BOHME, JAKOB

born 1575, Altseidenberg, near Grlitz, Saxony died Nov. 21, 1624, Grlitz German philosophical mystic who had a profound influence on such later intellectual movements as idealism and Romanticism. Erklrung ber das erste Buch Mosis, better known as Mysterium Magnum (1623; The Great Mystery), is his synthesis of Renaissance nature mysticism and biblical doctrine. His Von der Gnadenwahl (On the Election of Grace), written the same year, examines the problem of freedom, made acute at the time by the spread of Calvinism. Additional reading The 17th-century translation of Bhme into English by J. Ellistone and J. Sparrow, The Works of Jacob Behmen, 4 vol., reprinted in the 20th century, is considered to have more grace and elegance than modern translations of some tracts by J.R. Earle and J.J. Stoudt. The 1730 German edition of the collected works, edited by J.W. Ueberfeld and reprinted in facsimile during the 1950s by W.E. Peuckert, remains the best text, although in modernized German. The most serviceable English biography utilizing modern materials is J.J. Stoudt, Jacob Boehme: His Life and Thought (1968), based on the standard German biographical works by W.E. Peuckert, Das Leben Jakob Bhmes (1924); and R. Jecht, Jakob Bhme, Gedenkgabe der Stadt Grlitz (1924). The best modern interpretation is A. Koyre, La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme (1929).