He was born at Dörrenzimmern, in the principality of Hohenlohe-Oehringen. He was educated at the state school in Weikersheim, where his father was superintendent, at the gymnasium at Heilbronn and at the University of Göttingen (1770-1774), studying under JP Michaelis. In 1774 he received the rectorship of the gymnasium at Ohrdruf, in the duchy of Gotha, and in the following year was made professor of oriental languages at Jena. On the death of Michaelis in 1788 he was elected professor ordinarius at Göttingen, where he lectured not only on Oriental languages and on the exegesis of the Old and New Testaments, but also on political history. His health was shattered in 1825, but he continued his lectures until attacked by fever on June 14 1827. His son, Karl Friedrich, became a famous jurist.
Eichhorn has been called "the founder of modern Old Testament criticism." He recognized its scope and problems, and began many of its most important discussions. "My greatest trouble," he says in the preface to the second edition of his Einleitung, "I had to bestow on a hitherto unworked field--on the investigation of the inner nature of the Old Testament with the help of the Higher Criticism (not a new name to any humanist)." His investigations led him to the conclusion that "most of the writings of the Hebrews have passed through several hands." He took for granted that all the so-called supernatural facts relating to the Old and New Testaments were explicable on natural principles. He sought to judge them from the standpoint of the ancient world, and to account for them by the superstitious beliefs which were then generally in vogue. He did not perceive in the biblical books any religious ideas of much importance for modern times; they interested him merely historically and for the light they cast upon antiquity.
He regarded many books of the Old Testament as spurious, questioned the genuineness of the First and Second letters of Peter and the Epistle of Jude, denied the Pauline authorship of the First and Second letters to Timothy and to Titus. He suggested that the canonical gospels were based upon various translations and editions of a primary Aramaic gospel, but did not appreciate as sufficiently as David Strauss and the Tübingen critics the difficulties which a natural theory has to surmount, nor did he support his conclusions by such elaborate discussions as they deemed necessary.
His principal works were: