JAHN, JOHANN (1750-1816), German Orientalist, was born at Tasswitz, Moravia, on June 18, 1750. He studied philo sophy at Olmiitz, and in 1772 began his theological studies at the Premonstratensian convent of Bruck, near Znaim, where, after a short interval, he became professor of Oriental languages and biblical hermeneutics. On the suppression of the convent by Joseph II. in 1784, Jahn took up similar work at Olmiitz, and in 1789 he was transferred to Vienna as professor of Oriental languages, biblical archaeology and dogmatics. His Einleitung ins Alte Testament (2 vols., 1792), rendered him suspect to the cardinal-archbishop of Vienna who laid a complaint against him for having departed from the traditional teaching of the Church, e.g., by asserting Job, Jonah, Tobit and Judith to be didactic poems, and the cases of demoniacal possession in the New Testa ment to be cases of dangerous disease. An ecclesiastical corn mission reported that the views themselves were not necessarily heretical, but he was advised to modify his expressions in future.
At last (1806) he was compelled to resign his chair and to accept a canonry at St. Stephen's, Vienna. Both his Introductio in libros sacros veteris foederis in compendium redacta (1804) and his Archaeologia biblica in compendium redacta (1805) were con demned. He died on Aug. 16, 1816.
He also published Hebraische Sprachlehre fur Anfanger (1792); Aramiiische od. Chaldaische u. Syrische Sprachlehre fiir Anfanger ; Arabische Sprachlehre (1796) ; Elementarbuch der hebr. Sprache (1799) ; Chaldiiische Chrestomathie (i800) ; Arabische Chrestomathie (1802) ; Lexicon arabico-latinum chrestomathiae ac commodatum (1802) ; an edition of the Hebrew Bible (1806) ; Grammatica Linguae hebraicae (1809) ; Enchiridion Hermeneuticae (1812) ; and a critical commentary on the Messianic passages of the Old Testament (Vaticinia prophetarum de Jesu Messia, 1815). The English translation of the Archaeologia by T. C. Upham (1840) passed through several editions.