Samuel Rolles Driver

S. R. Driver, by Werner & Son.

Samuel Rolles Driver, FBA (2 October 1846 – 26 February 1914) was an English divine and Hebrew scholar. He devoted his life to the study, both textual and critical, of the Old Testament. He was the father of Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver, also a distinguished Bible scholar.

Biography

Samuel Rolles Driver was born at Southampton. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he had a distinguished career, taking a first class in Literae Humaniores in 1869. He was awarded the Pusey and Ellerton scholarship in 1866, the Kennicott scholarship in 1870 (both Hebrew), and the Houghton Syriac prize in 1872. From 1870 he was a fellow, and from 1875 also a tutor, of New College, and in 1883 succeeded Pusey as Regius Professor of Hebrew and canon of Christ Church, Oxford.^[1]

He was a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee of the Revised Version (1876-1884) and examining chaplain to the Bishop of Southwell (1884-1904); received the honorary degrees of doctor of literature of the University of Dublin (1892), doctor of divinity of the University of Glasgow (1901),^[2] doctor of literature of the University of Cambridge (1905); and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1902.^[1]

In June 1901, he received an honorary doctorate of Divinity from the University of Glasgow.

Driver married in 1891, Mabel, daughter of Edmund Barr, of Burgh, near Aylsham, Norfolk, and leaves two sons and two daughters.^[1] He died at Oxford in 1914.^[3]

Works

Among Driver's numerous works are commentaries on:^[1]

• Book of Samuel (Hebrew text, 1890)
• Book of Leviticus (1894 Hebrew text, 1898 trans. and notes)
• Book of Joel and Book of Amos (1897)
• The Book of Daniel, with Introduction and Notes, (1900)
• Deuteronomy (1902)
• Book of Job (1905)
• The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah, (1906)
• The Minor Prophets, Book of Nahum to Book of Malachi (1905)
• Book of Genesis (1909)

Among his more general works are:^[1]

• Isaiah, his Life and Times (1887, ed. 1893)
• Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1891, ed. 1901, 1909)
• Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew (1892)
• Sermons on Subjects connected with the Old Testament (1892)
• The Parallel Psalter (1904)
• Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, known as "BDB" (Brown Driver Briggs) (in collaboration, 1906)
• Modern Research as illustrating the Bible (inaugural Schweich Lecture, 1908)
• Articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Biblica, Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible and Dictionary of National Biography

See also

• Brown Driver Briggs

Notes

1. Chisholm 1911, p. 585.
2. "Glasgow University jubilee". The Times (36481). London. 14 June 1901. p. 10.
3. Times staff, p. 11.

References

• Times staff (27 February 1914). "Death Of Canon S. R. Driver. A Great Biblical Scholar". The Times (40458). London. col F, p. 11.

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Driver, Samuel Rolles". Encyclopædia Britannica. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 585.

External links

• Works written by or about Samuel Rolles Driver at Wikisource