On May 31, one of the most important Biblical scholars of our era, Professor Philip R. Davies, died. He studied at the universities of Oxford and St. Andrews, but his name would become synonymous with the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, which he helped develop into the cutting-edge center of Biblical scholarship from the 1970s to the 2000s.
Davies epitomized the changes that took place in the field over the past 40–50 years. A specialist in early Judaism, his early work was focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and he was instrumental in ensuring that the application of historical-critical approaches became part of Scrolls scholarship. In the 1990s, he was a leading figure in the so-called minimalist movement, which critiqued assumptions about the Hebrew Bible being a reliable source for Iron Age history and shifted the focus toward ideological and scribal processes involved in the formation of the Biblical texts and the emergence of Judaism. Controversial, polemical, and divisive though these debates often were (and sometimes played out in the pages of BARa), Davies’s emphases have since become part of the mainstream and helped expose the naivety of uncritical contextualization of archaeological finds and Biblical texts.
Davies also made early contributions to the reception history of the Bible and the analysis of Biblical studies itself. Once eyebrow-raising but soon normative, his most famous contribution to reception history concerned Monty Python’s Life of Brian, analyzing not only the film’s use of ancient historical material but, crucially, the contemporary ideological tendencies at play in the film’s understanding of the Bible. Underpinning this and all his work was the notion of critical, academic scholarship over against confessional and theological approaches, which he saw as something quite different, like comparing astronomy with 016astrology, to use one of his favored analogies.
Davies had an important presence in the bureaucracy of the field at key moments. He was an integral figure in the release of unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls (also played out in the pages of BAR). He was one of the founders of the influential Sheffield Academic Press (earlier JSOT Press), which at one time was almost the only place for innovative journal articles and monographs. Later in his career, he became involved in developing the European Association of Biblical Studies and using it as a platform to mentor younger scholars outside North America. More recently still, he was chair of the Palestine Exploration Fund, a fitting venue for his experience and wide-ranging interests.
Davies had an extensive knowledge of subjects beyond Biblical studies. At Sheffield, and long after his retirement in 2003, he remained involved in interdisciplinary networks, including the informal and euphemistically named “Editorial Board Meetings” held regularly in a Sheffield pub to provoke heated debates on politics, literature, universities, religion, sociology, critical theory, general knowledge, local history, music, and so on. And at the heart of these lively gatherings was, naturally, the great scholarly gadfly, Philip Davies.—James Crossley, St. Mary’s University
On May 31, one of the most important Biblical scholars of our era, Professor Philip R. Davies, died. He studied at the universities of Oxford and St. Andrews, but his name would become synonymous with the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, which he helped develop into the cutting-edge center of Biblical scholarship from the 1970s to the 2000s. Davies epitomized the changes that took place in the field over the past 40–50 years. A specialist in early Judaism, his early work was focused on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and he was instrumental in ensuring that […]
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
