LOMAN, ABRAHAM DIRK: Dutch Protestant; b. at The Hague Sept. 16, 1823; d. at Amsterdam Apr. 17, 1897. After completing his studies at the Lutheran and Mennonite seminaries at Amsterdam, he traveled through Germany and Switzerland. Returning to Holland in 1846 he became assistant pastor of the Lutheran Church at Maastricht, where he was pastor for a year (1848-1849), after which he occupied a similar position at Deventer for seven years (1849-56). In 1856 he was appointed professor in the Lutheran seminary at Amsterdam, and in 1877, while still retaining his chair in the seminary, he became professor in the university of the same city, despite the fact that he had been totally blind since 1874. In 1893 he retired from active life.

As a theologian Loman belonged from the first to the so-called " modern school "; as early as 1861 he had advanced the view in De Grids that the Gospel account of the Resurrection was due to visions of the faithful. His main field was the New Testament, although his only book was his Bijdragenter inleiding op de Johanneische schriften des Nieutven Testaments (Amsterdam, 1865), of which the first part alone, on the testimony of the Muratorian Canon to the Fourth Gospel, was actually published. Later he devoted himself to the synoptic Gospels in his Bijdragen tot de critiek der synoptische evangelien (ThT, 1869-79). Here is manifest the beginning of the symbolic interpretation of the Gospels which he later developed. His view found its expression in his address on Het oudste Christendom before the "Free Congregation"at Amsterdam in Dec., 1881 (reprinted in Sternrnen uit de Vrije Gemeente, Amsterdam, 1882), in which he declared that Christ was not a historic personality, but the incorporation of a series of concepts and the symbolization and personification of thoughts and principles which were first fully developed in the Christianity of the second century, the passion and resurrection being nothing more than the abasement and death of Israel and its revival as Christianity. The storm of opposition which this hypothesis aroused forced Loman to reconsider his attitude, and he

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granted, in 1882, the historicity of Christ, but de nied that he had founded Christianity. He made still further retractations in his De oorsprong van het geloof aan Jezus opstanding in De Gids , 1888, in which all trace of novelty disappears from his theory, since he grants the historic personality of Christ and the fact that he actually founded Chris tianity, although still maintaining that the resur rection represents merely the metamorphosis of the Jewish Messianic community into the world-wide Christian Church. Loman's symbolic theory of the Gospels now forced him to deny the authenticity of the Pauline epistles, for if they were actually written by Paul in the Apostolic Age, his Christological hypothesis would become untenable. In his Quaestiones Pau linae (ThT, 1882-86), therefore, he distinguished between a " historic Paul" and a " canonical Paul," the former making a propaganda for the Jewish Messianic ideal outside Palestine, and the latter being merely a legendary figure. Loman was not only a theologian, but also a mu sician, and composed a number of chorales and choruses, besides writing the libretto of an ora torio in four acts on the Song of Solomon.

Bibliography: H. U. Meyboom has contributed articles on Loman'e life to De Gida, 1898, ii. 80-117, and to Le vensberichten der afgestorven medeleden van de Maatachap pij der Nederlandsche letterkunde, 1898, 26-28, 69-72, and D. E. J. Volter has written in Jaarboek van de ko ninklijke Akademie van Wetenachappen, 1899, pp. 3-36.