WÜNSCHE, AUGUST:

By: Isidore Singer, Joseph Jacobs

German Christian Hebraist; born at Hainewalde July 22, 1839. He has devoted his attention almost exclusively to rabbinic literature. After completing his commentaries on Hosea (1868) and Joel (1872), he wrote "Neue Beiträge zur Erläuterung der Evangelien aus Talmud und Midrasch" (1878), the most complete collection of the parallel passages of the Talmud and the New Testament since the works of Lightfoot and Schöttgen. In his "Bibliotheca Rabbinica" (Leipsic, 1880-85) he made a German translation of the whole of the Midrash Rabbah and the Midrash to the Five Megillot, and he has also translated haggadic portions of the Jerusalem Talmud (1880) and of the Babylonian Talmud (1886-89), as well as the Pesiḳta (1885) and the Midrash to the Psalms (1891). Smaller works of his are: "Die Rätselweisheit bei den Hebräern" (1883); "Die Freude im Alten Testament" (1896); "Naturbildersprache des Alten Testaments" (1897); and "Die Schönheit der Bibel" (Leipsic, 1905). Together with Winter he compiled the "Geschichte der Jüdischen Litteratur" (3 vols., Leipsic, 1892-95), the best existing anthology of Jewish literature in a modern language.

S. J.