Biography

Gustav Friedrich Oehler was born 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 Repelent, becoming in 1840 professor at the seminary and pastor in Schonthal.

In 1845 he published his Prolegomena zur Theologie des Alten Testaments, accepted an invitation to Breslau and received the degree of doctor from Bonn. In 1852 he returned to Tübingen 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, and died at Tubingen in 1872.

Oehler admitted the composite authorship of the Pentateuch and the Book of Isaian, and did much to counteract the antipathy against the Old Testament that had been fostered by Schliermacher. 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 Realencyklopadie.