William Sanday

1843-1920. Biblical scholar. He was a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, from 1866 until 1869 and then a country clergyman in three different parishes before becoming principal of Hatfield Hall, Durham, in 1876. In 1882 he returned to Oxford as Dean Ireland's professor of the exegesis of Holy Scripture and was Lady Margaret professor of divinity from 1895 until 1919. He was one of the original fellows of the British Academy. A patient and thorough scholar who embraced modernist convictions from 1912, he published a large number of books. Most of his work was in the field of the gospels, as is shown by his earlier works The Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel (1872) and The Gospels in the Second Century (1876). His Bampton Lectures were published with the title Inspiration (1893). The work for which he is best remembered, however, is the commentary on Romans, written with A.C. Headlam for the International Critical Commentary in 1895 because he felt that a professor of exegesis should do some exegetical work. After his appointment to the Lady Margaret chair he concentrated on the life of Christ. His works included Outlines of the Life of Christ (1905), The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel (1908), The Life of Christ in Recent Research (1907), Christologies Ancient and Modern (1910), and Personality in Christ and in Ourselves (1911). In conjunction with his seminar he also published Oxford Studies in the Synoptic Problem (1911).