Christopher Evans - Telegraph Obituary

The Telegraph has published its obituary of Christopher Evans:


The Rev Professor Christopher Evans
The Reverend Professor Christopher Evans, who has died aged 102, was one of the most interesting New Testament scholars of his day.

Evans combined a sceptical attitude to the historicity of much of the New Testament with a deep personal faith. Thus he was cautious and tentative about the Empty Tomb while emphatic in his preaching of the truth of the Resurrection of Christ. His special gifts as a teacher allied to a very attractive personality enabled him to exercise considerable influence in Oxford, Durham and London over some 30 years . . . 

. . . . Christopher Francis Evans was born in Birmingham on November 7 1909 and went from King Edward’s School in that city to Corpus Christi, Cambridge, where he came under the influence of Sir Edwyn Hoskyns, a New Testament scholar of international repute. Evans was eventually to move to a much more liberal position than that of his mentor, but while in Cambridge he learned a great deal from Hoskyns and took a First in Theology . . . .

 . . . But his magisterial commentary on St Luke’s Gospel, published in 1990, long after his retirement, was widely acclaimed and is likely to remain the standard work on its subject for many years . . .

I've excerpted some of my favourite pieces, but of course you should read it all.