This announcement was issued recently by Corpus Christi College, Oxford
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We were saddened to learn today of the death of The Revd. Christopher Evans FBA, Emeritus Fellow, Chaplain and Divinity Lecturer at Corpus (1948-58) at the age of 102 on 30 July. His funeral will be held on Monday, 6th August at 12.15 at All Saints, Cuddesdon.
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Prof. Evans also later held the Lightfoot chair at the University of Durham, and then a chair in New Testament in the University of London, King's College.
There was also an announcement in The Times. I am sorry that I did not see this in time to post it before the funeral yesterday. I will link to any online obituaries here as soon as they are published.
Christopher Evans was a brilliant New Testament scholar. His commentary on Luke (1990) is probably the best scholarly commentary on Luke available in the English language and came as the crowning achievement of a fine career. Professor Evans was a kind and gracious man, who even in his eighties was able to find time to encourage a young post-graduate student in Oxford. I named my doctoral thesis, subsequently my first book, after an article he published in Theology in 1979, "Goulder and the Gospels". I saw him last in Birmingham at the SNTS in 1997 when he came along to the Synoptic Problem chaired by the late David Dungan. On that occasion too, Christopher Evans was a model of grace and wisdom.
I never met him Mark but I appreciate your personal reflections here. Seems so many of our hoary-headed (I guess I need to be careful here, since I am 66 now) ones to whom we looked in the 1970s and earlier had a certain grace about the ways they went about working in our field, and with colleagues. I remember Morton Smith taking time to write me long single spaced handwritten notes on my dissertation with Jonathan Smith. I could not believe he gave me that sort of time and he was not officially involved. He mailed me copies of things I could use, Sepher HaRazim before it was in print, PGM notes, etc. I am not saying these older mentors were never demanding and stern and even short, they surely could be, but there was a kind of grace in dealing with others. Okay, there, my nostalgia for the day, and probably inaccurate, as yes, there was plenty of crazy nastiness going on in the 1970s as well...
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