The Daily Discoveries of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter: A Biography of James Rendel Harris 1852–1941. By Alessandro Falcetta

Abstract

In histories of biblical scholarship the name of J. Rendel Harris belongs chiefly to the field of textual criticism of the New Testament reflecting his lifelong support for the views of Westcott and Hort regarding the authority of the Western textual tradition, linked to Codex Beza—a text given to the University of Cambridge in the sixteenth century. He was born in Plymouth in 1852 and came to Clare College Cambridge in 1870 where he graduated with honours (Third Wrangler) in Mathematics in 1875. Biblical scholarship was in disarray; controversies over interpretation had intensified with the plan to unite the resources of all the major religious traditions to produce a Revised English translation to replace that of 1611. This brought text criticism into the front line of public attention and made its details a debatable issue which Harris came to regard as the most important feature of the era. This extensive study is a revised and extended biography based on a dissertation submitted to the University of Birmingham; it is replete with more than 150 pages of notes and bibliography, abundant quotations from the subject’s published lectures, together with personal reminiscences and photographs. They give to his academic record a distinctive colour and liveliness, reflecting the eccentricities, humour, and passion for which Harris was renowned. In pursuit of his main subject he witnessed abundant controversy and much human tragedy which he regarded as an inevitable part of the story of religion in human history.