Christian Church appeared in 1857. His dogmatic position seems to be intermediate between the extreme school of naturalists, such as Heinrich Paulus, Johann Friedrich Röhr (1777–1848) and Julius Wegscheider on the one hand, and DF Strauss and FC Baur on the other. Recognizing a supernatural element in the Bible, he nevertheless allowed to the full the critical exercise of reason in the interpretation of its dogmas (cp. Otto Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, pp. 89 if.). References Autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Selbstbiographie von K. G. Bretschneider (Gotha, 1851); translation, with notes, by George E. Day, in Bibliotheca Sacra and American Biblical Repository, Nos. 36 and 38 (1852, 1853) Neudecker in Die allgemeine Kirchenzeitung (1848), No. 38 *Wustemann, Bretschneideri Memoria (1848) A. G. Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought (Bampton Lectures, 1862) Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 1897). 1776 births 1848 deaths People from Zwickau (district) People from the Electorate of Saxony 19th-century German Protestant theologians 19th-century German male writers 19th-century German writers German male non-fiction writers