User:Springnuts/in progress CK Barrett

Direct copy of Guardian so not usable of course.

Charles Kingsley Barrett, who has died aged 94, stood alongside CH Dodd as the greatest British New Testament scholar of the 20th century. Barrett regarded commentary on the texts as the primary task of the biblical scholar, and his meticulous commentaries have provided solid foundations for students and clergy for more than 50 years. He was a Methodist minister for nearly 70 years and, during his time as lecturer and professor of divinity at Durham University (1945-82), and in retirement there, he preached most Sundays in the city or a nearby village. His opposition to the scheme for Anglican-Methodist reunion in the 1960s brought him into contact with a wider public as a church leader, as well as a renowned teacher.

He was born into a Primitive (Calvinist) Methodist clergy family in Salford. He was sent to Shebbear college, in Devon, where he became captain of cricket and a promising opening batsman. At Pembroke College, Cambridge, he distinguished himself in the mathematical tripos before transferring to theology. His supervisor, Noel Davey, directed him to what turned out to be the last course of lectures on the theology and ethics of the New Testament by EC Hoskyns.

Barrett was amazed to hear from Hoskyns, an Anglo-Catholic, the tone of "biblical theology" he had imbibed from his father's un-Anglican sermons. A decade later, at Durham, he persuaded his professor, Michael Ramsey (later archbishop of Canterbury), another admirer of Hoskyns, to continue that novelty. When, in 1950, Ramsey returned to Cambridge, Barrett made the Hoskyns view of New Testament theology the backbone of a Durham theological education.

Training at Wesley House, the Methodist theological college in Cambridge, enabled Barrett to join Dodd's senior seminar at the university, to study rabbinics there with Herbert Loewe, and to find a lifelong friend in David Daube, a refugee from Nazi Germany and scholar of ancient law. These contacts with Jewish scholars became important after the second world war, when New Testament scholarship became more attentive to Second Temple Judaism (Judaism prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70AD), largely due to the impact of the then newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls, but partly also as the full horrors of antisemitism belatedly dawned on the Christian conscience.

When, in the 1970s, negative Christian stereotypes of Judaism were discredited, Barrett did not find his own commentaries on Romans (1957), 1 Corinthians (1968) and 2 Corinthians (1973) in need of extensive revision. The 1991 edition of Romans still reflected a theological mind steeped in Luther and Calvin, and galvanised in his own day by Karl Barth. Barrett's textbook The New Testament Background: Selected Documents (1956) and The Gospel of John and Judaism (published in German in 1970, and English in 1975) exemplify historical scholarship enriched by theological grasp rather than distorted by religious prejudices. The learned and judicious historian of Christian origins did not in his writing and lecturing allow more than glimpses of the fire in his belly.

Barrett's natural gifts were reinforced by a robust constitution and formidable capacity for hard work. A year as tutor at Wesley College in Headingley, near Leeds, in 1942, was followed by pastoral work in Darlington. Each night, the hours from 10pm to 2am were set aside for research. The lectureship at Durham in 1945, and chair in 1958, allowed him to settle into a more reasonable 14-hour day, which he carried into retirement.

Fifty years a fellow of the British Academy, he was awarded its Burkitt medal in 1966 and accumulated several honorary doctorates, prizes and honours – and declined some too. The Durham tutorial system involved what would now seem an absurdly heavy teaching load, but having in HEW Turner a head of department who preferred not to share the administration allowed Barrett plenty of time to write.

As editor at the Christian publishing house SPCK, Davey published Barrett's first book, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition (1947), and, in 1955, his now classic commentary on John's Gospel, updated in 1978 and translated into German in 1990. These show an intimate knowledge of the German tradition, and through personal friendships and academic conferences Barrett did more than most to restore English academic links with Europe.

He helped shape the new international character of New Testament scholarship, and became president of the international Society for New Testament Studies in 1973, having earlier refused, unwilling to take precedence over an older German giant, Ernst Käsemann.

Barrett saw himself as a historian rather than a doctrinal theologian – but a historian with a sensitivity for the religious and theological character of the texts not always so evident as the discipline has become more secularised. The relationship of theology and history in New Testament theology is at issue in many of his articles, including sketches of his most admired predecessors. Paul was the centre of his theological gravity and John the commentary that first revealed his quality, but his two volumes on Acts (1994 and 1999), in a series more noted for detail than sparkle, are perhaps his most enduring monument. Those unable to digest such detail and quotations in several languages were grateful for The Acts of the Apostles, a simplified version of it, in 2002.

Unbending on matters of principle and a man of few words in company, Barrett has been remembered for his kindness to junior colleagues. A harmonious domestic life made space for productivity and hospitality. From their marriage in 1944 until her death in 2008, Margaret introduced lightness into a life called to seriousness. Their children, Penelope and Martin, who survive him, enabled him to remain independent in old age and infirmity.

• Charles Kingsley Barrett, biblical scholar, born 4 May 1917; died 26 August 2011.