Heinrich Julius Holtzmann (May 7, 1832 - 1910), German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Protestant theologian

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

, son of Karl Julius Holtzmann (1804-1877), was born at Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe

The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

, where his father ultimately became prelate and counsellor to the supreme consistory.

He studied at Berlin, and eventually (1874) was appointed professor ordinarius at Strassburg. A moderately liberal theologian, he became best known as a New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

 and exegete

Exegesis

Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used...

, being the author of the Commentary on the Synoptics (1889; 3rd ed., 1901), the Johannine books (1890; 2nd ed., 1893), and the Acts of the Apostles

Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...

 (1901), in the series Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament.

On the question of the relationship of the Synoptic Gospels

Synoptic Gospels

The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes exactly the same wording. This degree of parallelism in content, narrative arrangement, language, and sentence structures can only be...

, Holtzmann in his early work, Die synoptischen Evangelien, ihr Ursprung und geschichtlicher Charakter (The Synoptic Gospels: Their Origin and Historical Character; Leipzig, 1863), presents a view which has been widely accepted, maintaining the priority of Mark

Mark the Evangelist

Mark the Evangelist is the traditional author of the Gospel of Mark. He is one of the Seventy Disciples of Christ, and the founder of the Church of Alexandria, one of the original four main sees of Christianity....

, deriving Matthew

Matthew the Evangelist

Matthew the Evangelist was, according to the Bible, one of the twelve Apostles of Jesus and one of the four Evangelists.-Identity:...

 in its present form from Mark and from Matthew's earlier "collection of Sayings," the Logia of Papias

Papias

Papias was a bishop of the early Church, canonized as a saint. Eusebius of Caesarea calls him "Bishop of Hierapolis" which is 22 km from Laodicea and near Colossae Papias (writing in the first third of the 2nd century) was a bishop of the early Church, canonized as a saint. Eusebius of...

, and Luke

Luke the Evangelist

Luke the Evangelist was an Early Christian writer whom Church Fathers such as Jerome and Eusebius said was the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles...

 from Matthew and Mark in the form in which we have them. This view was a modified version of Christian Weisse

Christian Hermann Weisse

Christian Hermann Weisse , was a German Protestant religious philosopher.- Philosophy :He was born at Leipzig, and studied at the university there, at first adhering to the Hegelian school of philosophy. In the course of time, his ideas changed, and became close to those of Schelling in his later...

's hypothesis.

Other noteworthy works are the Lehrbuch der histor.-kritischen Einleitung in das Neue Testament (1885, 3rd ed., 1892), and the Lehrbuch der neutestamentlichen Theologie (2 vols., 1896-1897). He also collaborated with Richard Otto Zöpffel

Richard Otto Zöpffel

Richard Otto Zöpffel was a German church historian and theologian born in Arensburg, Governorate of Livonia, Russian Empire ....

in the preparation of a small Lexikon für Theologie und Kirchenwesen (1882; 3rd ed., 1895), and in 1893 became editor of the Theol. Jahresbericht.