The Durham Tradition and its Exegetes-- an Encomium

We all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, especially when we are dealing with the life of the mind. And of course there have been many great schools of Christian thought and of Christian scholarship, but when it comes to Biblical Interpretation there are few if any institutions from the 19th century until now that can claim to have had a grander series of exegetes of the New Testament than the University of Durham, the resting place of the Venerable Bede and Cuthbert and many after them.

My own personal interest in the Durham exegetes began in the 1970s when I was doing my divinity degree in Massachusetts and kept running into the works of various of these scholars over and over again, scholars that my teachers kept referring to as the authorities on this or that or the other NT subject. It was one of the things that led me to study at Durham where I had the privilege of studying under C.K. Barrett, C.E.B. Cranfield, John Rogerson, T.H.L. Parker, Stephen Sykes and others. But before any of these scholars of the 1950s-1980s darkened the doors of Durham, there was B.F. Wescott, there was the amazing J.B. Lightfoot, there was Alfred Plummer, there was H.E.W Turner, and after my time at Durham there has been J.D.G. Dunn and now John Barclay in the Lightfoot Chair in the theology department. There are other names I could gladly mention as well. My point is this-- Good exegetes are not born, they are made and molded, and the process is more helpful and less painful if you are learning from the best.

If it is true that you become what you admire, then there can be little doubt of the great debt I owe to all of these persons whom I have named, and whose works I continue to read with profit long after my time in Durham, and long after many of these men have retired or died. There is a living legacy of scholarship nurtured over generations in the same place which like a clear stream which continues to have it specific places where fish can best be caught, continues to be a place to which I return again and again with profit to get clear answers, intellectual stimulus, spiritual succour, and food for thought.

Hail to Durham whose Norman Cathderal will reach its second millennium birthday perhaps in my son's lifetime, and hail to its new bishop-- my friend Tom Wright who himself now carries forward the wonderful rich tradition of Durham exegetes. To all of us who stand in this tradition I bring reminder of the words of J. Bengel, whom Wesley was wont to quote in his own notable Notes on the NT--- "apply the whole of the text to yourself, apply the whole of yourself to the text." I am proud to be a Durhamite.