ERNESTI, JOHANN AUGUST (1707-I 781), German theologian and philologist, was born Aug. 4, 1707, at Tennstadt in Thuringia. He was educated at the celebrated Saxon cloister school of Pforta, and at the universities of Wittenberg and Leip zig. After minor appointments, he was named professor extraor dinarius of ancient literature in the university of Leipzig (1742), professor ordinarius of rhetoric (1756), and professor ordinarius in the faculty of theology (1759). He died at Leipzig on Sept. II, 1781.
To Ernesti and to Gesner is due the credit of having formed, by discipline and by example, philologists greater than themselves, and of having kindled the national enthusiasm for ancient learning. In his Institutio Interpretis N. T. (1761), Ernesti admits in the sacred writings as in the classics only one acceptation, and that the grammatical, convertible into the logical and historical. Con sequently he censures all mystical interpretation as well as ex treme rationalism. At the same time, as a dogmatician, he clung to the traditions of the Lutheran Church.
His chief works are:-Initia doctrinae Solidioris (1736) ; editions, mostly annotated, of Xenophon's Memorabilia (1737) , Cicero 39) , Suetonius (1748) , Tacitus (1752) , the Clouds of Aristophanes Homer (1759-64) ; Antimuratorius sive confutatio dispute tionis Muratorianae de rebus liturgicis ; Neue theologische Bibliothek, vols. i. to x. (176o-69) ; Institutio interpretis Nov. Test. (3rd ed., 1775) ; Neueste theologische Bibliothek, vols. i. to x. (1771 75) ; Opuscula oratoria (1762) ; Opuscula philologica et critics (1764) ; Opuscula theologica (1773).