Gustav Friedrich Oehler

W. W. Everts,
1884 The Old Testament Student  
Love your wife like yourself, honor her more than yourself; you will then see the fulfillment of the promise: 'And thou shalt know that there is peace in thy tent.'" (Yebamoth 63.) "If thy wife is small, bend down to her, to take counsel from her." (B. Metzia 59.) "Tears are shed on God's altar for the one who forsakes the love of his youth." (Gittin 90.) "He who divorces his wife is hated before God." (Gittin 90.) "He who sees his wife die, has, as it were, been present at the destruction of
more » ... e temple." (Sanhedrin 22.) "The whole world is darkened for him whose wife died in his lifetime." (Sanhedrin 29.) " A husband's death is felt by none as by his wife. A wife's death is felt by none as by her husband." (Sanhedrin 22.)-From Mielziner's Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce. +gOTl IBUTED .. IP0TES.* Gustav Friedrich Oehler.-This distinguished student of the Old Testament was born, in the same district with Beck, in 1812. His father, a poor school teacher, urged on his little son in his studies so rapidly that at nine years of age he was a student of four languages, and besides had special lessons in Persian and Arabic. At this time his mother was taken from him, but her holy influence ever remained. Though burdened with a sickly body, he successively held the first place in the lyceum and theological institute. His eyes were weak and his hearing difficult, and he sacrificed society to his study. He was very fortunate in receiving a strong intellectual impulse from Dr. Baur, while his theological tendency was shaped by the evangelical authors C. F. Schmidt and Steudel and the practical piety 'prevalent at Basel. Schmidt's New Testament Theology taught him to revere the word of God and led him to prepare in the same spirit the Old Testament Theology. But the brilliant youth was to pass through many obstacles before he gained his lofty place in the world. His trouble was that he was too devout for the Tiibingen school, where his friends again and again sought a professorship for him. He thought that "theologians should be men of God." Rarely have high culture and brotherly love been so perfectly united as in him. He could not make up his mind to devote himself exclusively to the oriental languages, therefore he sought and found a place to teach theology in a humble sphere. In this comparative retirement he published his prolegomena to Old Testament Theology, after which calls came to him to various universities, of which he selected Breslau. Further discipline awaited him there, for such was the opposition raised by rationalists that students were deterred from attending his lectures, his courses were broken up, and those he attempted to hold were sometimes greeted with an empty auditorium. At the end of two years the tide turned and he became an honored professor and one of the most influential personages in Silesia. He resisted all calls
doi:10.1086/469555 fatcat:xdkwoijgebfx3ibvba5hctnlgm