Abraham Dirk Loman (16 September 1823,

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

– 17 April 1897,

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

) was a Dutch theologian. He was a professor from 1856 to 1893. In his later period he belonged to the Dutch radical critics.

Life

Loman was the son of a minister in the Dutch Lutheran church. He started studying theology in 1840 and became a minister in 1846. In 1856 he became a professor at the Lutheran

seminary A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called ''seminarians'') in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy, ...

in Amsterdam. Loman gradually lost his eyesight in the beginning of the 1870s, but continued working. From 1877 he also was a theology professor at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

until his retirement in 1893.

Work

Loman introduced modern theology in the Dutch Lutheran Church. He taught almost all disciplines of theology, but concentrated after 1867 on the New Testament and early Christian literature. He wrote a book about the

Muratorian fragment The Muratorian fragment, also known as the Muratorian Canon (Latin: ), is a copy of perhaps the oldest known list of most of the books of the New Testament. The fragment, consisting of 85 lines, is a 7th-century Latin manuscript bound in a 7th- o ...

, but published mostly in journals. His opinions mostly agreed with the Tübingen school. When his colleague

Allard Pierson Allard Pierson (8 April 1831 – 27 May 1896) was a Dutch theologian, historian, and art historian. He was a leading proponent of radical criticism in the Netherlands. Life Pierson's father was a merchant in Amsterdam, his mother an author of piet ...

in 1878 denied the authenticity of

Galatians Galatians may refer to: * Galatians (people) * Epistle to the Galatians, a book of the New Testament * English translation of the Greek ''Galatai'' or Latin ''Galatae'', ''Galli,'' or ''Gallograeci'' to refer to either the Galatians or the Gauls in ...

, Loman wrote a fierce condemnation. But after 1880 his views changed. He was an advocate of the

Christ myth theory The Christ myth theory, also known as the Jesus myth theory, Jesus mythicism, or the Jesus ahistoricity theory, is the view that "the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology", possessing no "substantial claims to historical fact". Alternative ...

and caused great consternation by a public lecture on 13 December 1881 in the building of the Vrije Gemeente where he stated that

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

is not a figure of history and that all we know about him is second-century fiction. In his ''Quaestiones Paulinae'' (1882, 1883, 1886) he abandoned Pauline authorship of Galatians. His arguments were that the Pauline epistles are not quoted by

Justin Martyr Justin Martyr ( el, Ἰουστῖνος ὁ μάρτυς, Ioustinos ho martys; c. AD 100 – c. AD 165), also known as Justin the Philosopher, was an early Christian apologist and philosopher. Most of his works are lost, but two apologies and ...

and that the first datable references are by

Marcion Marcion of Sinope (; grc, Μαρκίων ; ) was an early Christian theologian in early Christianity. Marcion preached that God had sent Jesus Christ who was an entirely new, alien god, distinct from the vengeful God of Israel who had created ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loman, Abraham Dirk 1823 births 1897 deaths 19th-century Protestant theologians Christ myth theory proponents Dutch Protestant theologians Leiden University alumni Clergy from The Hague University of Amsterdam faculty