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Petavel, Alfred F.

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

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Petavius, Dionysius

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a Swiss Protestant clergyman of note, was born near the close of the last century. He studied at the university in Berlin, and was the first recipient from that high school of the doctorate in philosophy. He was greatly instrumental in the establishment of the Swiss Missionary Society, and subsequently took no inconsiderable share in the doings of the Evangelical Alliance. The principal work, however, to which he devoted his best time, his talents, his energies, and his whole heart, was to bring the Jewish people into a more intimate personal contact with the Christians, and it is especially in this respect that his influence has extended beyond his little country. He was a zealous member of the Universal Israelitish Alliance and of the Evangelical Alliance. He did not, at first, impress one as a pastor, a missionary, an apostle, a father of the Church, but rather as one of those individials described in the book of Genesis, who walked with God, who communed with him, like a patriarch or a seer. He died at the age of eighty. The addresses which he delivered were collected under the title of Discourses on Education. His Daughter of Zion, his Letter to the Synagogues of France, and many other writings, will always remain as imperishable records of the zeal which animated him for the re- establishment of the Jews as a people.