Johann Peter Lange

1802-84. German Protestant theologian and biblical scholar. Born near Elberfeld, Prussia, he attended the University of Bonn (1822-25), where he was brought under the influence of K.I. Nitzsch, one of the chief advocates of the Vermittlungstheologie. While serving as a parish minister in Duisburg (1832-41), he published a sharp attack on D.F. Strauss* under the title, über den geschichtlichen Charakter der kanonischen Evangelien (1836). When Strauss was prevented in 1841 from assuming the chair at the University of Zurich to which he had been elected, Lange was called to occupy the chair in his place. At Zurich Lange elaborated further his own alternative to Strauss's Leben Jesu in his multivolume Leben Jesu nach den Evangelien (1844-47). In 1854 he was appointed to the chair of dogmatic theology at the University of Bonn previously held by I.A. Dorner.