Controversial Lutheran scholar who took an active role in spreading the Protestant reformation. Though Osiander (whose actual last name was Hosemann) held an unorthodox view of justification by faith, he was responsible for reorganizing the free imperial city of Nürnberg on strict Lutheran principles & drafting similar church orders for several other cities. A professor of Hebrew, he vehemently rejected fellow German reformers' assertions of Jewish guilt for Jesus' death, becoming the first Christian theologian to refute publicly the myth that Jews were ritual murderers.

Osiander proved he was open to progressive scientific research by drafting an introduction to Copernicus' Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs (1543) that for more than a century prevented the scientist's views of the solar system from being banned by church authorities. But in interpreting the gospels he was a strict literalist. He published a monumental Gospel Harmony (1537) that claimed not to omit or change a single detail from Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

This work is a perfect illustration of a sequential harmony. If different versions of a story or saying could not be fused in a single synthesized account without altering either their detail or location in the gospel narrative, Osiander simply presented them as separate incidents. This created an extended narrative filled not only with doublets, but triplet & even quadruplet material. Jesus is portrayed as performing the same act or delivering the same saying several times in nearly identical circumstances. Jesus probably did repeat his parables & aphorisms and some typical behavior on several different occasions. But Osiander's literalism led him to distort the textual evidence by multiplying material that is presented in each gospel only once or (rarely) twice.

[For more details see The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (1985) vol. 8, p. 1026]

Other On-line resources:

• Osiander, Andreas - Albert van Helden provides biographical information on Osiander & others in the 16th c. scientific community for the Galileo Project (Rice U).

• Andreas Osiander - biography prepared for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation website of Concordia Seminary.

• Osiander, Andreas - brief biographical note focusing on Osiander's relation to Jewish tradition (Jewish Virtual Library).