Alexander Souter

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Alexander Souter (August 14, 1873 – 1949) was Scottish biblical scholar.

[edit] Biography

Souter was born in Perth, and studied at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Cambridge. He subsequently became a Latin assistant at Aberdeen. While at Cambridge he studied under J. E. B. Mayor, whom Souter would credit with influence on his later scholarship.

In 1903 he was appointed professor of New Testament Greek and Exegesis at the University of Oxford's Mansfield College. In 1911 he moved back to the University of Aberdeen, succeeding William Ramsay as Regius Professor of Humanity, in which position he remained until his retirement in 1937.

Upon his retirement, Souter moved back to Oxford, where he became editor-in-chief of the proposed Oxford Latin Dictionary. The outbreak of World War II prevented its completion within his lifetime, but Souter did publish a smaller work borne of this endeavor, Glossary of Later Latin, A.D. 150–600.

[edit] Scholarship

Souter's two main interests were in the text of the New Testament and in early Latin commentaries on the Pauline epistles. He published an edition of the New Testament in 1910 (revised edition 1947) giving the Greek text on which the English Revised Version of 1881 was based, along with commentary on variants. His work on the Pauline epistles included proposed revisions to many accepted attributions, notably of Ambrosiaster, as well as numerous commentaries on and editions of other works.

[edit] References

• Laistner, M.L.W.; Lowe, E.A.; and Ullman, B.L. (1950). "Alexander Souter (in Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Mediaeval Academy)". Speculum 25 (3): 418–419.