Paul E. Kahle

Who was Paul E. Kahle?

Paul Ernst Kahle was a German orientalist and scholar.

He was born in East Prussia and studied orientalism and theology in Marburg. He attained his doctorate in 1898. He was a Lutheran pastor. He studied semitic philology in Cairo between 1908 and 1918. In 1918 he was promoted to a full professorship at Gießen University, a chair previously held by Friedrich Schwally. In 1923 he switched to Bonn University, where he developed the Eastern Studies curriculum by adding a Chinese and a Japanese class.

Kahle migrated to England and the University of Oxford in 1939, having been dismissed from his University post in Bonn, owing at least in great part to the fact that he had a Polish rabbi as an assistant. At Oxford he gained two further doctorates. During this period in Oxford he suffered the personal tragedy of his son Paul's untimely death.

Kahle returned to Germany after the war, where he pursued his research as Professor Emeritus. His principal academic renown is as editor of the Hebrew Bible.

Part of his work is published in the book What the Koran Really Says, edited by Ibn Warraq.