Early Life
Wolff's father David Wolff (b. 1760), by 1790 rabbi in Weilersbach, then in Kissingen, Halle upon Saale und Uehlfeld, served as rabbi in Jebenhausen, Württemberg between 1804 and 1807, and sent his son to the Lutheran lyceum at Stuttgart. He was converted to Christianity through reading the books of Johann Michael von Sailer, bishop of Regensburg, and was baptized in 1812 by the Benedictine abbot of Emaus, near Prague. In his writings the following story is told of his early conviction that Jesus is the Messiah:
When only seven years old, he was boasting to an aged Christian neighbor of the future triumph of Israel at the advent of the Messiah, when the old man said kindly, “Dear boy, I will tell you who the real Messiah was: he was Jesus of Nazareth, whom your ancestors crucified, as they slew the prophets of old. Go home and read the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and you will be convinced that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Conviction at once fastened upon him. He went home and read the scripture, wondering to see how perfectly it had been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Were the words of the Christian true? The boy asked of his father an explanation of the prophecy, but was met with a silence so stern that he never again dared to refer to the subject. This however only increased his desire to know more of the Christian religion.
Wolff was a keen Oriental scholar and pursued his studies at Tübingen and at Rome, where he was expelled from the Collegio di Propaganda in 1818 for attacking the doctrine of infallibility and criticizing his tutors. After a short stay in the monastery of the Redemptorists at Val Sainte near Fribourg, Switzerland, he went to London, entered the Anglican Church, and resumed his Oriental and theological studies at Cambridge.
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