Heinrich Julius Holtzmann

1832-1910. German theologian and NT scholar. Born in Karlsruhe and educated at Berlin, he held a pastorate at Baden (1854) before beginning his academic career. He taught in Heidelberg (1858), then in Strasbourg (1874) until retirement in 1904. In his study of the synoptic gospels (1863) he developed the two-source theory, with its dual necessity of accepting a “teachings” source for Matthew and Luke, and the priority of Mark, which yielded the kind of portrait of Jesus desirable to the liberal-psychological scheme, and one in which the eschatological interpretation of the kingdom of God in Jesus' preaching could be avoided. As a consequence Holtzmann was involved in church-political squabbles of the German pastors. At Strasbourg his work was mainly directed toward the preparation of textbooks in NT introduction (1885) and theology (2 vols., 1896-97), and a Lexicon für Theologie und Kirchenwesen, with Richard Zoepffel (1882). By his contribution on the synoptics to the Hand-Kommentar zum Neuen Testament (1889) and his New Testament Theology, he laid the foundations for the NT research of the twentieth century.