Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare

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Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare (1856-1924) was a British orientalist, Fellow of University College, Oxford, and Professor of Theology at the University of Oxford.

He took an interest in the Order of Corporate Reunion, an Old Catholic organisation, becoming a Bishop in it in 1894. Also in the 1890s he wrote a book on the Dreyfus case, as a Dreyfusard, and translated the Testament of Solomon and other early Christian texts. As well, he did influential work on Barlaam and Josaphat. He was an authority on the Armenian Church.

He from 1904 to 1915 was a member of the Rationalist Press Association of freethinkers, founded in 1899. These multiple associations make his position on Christianity harder to discern.

One of his best-known works is Myth, Magic, and Morals from 1909, later reissued under the title The Origins of Christianity. This has been read both as strong criticism of the Jesus myth theory, making Conybeare a supporter of the historical Jesus; but also as an attack on aspects of Christianity itself. He returned later in 1914 to make a direct assault on leading proponents of the time of the Jesus-myth theory.

His wife Mary Emily was a translator of Wilhelm Scherer. The distinguished physician Sir John Josias Conybeare (1888-1967) was his son.

[edit] Works

• Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion by Hermann Lotze (1892) translator
• The Armenian Apology and Acts of Apollonius, and Other Monuments of Early Christianity (1894)
• About the Contemplative Life; or the Fourth Book of the Treatise Concerning Virtues, by Philo Judaeus (1895) editor
• The Dreyfus Case (1898)
• The Key of Truth, a Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia (1898)
• The Testament of Solomon (1898) translation in the Jewish Quarterly Review, October 1898, online
• The Story of Ahikar from the Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Greek and Slavonic Versions (1898) with J. Rendel Harris and Agnes Smith Lewis
• Rituale Armenorum Being the Administration of the Sacraments & the Breviary Rites of the Armenian Church Together with the Greek Rites of Baptism & Epiphany edited from the oldest manuscripts (1905) with Arthur John Maclean
• Selections from the Septuagint According to the Text of Swete (1905) with St. George Stock, later as A Grammar of Septuagint Greek online
• The Armenian version of Revelation, Apocalypse of John the Divine (1907) editor
• Myth, Magic, and Morals: A Study of Christian Origins (1909)
• History of New Testament Criticism (1910)
• The Ring of Pope Xystus, Together with the Prologue of Rufinus (1910)
• The Life of Apollonius of Tyana: The Epistles of Apollonius and the Treatise of Eusebius. Philostratus (1912) translator, Loeb Classical Library, two volumes
• A Catalogue of the Armenian Manuscripts in the British Museum (1913)
• The Historical Christ; or, An investigation of the views of Mr. J. M. Robertson, Dr. A. Drews, and Prof. W. B. Smith (1914)
• Russian Dissenters (1921)
• The Armenian Church: Heritage and Identity. (St. Vartan Press: New York, 2001) edited by the Rev. Nerses Vrej Nersessian