Edwin Palmer (priest)

Edwin Palmer (1824–1895) was an English churchman and academic, Corpus Professor of Latin at Oxford from 1870 to 1878[1] and archdeacon of Oxford from 1878 to his death.[2]

Life

His father William Jocelyn Palmer was rector of Mixbury in Oxfordshire. His mother Dorothea was daughter of the Rev. William Roundell of Gledstone, Yorkshire; there were six sons and four daughters, and William Palmer and Roundell Palmer were his two eldest brothers.[3][4]

At Oxford, he met William Stubbs, who was his future bishop when he became archdeacon, at the Hermes debating society, and they became lifelong friends.[5] As a Fellow of Balliol College he was one of an influential group of liberal theologians in the college: Benjamin Jowett, T. H. Green and William Lambert Newman were others.[6] With Edward Charles Wickham he started the intercollegiate lectures in the university.[7] Oliver Wendell Holmes was his guest at Balliol in 1866.[8] In 1870, with his Latin professorship, he became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College.[9]

He set off on travel for his heath during the winter of 1849/50 with his brother William in the Levant, meeting Alexandros Mavrokordatos in Athens and visiting Smyrna to see Yevfimy Putyatin. They went on to Damascus and Jerusalem.[10] Returning, they visited Mount Athos.[11] The trip ended back in England in August 1850, with Edwin Palmer in better health.[12]

New Testament scholar

In 1881 Palmer edited the Greek Testament With the Readings Adopted by the Revisers of the Authorized Version, producing a Greek New Testament text representing the basis of the Revised Version. In the 1881 Revision it was stated "A revision of the Greek text was the necessary foundation of our work; but it did not fall within our province to construct a continuous and complete Greek text." Palmer's text was a post facto text, designed to meet the need of showing the Greek behind the decisions of the English committee. Later parallel editions from Oxford and Cambridge included a Received Text edition across from the Palmer edition. Palmer was assisted by Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener.[13] The 1910 edition by Alexander Souter reproduces Palmer's text.[14]
Charles John Ellicott wrote that there were at most 64 readings in Palmer's text, in agreement with the 1881 text of Fenton John Anthony Hort and Brooke Westcott, The New Testament in the Original Greek, that were not found in either the Textus Receptus or in one or more of the texts of Karl Lachmann, Constantin von Tischendorf and Samuel Prideaux Tregelles.[15]

Family

He married Henrietta, daughter of Rev. James Riddell; Edwin James Palmer was their son, and they had two daughters.[16]

References

Notes

  1. ↑ P. G. Naiditch, A. E. Housman at University College, London: the election of 1892 (1998), p. 35 note 10-5; Google Books.
  2. ↑ Wheeler p. 70 note 67.
  3. ↑  "Palmer, William (1811-1879)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  4. ↑ Wheeler, p. 12 note 2.
  5. ↑ William Holden Hutton (editor), Letters of William Stubbs, Bishop of Oxford, 1825-1901 (1904), p. 21; archive.org.
  6. ↑ Denys Leighton, The Greenian Moment: T.H. Green, religion and political argument in Victorian Britain (2004), p. 42; Google Books.
  7. ↑ Curthoys, M. C. "Wickham, Edward Charles". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36887. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  8. ↑ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sir Frederick Pollock, Holmes-Pollock Letters: the correspondence of Mr. Justice Holmes and Sir Frederick Pollock, 1874-1932, Volume 1 (1961), p. 75; Google Books.
  9. ↑ Thomas Fowler, Corpus Christi (1898), p. 219; Google Books.
  10. ↑ Wheeler, p. 303-9
  11. ↑ Wheeler, p. 312.
  12. ↑ Wheeler, p. 323.
  13. ↑ Jay P. Green, Unholy Hands on the Bible: An Examination of Six Major New Versions (1992), p. 329; Google Books.
  14. ↑ Bruce Manning Metzger, New Testament Tools and Studies (1968), p. 158; Google Books.
  15. ↑ Charles John Ellicott, The Revisers and the Greek Text of the New Testament (1882), p. 41; archive.org.
  16. ↑ Studdert-Kennedy, Gerald. "Palmer, Edwin James". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/38837. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

External links