Ronald Knox

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Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (born February 17, 1888 in Kibworth Beauchamp , Leicester , † August 24, 1957 in Mells , Somerset ) was a British theologian, priest, satirist and crime writer.

Live and act

The son of the Anglican pastor Edmund Arbuthnott Knox (later Bishop of Manchester) discovered his passion for crime literature during his student days in Oxford and initiated the so-called " Sherlockian Reading " through a satirical speech given in 1911 at the Gryphon Club . Knox applied the methods of historical-critical biblical exegesis to the "canon" of the Sherlock Holmes stories and thus began a reading practice that is still looking for the solution of contradictions between the individual stories and their correct chronology. The speech appeared in his 1928 essays in Satire under the title Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes .

In addition, he wrote his own detective novels such as The Viaduct Murder , 1925 (German "Der Mord am Viadukt"), The Three Taps. A detective story without a moral , 1927 (German "The three gas taps") and The Footsteps at the Lock , 1928 (German "Fußspuren an der Schleuse").

In 1929 he tried as a member of the Detection Club with his Ten Rules for a Fair Detective Novel ( Father Knox's Decalogue ) to set up rules for detective novels, which were published in the foreword to the book he edited, Best Detective Stories of 1928–1929 . However, these rules were not perceived as serious by all members of the club, and in some cases they were considered a joke.

Knox was ordained an Anglican priest in 1912 , but converted to Catholicism in 1917 under the influence of Gilbert Keith Chesterton . The most important achievements of Father Knox are in the field of theology. In 1939 he left Oxford and withdrew to the more remote Shropshire to devote himself to a new translation of the Bible on the basis of the Vulgate (using the original Hebrew and Greek texts). His New Testament appeared in 1945, the Old Testament in 1949. As a result of his translation work, Knox finally wrote three commentary volumes on the Gospels , the letters of the Apostle Paul of Tarsus , the Acts of the Apostles and the Apocalypse (1953-1956).

Knox is considered the most influential Catholic apologist of his generation in Britain .

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personal data
SURNAME Knox, Ronald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British theologian, satirist and detective writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Kibworth Beauchamp ( Leicester )
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1957
Place of death Mells ( Somerset )