James Barr (theologian)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James Barr (born March 20, 1924 in Glasgow , Scotland , † October 14, 2006 in Claremont , California ) was a Scottish Presbyterian pastor, Hebrew and Old Testament scholar .

Life

James Barr was the grandson of the Labor politician James Barr (1862-1949). He attended Daniel Stewart College in Edinburgh . During World War II he was a pilot of a torpedo bomber for the aviation division of the Royal Navy . He took part in rescue missions in the air and in water. After the war he studied at the University of Edinburgh . In 1948 he was awarded the Scottish MA in Classics with honors degree . In 1950 he married Jane Hepburn and they had two sons and a daughter.

In 1951 he received the BD in the Old Testament with distinction. He was ordained that same year for the service of the Church of Scotland . From 1951 to 1953 he was pastor of this church in Tiberias , Israel , where he learned modern Hebrew and Arabic . 1953 to 1955 he was Professor of New Testament at the Presbyterian College in Montreal . 1955 to 1961 he taught at New College in Edinburgh at the University of Edinburgh language, literature and theology of the Old Testament. At Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton , New Jersey , he was Professor of the Old Testament from 1961 to 1965. In 1965 he returned to Great Britain, was Professor of Semitic Languages ​​and Literature at the Victoria University of Manchester until 1976 . a. the Journal of Semitic Studies . From 1976 to 1978 he taught Old Testament Bible Exegesis at Oriel College , Oxford, and was then Regius Professor of Hebrew for Hebrew and Oriental Languages at Oxford University until 1989 . His last professorship was at Vanderbilt University in Nashville , Tennessee from 1989-1998. Barr died eight years later in 2006 in Claremont, California, where he and his wife had retired.

Teaching

In The Semantics of Biblical Language of 1961 (German Biblical Exegesis and Modern Semantics , 1965) he criticized the tendency of many scholars to argue linguistically imprecise and methodologically incorrect. There were often misconceptions about the relationship between thinking and language, with reference to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure . In his work Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament , published in 1968, he criticized the tendency to determine the meaning of difficult Hebrew words with their use in other Semitic languages, thus making an important contribution to comparative Semitic philology.

Barr was also a critic of the conservative evangelicals whom he attacked in his 1977 book on fundamentalism . In particular, he criticized James Innell Packer for supporting the doctrine of inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures, the so-called Chicago Declaration on Inerrancy of the Bible , which says that the Bible is without error. In contrast, he praised evangelicals like Frederick Fyvie Bruce and Donald Guthrie for their scientific work. He insisted that there was a difference between what the Hebrew writers of the Bible knew and wanted to say and what we should believe today.

Honors

Barr was president of the Society for Old Testament Study (SOTS) in 1973 and chaired the British Association for Jewish Studies in 1978 . In 1969 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1993 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society . In 1976 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . Barr was one of the most competent and influential Old Testament scholars of his time and is still quoted and valued by theologians for his thorough research and precise knowledge, including the German Old Testament scholar Frank Crüsemann . His assessment that evangelical fundamentalism is not fundamentally about the Bible and what it says, but about dominating the evangelical tradition and way of life, is viewed by Peter Enns as a prophetic statement.

Publications (selection)

  • 1961: The Semantics of Biblical Language
  • 1968: Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament
  • 1973: The Bible in the Modern World
  • 1977: Fundamentalism
  • 1980: The Scope and Authority of the Bible
  • 1984: Escaping From Fundamentalism (USA: Beyond Fundamentalism )
  • 1989: The Variable Spellings of the Hebrew Bible (Schweich Lectures 1986) British Academy by the Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-726068-3
  • 1992: Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Gifford Lectures 1990–1991) Clarendon Press, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-826205-1
  • 1999: The Concept of Biblical Theology: an Old Testament perspective
  • 2004: Of Metaphysics and Polynesian Navigation (Article in anthology Seeing God Everywhere World Wisdom)
  • 2005: History and Ideology in the Old Testament: biblical studies at the end of a millennium
  • 2013: Bible and Interpretation: The Collected Essays of James Barr, Volumes I-III. Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 9780198261926

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Notice in the London Gazette on October 5, 1978, regarding the appointment of James Barr as Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University.
  2. ↑ [1] Acknowledgment of Barr in The Guardian November 8, 2006
  3. ^ Letter to David C. Watson dated April 23, 1984
  4. ^ List of members . In: Yearbook of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences . tape 2011 , no. 1 , 2012, p. 39 .
  5. ↑ Frank Crüsemann: The Old Testament as a truth space of the new. The new view of the Christian Bible. Pages 69-78
  6. ↑ Peter Enns on James Barr on Patheos, July 2013
personal data
SURNAME Barr, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish Presbyterian pastor, Hebrew and Old Testament scholar
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH October 14, 2006
Place of death Claremont , California