Francis Burkitt
From Textus Receptus
Francis Crawford Burkitt FBA (3 September 1864 – 1935) was an English theologian. As Norris Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge from 1905 until shortly before his death, Burkitt was a sturdy critic of the notion of a distinct "Caesarean Text" of the New Testament put forward by B. H. Streeter and others.
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Education and career
Burkitt was educated at Harrow School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics, graduating BA as 28th Wrangler in 1886, and gained first-class honours in the theological tripos in 1888. Received MA in 1890, and Bachelor of Divinity and Doctorate in Divinity in 1915. Lecturer in Palaeography in 1903-1905, Norrisian Professor of Divinity, Cambridge 1905-1936 Chief promoter of and author of the Preface for the English translation of Albert Schweitzer's book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, by W. Montgomery.
Burkitt accompanied Robert Bensly, James Rendel Harris, and sisters Agnes and Margaret Smith on the 1893 expedition to Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt to examine a Syriac palimpsest of the Gospels discovered there the previous year by the sisters. Burkitt played an important role in deciphering the text and in subsequent publication of the team's findings.
Burkitt was a noted figure at Cambridge in 1912–1935 for his chairmanship of the Cambridge New Testament Seminar, attended by other prominent theologians, including Robert Newton Flew, who left an account of it in an obituary for Burkitt in the Proceedings of the British Academy. He was also president of the Cambridge Philological Society from 1904 to 1905.
The Burkitt Medal, awarded by the British Academy, is named in his honour.
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