Oscar von Gebhardt

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Oscar Leopold von Gebhardt (22 June 1844 – 9 May 1906) was a German Lutheran theologian. He was born in Wesenberg, in the Baltic German settlement of the Russian Empire (now Rakvere, Estonia). He studied theology at the University of Dorpat and at several German universities, and later worked in university libraries in Strasbourg, Leipzig, Halle, and Göttingen. In 1891 he became director of the publication department at the Royal Library in Berlin, and in 1893 he was named chief librarian and professor of paleography at the University of Leipzig. Gebhardt specialized in early Christian literature and believed that librarians could be scholars in their own right, separate from the teaching profession. He published and edited important works, including Karl Gottfried Wilhelm Theile's Novum Testamentum Graece (1875–1900) and Das Neue Testament griechisch und deutsch (fourth edition, 1896); edited The Miniatures of the Ashburnham Pentateuch (1883); and, with Adolf von Harnack, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur (1882–1905), a multi‑volume series on New Testament and patristic criticism; and with Harnack and Theodor Zahn, an edition of the Apostolic Fathers (1875–78). Gebhardt died in Leipzig.