Rev. Charles Fox Burney was Biblical scholar

Biblical studies

Biblical studies is the academic study of the Judeo-Christian Bible and related texts. For Christianity, the Bible traditionally comprises the New Testament and Old Testament, which together are sometimes called the "Scriptures." Judaism recognizes as scripture only the Hebrew Bible, also known as...

 at Oxford University, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Early life

Charles was the son of Charles Burney, Paymaster Chief Royal Navy, and his wife Eleanor Norton, daughter of the Rev. W. A. Norton, rector of Alderton

Alderton, Suffolk

Alderton is a village and civil parish in the Suffolk Coastal district of Suffolk, England, about six miles north of Felixstowe, 10 miles south-east of Woodbridge and 2 miles south of Hollesley, on the North Sea coast and in the heart of Heaths of Outstanding Natural Beauty. In 2007 its population...

 and Eye, Suffolk

Eye, Suffolk

Eye is a small market town in the county of Suffolk, East Anglia, England, south of Diss, and on the River Dove.Eye is twinned with the town of Pouzauges in the Vendée Departement of France.-History:An island...

. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School

Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood

Merchant Taylors' School is a British independent day school for boys, originally located in the City of London. Since 1933 it has been located at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire ....

, and St. John's College, Oxford.

Career

In 1893 Burney was elected Senior Scholar of St. John's and Lecturer in Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

 and became a Fellow of St John's in 1899 and Vice President in 1900, 1906, 1910 and 1911. In June, 1914, Dr. Burney became the Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture

Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture

The Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of the Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford is an old-established professorial position.The Oriel Professor is ex officio a Fellow of Oriel College....

, and was also elected a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford in 1919. He published several works on biblical history. In “Israel’s settlement in Canaan”, he brought much new or newly-applied material especially from Babylonian sources to explain Israel’s early residence in Canaan, and a major contribution was the theory that Yahweh (Jehovah) was at an early period an Amorite

Amorite

Amorite refers to an ancient Semitic people who occupied large parts of Mesopotamia from the 21st Century BC...

 deity. In “The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel” he attempted to prove that the Gospel according to St. John was a literal Greek translation of a Gospel written in Aramaic

Aramaic language

Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...

 by a Jewish disciple, and this at least led to an accepted view that the author thought in Aramaic, and strengthened the probability that it was the work of an eyewitness.

In 1913 at the age of 45 he married Ethel Wordsworth Madan (1891–1984) the elder daughter of Falconer Madan

Falconer Madan

Falconer Madan was Librarian of the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.Falconer was the fifth son of George and Harriet Madan. He was educated at Marlborough College and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he took part in Oxford and Cambridge Chess matches in 1873 and 1874, and won the University...

 and his wife Frances Hayter. His daughter, Venetia Phair

Venetia Phair

Venetia Phair, née Burney was the first person to suggest the name Pluto for the object discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. At the time, she was 11 years old and lived in Oxford, England.-Biography:...

, is credited with proposing the name Pluto

Pluto

Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

 for the erstwhile planet.

Publications

• “Outlines of Old Testament Theology” (1899)
• Encyclopaedia Biblica
  Encyclopaedia Biblica
  Encyclopaedia Biblica: A Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religion History, the Archeology, Geography and Natural History of the Bible , edited by Thomas Kelly Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black, is a critical encyclopedia of the Bible. In Theology/Biblical studies, it is often...
  
  (contributor) (1903)
• “Israel’s Settlement in Canaan : The Biblical Tradition and its Historical Background,” (Schweich Lecture
  Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology
  The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology are a series of lectures delivered and published under the auspices of the British Academy. The Leopold Schweich Trust Fund, set up in 1907, was a gift from Miss Constance Schweich in memory of her father...
  
  for 1917)
• "The Book of Judges, with introduction and notes" (1918)
• “The Aramaic Origin of the Fourth Gospel,” (1922)
• “The Poetry of Our Lord.” Clarendon Press,Oxford (1925)

External links

• Open Library online edition The Poetry of Our Lord http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6691962M/poetry_of_Our_Lord