Wilke (Wilkius, Wilkins), David (1685-1745)

English clergyman and scholar. He was born of Prussian parentage and was educated at the universities of Berlin, Rome, Vienna, Paris, Amsterdam, Oxford, and Cambridge. In October 1717 he was awarded a doctorate in divinity at Cambridge and ordained in the Church of England. In 1724 he was appointed professor of Arabic at Cambridge. He published many books. Most important and still useful is his Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hibernae a Synodo Verulamiensi A.D. 446 ad Londinensem A.D. 1717 . . . (4 vols., London, 1737). He was the first scholar who published books of the Coptic Old Testament, among them Quinque Libri Moysis Prophetae in Lingua Aegyptia ex mss. Vaticano, Parisiensi et Bodleiano Descripsit ac Latine Vertit (Five Books of Moses the Prophet in the Egyptian Language from Manuscripts of the Vatican, Paris, and the Bodleian Library Published with Latin Translation; London, 1731), and the Coptic New Testament, Novum Testamentum Aegyptium Vulgo Copticum ex mss. Bodleianis Descripsit, cum Vaticanis et Parisiensibus Contulit, et in Latinum Sermonem Convertit (The Egyptian or Coptic New Testament from Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Collated with Manuscripts in the Vatican and in Paris, and Published with Latin Translation; Oxford, 1716). A part of his correspondence with M. V. La Croze has been published (La Croze, Thesauri Epistolia Lacroziani. 3 vols. in 2, ed. J. L. Uhlius, Leipzig, 1742-1746).