Eduard Ahrens, born 200 years ago, was a revolutionary figure in the history of Estonian studies. His Grammar lay the foundation to a new orthography and a new Finnish-based approach to the language, both of which have held till nowadays. Although Ahrens's contribution to Estonian grammar history has always been highly appreciated, his worldview has traditionally been mentioned in an extremely negative context, if at all. This paper attempts to see Ahrens as a missionary linguist whose linguistic activities and pastor's vocation made up an integral whole. At that, the author dwells upon two issues: first, what – in Ahrens's opinion – was actually wrong with the literary Estonian of his time, and second, how justified was his criticism of Estonian Bible translation. The conclusion reads that although Ahrens's sensation of the cleavage between the live dialects and the church language created by German pastors was most adequate, his linguistic views did not enable him to describe it quite as exactly. Nevertheless, Ahrens played a vital role in the fusion of folk speech and church language.
