Jablonski, Daniel Ernst

Jablonski, Daniel Ernst a distinguished German theologian, was born at a little village near Dantzic Nov. 26, 1660. The name of his father, a preacher, was originally Figulus, but he in after life exchanged it for Jablonski, deriving the name from that of his native place, Jablunka, a small village in Silesia. Young Jablonski was educated: at the gymnasium of Lyssa, in Prussian Poland, and at the University of Frankfort on the Oder (now constituting the Berlin University), where he applied himself to literature and philosophy, but more especially to theology and the Oriental languages. In 1680 he visited the universities and libraries of Holland and England, and spent considerable time at Oxford. On his return in 1683 he was appointed preacher at one of the reformed churches of Magdeburg, which place he left two years later in order to assume the rectorship of the gymnasium at Lyssa. In 1690 he was made court preacher at Knigsberg, and in 1693 his fame procured him the place of preacher to the king at Berlin. But still other honorable offices awaited him. Thus, in 1718, he was made a member of the Consistory, in 1729 a Church councilor, and in 1733 he was elected president of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin. At the request of the king, Frederick I, he labored earnestly, but unsuccessfully, to accomplish a union of the different Protestant churches. He died at Berlin May 25, 1741. The greater part of his life had been devoted to severe study, and he was eminently successful as a preacher. Dr. Hagenbach (Hurst's transl. of Ch. Hist. (Of 18th and 19th Cent, i, 410, 412) says that Jablonski was a bishop among the Moravians (1698), and even was "the eldest of the Moravian bishops," and that he consecrated both David Nitschmann (q.v.) and count Zinzendorf for the episcopal office. At the instance of the queen, he was honored as early as 1706 with the degree of doctor of divinity. Jablonski translated into Latin the eight discourses of Richard Bentley against. Atheism, the treatise of Joseph Woodward on the religious societies of London, and that of Burnet on predestination and grace; but he is especially celebrated by an edition of the Hebrew Bible, with notes and an introduction, published under the title of Biblia Hebraica cum notis hebraicis (Berlin, 1699, 2 vols. 4to; — 2nd ed. 1712, 12mo). The 'preface has since been printed in other editions of the Hebrew Bible. Both editions have a list, by Leusden, of 2294 select verses, in which all the words to be found in the Bible are contained. He also published an edition of the Talmud, and wrote a number of religious works, the most important of-which is Christliche Predigten (Berlin, 1716, etc., 10 parts, 4to). Many of Jablonski's writings bear on the state of the Church in Poland. One of the most able of them is the Historia Consensus Sendomniriensis inter evangelicos regni Polonic et Lithuanice (Berlin, 1731, 4to), etc. See Ersch Lu Gruber, Allg. Encyk. s.v.; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Géneralé 26, 145; Kitto, Bibl. Cyclop. s.v.