He was a delightful conversationalist and friendly colleague and excellent scholar. He has written boatloads of very useful books on the Old Testament. This truly was awful news.
Vice Dean of the Department of Protestant Theology at Philipps-Universität Marburg Christl M. Maier sends the news:
I write with a heavy heart to inform you about the passing of professor emeritus Dr. Dr. Erhard S. Gerstenberger on April 15, 2023, at the age of 90. He taught Old Testament from 1985 to 1997 at Marburg and served as Dean of the department from 1993 to 1994. We honor him as an influential biblical scholar, whose work has been translated into many languages, and as a dedicated teacher who inspired many generations of students and scholars.
Born on June 20, 1932 in Rheinhausen, Gerstenberger grew up in a miner’s family. After the war he found his way to the church and studied Protestant theology at the universities of Marburg, Tübingen, Bonn and at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal. In 1959, a fellowship from the World Council of Churches brought him to Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT, where he did research and taught until 1964. He received his PhD from the University of Bonn in 1961 (Wesen und Herkunft des ‘apodiktischen’ Rechts, WMANT 20, 1965). From 1965 to 1975 he worked as a parish minister in Essen-Frohnhausen, interrupted in the years 1969 to 1970, when he finished his habilitation in Heidelberg with a study on Bittritual und Klagelied des Einzelnen im Alten Testament (WMANT 51, 1980) in 1970. From 1975 to 1981 he taught Old Testament at the Lutheran Theological College in São Leopoldo (Brazil). In 1981, he became full professor at Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, and in 1985 at Philipps-Universität Marburg, where he taught until his retirement in 1997. Far from retiring, Gerstenberger continued his studies begun at Yale and received his second doctorate, in ancient Near Eastern studies, at Marburg in 2014 with a thesis on Sumerian hymn literature (ORA 28, 2018).
The multiple paradigm shifts of his eventful life on three continents, in academia and in the congregation, had a lasting impact on Gerstenberger’s theology: he connected his interpretation of the world of the Bible with the world of its readers and their specific contexts. He was committed to Latin American liberation theology and one of the first male allies of emerging feminist theology in Germany, fervently promoting female scholars in academia. After his retirement, he co-initiated a liberation-theology reading circle at the department with students of several generations. For decades, Gerstenberger gave lectures at congregations, parish conventions and academies, and, on the way to the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, to numerous U.S. colleges and universities.
Gerstenberger’s English publications include commentaries on Psalms (2 vols. FOTL, Eerdmans 1988, 2001) and Leviticus (OTL, Westminster John Knox, 1996; German 1993) as well as the monographs Theologies in the Old Testament (Fortress and T&T Clark, 2002; German 2002) and Israel in the Persian Period (Brill, 2012; German 2005).
For his tremendous scholarship and warm friendship, Erhard Gerstenberger will long be remembered by our community, and greatly missed.
A list of several of his publications can be found here https://tinyurl.com/5ded9zbp
May he rest in peace.
Zwinglius Redivivus 
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