Oskar David Leonard Hedegård (1891-1971), born in Östergötland, Sweden was a Swedish theologian and Bible translator. He was first active in the Swedish Missionary Union where he became a member in 1909. He was a preacher in the Spelvik -Husby mission district in 1911–1912 and then in the Mariefred mission congregation in 1913–1915. He attended the Missionary Union's theological seminary on Lidingö in 1915–1917 and in 1917 became a preacher in the Jönköping Ansgariiförening. After graduating as a private student in 1920, he moved to Lund and was pastor of the Bethel missionary congregation in Eslöv from 1923 to 1925. He simultaneously pursued university studies and became a candidate of philosophy in 1924 and a candidate of theology in 1928. Hedegård was a teacher at the Theological Seminary in Lidingö from 1928 to 1940. In 1930 he published the book The Old Testament Sacrifice Service in which he emerged as a conservative biblical theologian; the book was a kind of response to the book Priests and Prophets in the Development of Biblical Religions by the SMF's mission director Axel Andersson, which had been published the previous year. Hedegård was the initiator of the Association for Biblical Faith in 1937 and from then until his death published its magazine For Biblical Faith. Together with the Finnish professor Aapeli Saarisalo, he published Biblical Encyclopedia. Handbook for Bible Readers (1939), which has been published in five revised editions. Due to differences of opinion regarding the Bible, Hedegård left the Swedish Missionary Union in 1940. He became rector of the Alliance Mission seminary in Kortebo near Jönköping in 1941 and became a licentiate in theology in 1943. In 1951 at the age of 60, inspired by his teacher Professor Hugo Odeberg, he defended his doctoral thesis on a Jewish liturgical handbook from the 8th century, Seder R. Amaram Gaon. He was also one of the initiators of the Nordic Evangelical Council, of which he was chairman throughout its entire period of operation, 1955–1968.