Hans Heinrich Schmid

Hans Heinrich Schmid (22 October 1937 in Winterthur, Canton of Zürich – 4 October 2014) was a Swiss Protestant Reformed theologian, university professor and university rector.

Life He was the son of the Zurich pastor Gotthard Schmid (1909–1968). He studied theology at the Universities of Zurich and Göttingen and received his doctorate in 1965 in Zurich.

In the winter semester 1966/67 he was habilitated in Zurich and a year later was appointed as an assistant professor. In 1969, Schmid was made associate professor of Old Testament studies.

In 1972, he became the rector of Bethel Theological Seminary (Kirchlichen Hochschule Bethel). In the summer semester 1976 he was professor of Old Testament scholarship and general history of religion at the University of Zurich. From 1988 to 2000 he served as rector of the University of Zurich. During his tenure, in 1998, the University of Zurich became an independent legal entity of the Canton of Zurich.

Hans Heinrich Schmid was married in 1962 and had two sons and two daughters.

Scholarship Schmid was a respected authority on the question of Pentateuchal origins (the question of how the first five books of the bible – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Book of Numbers and Deuteronomy – came to be written).

His book Der sogenannte Jahwist (The So-called Yahwist, 1976) appeared at about the same time as two other important works, John Van Seters' Abraham in History and Tradition (1975), and Rolf Rendtorff's "Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch" (The Problem of the Transmission of the Pentateuch, 1977). These three studies inaugurated a heated discussion in scholarly circles on the validity of the then-dominant consensus on Pentateuchal origins, the Documentary Hypothesis.

Thus, Schmid significantly contributed to the advancement of the Supplementary hypothesis of Pentateuch composition.

According to Schmid, both the J material and the P material were products of the Babylonian exile period (6th century BC) and were directly derived from Babylonian sources (see also Panbabylonism).