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Sunday 21 August 2011

F.F. Bruce - A LIFE: The Definitive Biography of a New Testament Scholar

Every once in a while, one stumbles across a book here in Cambridge you just have to buy. Yesterday was such a day when I bought the brand new biography of F.F. Bruce - one of the most influential evangelical New Testament scholars of the 20th century in England. It's got all the normal things one gets in a biography, but, the following quote on the back cover explains why it's so significant to me:

"Evangelicals have often wrestled with two problems: the relation between academic theology and church life, and the quest for recognition of their status as credible interpreters of the Bible. F.F. Bruce (1910-1990) was one of the most influential British biblical scholars of the twentieth century, and his career offers valuable insights into these issues, as well as shedding light on the ways in which Evangelicalism was changing from the 1950s onwards ... Tim Grass argues that Bruce, like his father, was always something of an evangelist at heart."

Mark Noll has the following to say: "Tim Grass has written an unusually solid biography of an exceedingly solid scholar. Its pages provide a full account of F.F. Bruce's biblical scholarship and his path-breaking leadership of evangelical intellectual life more generally ... the result is a very good book on a very worthy subject."

1 comment:

New Testament Scholarship Worldwide said...

Hey Ferdie, I am now reading F. F. Bruce's commentary on John. I like his balance between scholarship and church life. I wanted to be like him.