G. B. Caird

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George Bradford Caird was a Congregational minister, New Testament scholar and theologian.

G. B. Caird was born in London in 1917 to a family of Dundee Scots. He was educated at St Edward's School, Birmingham and Peterhouse, Cambridge (1936-1939), where he read classics and was awarded a double first. He took his doctorate (a study in the use of doxa (glory) in the New Testament)at Mansfield College, Oxford, and was ordained in the Congregational Church. He was minister of Highgate Congregational Church from 1943 until 1946, when he was appointed Professor of Old Testament Language and Literature at St Stephen's College in Edmonton. In 1950 he moved to McGill University, where he became a Professor of the New Testament, and later Principal of the United Theological College.

In 1959 Caird returned to Oxford and Mansfield College, where he was appointed Senior Tutor (he was Principal from 1970). He served as Dean Ireland Chair of Exegesis of Holy Scripture in the University of Oxford from 1977 until his sudden death in April 1984. He was awarded the Collins Religious Book Award, for The Language and Imagery of the Bible (1980).

[edit] Works

Caird produced seven major works in his lifetime:

• The Truth of the Gospel (1950)
• The Apostolic Age (1955)
• Principalities and Powers (1956)
• The Gospel of St Luke (1963)
• The Revelation of St John the Divine (1966)
• Paul's Letters from Prison (1976)
• The Language and Imagery of the Bible (1980)

Another was published posthumously:

• New Testament Theology (1994), edited and completed by L. D. Hurst

[edit] Assesment

A appreciation of Caird's life and work by James Barr was published in Proceedings of the British Academy.^[1]

Combining a penetrative knowledge of both Testaments with a rare fastidiousness with words, Caird analysed his texts in a way which for many set a new standard for the field. These traits, coupled with a fertility of imagination and an almost poetic approach to complex theological issues, produced a potent brew which any who took even a small draught were not likely to forget.^[2]

[edit] Notes