Gustav Friedrich Oehler

Gustav Friedrich Oehler (1812-1872), German theologian, was born on the 10th of June 1812 at Ebingen, Wurttemberg, and was educated privately and at Tubingen where he was much influenced by J. C. F. Steudel, professor of Old Testament Theology. In 1837, after a term of Oriental study at Berlin, he went to Tubingen as Repetent, becoming in 1840 professor at the seminary and pastor in Schdnthal. In 1845 he published his Prolegomena zur Theologie des Allen Testaments, accepted an invitation to Breslau and received the degree of doctor from Bonn. In 1852 he returned to Tubingen as director of the seminary and professor of Old Testament Theology at the university. He declined a call to Erlangen as successor to Franz Delitzsch (1867), and died at Tubingen on the 19th of February 1872. Oehler admitted the composite authorship of the Pentateuch and the Book of Isaiah, and did much to counteract the antipathy against the Old Testament that had been fostered by Schleiermacher. In church polity he was Lutheran rather than Reformed. Besides his Old Testament Theology (Eng. trans., 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1874-1875), his works were Gesammelte Seminarreden (1872) and Lehrbuch Symbolik (1876), both published posthumously, and about forty articles for the first edition of Herzog's Realencykloptidie which were largely retained by Delitzsch and von Orelli in the second.