DEATH OF CANON DRIVER

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1996, 2 March 1914, Page 7

DEATH OF CANON DRIVER

A GREAT BIBLICAL CRITIC. By Telegraph—Press Association—Oooyrieht London, February 27. The Rev. Samuel Rolles Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Professor of Hebrew and : Canou of Christ Church, Oxford, is dead.

-Dr. Driver wa.3 born at Southampton on October 2, 1816, and educated at . Winchester College, aud New College, Oxford. He secured first class Lit. Hum. in 1869, was Pusey and' Ellerton Hebrew Scholar in. 1870, and won the Houghton Syriac Prize in 1872, was a Fellow of the Iscw College from 1875 to 1883. tutor of the New College from 1875 to 1883, a member of the Old Testament Revision Company from 1876 to 1884, and examining chaplain to the Bishop of Southwell from 1884 to 1904. Ho was the author of "An Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament," and a,number of other works in addition to articles'- in Hastings s "Dictionary of the Bible," the "Encyclopaedia Biblica," "The Guardian," and other periodicals. Dr. Driver was one of tho most distinguished of the British school •of moderrf criticism of tho fhd Testament. . ' In a study of Canon Driver In the 'Homiletic Review." Mrs. E. Hermann recalls the ■ "uneasiness, approaching to panic," created in the earlier dAys of the historical criticism of the Old Testament. '"ih« general theological public- in Eng-land.-unable to estimate- the real depth of scholarship and -wealth of penetrative insight which lay behind. such critical in it either flu arbitrary and fomewhat childish puzzlc-gamo, or else they regarded it as a malignant and dangerous attack upon the very citadel of the Christian faith. ' Dr. Driver , possesses peculiar qualities for pioneering -work in th'e'reaim'of Biblical criticism. No other theological personalty known to lis could have captured the mind of his generation with such _ compelling and reassuring force as this watchful and cautious Oxford professor, with his characteristic sobriety of .mental outlook, his unexceptioiially"reverent tone, and his all but cxtrenie caution." "Dt. Driver," says the "Christian World." "has not only held his course successfully through a_ particularly grave theological orisis. but it is largely Owing to his work that the crisis has issued in n deepened <iml instead of •leaving a widespread deposit of profane rationalism."