Joseph Barber Lightfoot (13 April 1828 – 21 December 1889) was an
EnglishEngland 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...
theologianTheology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
and Bishop of Durham, usually known as
J.B. Lightfoot.
He was born in
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, where his father was an accountant. He was educated at
King Edward's School, BirminghamKing Edward's School is an independent secondary school in Birmingham, England, founded by King Edward VI in 1552. It is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham, and is widely regarded as one of the most academically successful schools in the country, according to...
, under
James Prince LeeJames Prince Lee, MA, DD was an English clergyman who became the first Bishop of Manchester.-Early life:...
, afterwards Bishop of Manchester. His contemporaries included
Brooke Foss WestcottBrooke Foss Westcott was a British bishop, Biblical scholar and theologian, serving as Bishop of Durham from 1890 until his death.-Early life and education:...
and
Edward White BensonEdward White Benson was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883 until his death.-Life:Edward White Benson was born in Highgate, Birmingham, the son of a Birmingham chemical manufacturer. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA in 1852...
. In 1847 Lightfoot went up to
Trinity College, CambridgeTrinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, and read for his degree along with Westcott. He graduated senior classic and 30th wrangler, and was elected a fellow of his college. From 1854 to 1859 he edited the
Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology. In 1857 he became tutor and his fame as a scholar grew. He was made
Hulsean professorThe Norris-Hulse Professorship of Divinity is one of the senior professorships in divinity at the University of Cambridge.The Norrisian chair was founded in 1777 by a bequest from John Norris...
in 1861, and shortly afterwards chaplain to the Prince Consort and honorary chaplain in ordinary to
Queen VictoriaVictoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
.
In 1866 he was Whitehall preacher, and in 1871 he became canon of
St Paul's CathedralSt Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
. His sermons were not remarkable for eloquence, but a certain solidity and balance of judgment, an absence of partisanship, a sobriety of expression combined with clearness and force of diction, attracted hearers and inspired them with confidence. As was written of him in
The TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
after his death,
"his personal character carried immense weight, but his great position depended still more on the universally recognized fact that his belief in ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
truthTruth has a variety of meanings, such as the state of being in accord with fact or reality. It can also mean having fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. In a common usage, it also means constancy or sincerity in action or character...
and his defense of it were supported by learning as solid and comprehensive as could be found anywhere in Europe, and by a temper not only of the utmost candor but of the highest scientific capacity. The days in which his university influence was asserted were a time of much shaking of old beliefs. The disintegrating speculations of an influential school of criticism in Germany were making their way among English men of culture just about the time, as is usually the case, when the tide was turning against them in their own country. The peculiar service which was rendered at this juncture by the 'Cambridge School' was that, instead of opposing a mere dogmatic opposition to the Tübingen critics, they met them frankly on their own ground; and instead of arguing that their conclusions ought not to be and could not be true, they simply proved that their facts and their premises were wrong. It was a characteristic of equal importance that Dr Lightfoot, like Dr Westcott, never discussed these subjects in the mere spirit of controversy. It was always patent that what he was chiefly concerned with was the substance and the life of Christian truth, and that his whole energies were employed in this inquiry because his whole heart was engaged in the truths and facts which were at stake. He was not diverted by controversy to side-issues; and his labor was devoted to the positive elucidation of the sacred documents in which the Christian truth is enshrined."
In 1874, the anonymous publication of
Walter Richard CasselsWalter Richard Cassels is the speculated author of the anonymous work Supernatural Religion.-Biography:...
'
Supernatural Religion created considerable sensation. In a series of papers in the
Contemporary Review, between December 1874 and May 1877, Lightfoot undertook the defense of the
New TestamentThe New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
canon. The articles were published in collected form in 1889. About the same time he was engaged in contributions to W Smith's
Dictionary of Christian Biography and Dictionary of the Bible, and he also joined the committee for revising the translation of the New Testament. In 1875 he became
Lady Margaret's Professor of DivinityThe Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity is the oldest professorship at the University of Cambridge. It was founded initially as a readership by Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, in 1502....
in succession to William Selwyn.
He had previously written his commentaries on the Epistle to Galatians (1865), Epistle to Philippians (1868) and
Epistle to the ColossiansThe Epistle of Paul to the Colossians, usually referred to simply as Colossians, is the 12th book of the New Testament. It was written, according to the text, by Paul the Apostle to the Church in Colossae, a small Phrygian city near Laodicea and approximately 100 miles from Ephesus in Asia...
(1875), the notes to which were distinguished by sound judgment and enriched from his large store of patristic and classical learning. These commentaries may be described as to a certain extent a new departure in New Testament exegesis. Before Lightfoot's time, commentaries had frequently consisted either of short homilies on particular portions of the text, or of endeavors to enforce foregone conclusions, or of attempts to decide with infinite industry and ingenuity between the interpretations of former commentators. Lightfoot endeavored to make his author interpret himself, and by considering the general drift of his argument to discover his meaning where it appeared doubtful. Thus he was able often to recover the meaning of a passage which had long been buried under a heap of contradictory glosses, and he founded a school in which sobriety and common sense were added to the industry and ingenuity of former commentators.
In 1879 Lightfoot was consecrated bishop of Durham in succession to
Charles BaringCharles Thomas Baring was an English bishop, noted as an Evangelical.-Life:He became a bishop at a period when Lord Palmerston, influenced by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, was promoting Evangelicals....
. He was as successful in this position as he had been when professor of theology, and he soon surrounded himself with a band of scholarly young men. He endeavored to combine his habits of theological study with the practical work of administration. He exercised a large liberality and did much to further the work of temperance and purity organizations. He continued to work at his editions of the
Apostolic FathersThe Apostolic Fathers are a small number of Early Christian authors who lived and wrote in the second half of the first century and the first half of the second century. They are acknowledged as leaders in the early church, although their writings were not included in the New Testament...
, and in 1885 published an edition of the
Epistles of Ignatius and PolycarpIgnatius of Antioch was among the Apostolic Fathers, was the third Bishop of Antioch, and was a student of John the Apostle. En route to his martyrdom in Rome, Ignatius wrote a series of letters which have been preserved as an example of very early Christian theology...
, collecting also a large store of valuable materials for a second edition of
Clement of Rome, which was published after his death (1st ed., 1869). His defense of the authenticity of the
Epistles of Ignatius is one of the most important contributions to that very difficult controversy. His unremitting labors impaired his health and shortened his splendid career at Durham. He was never married. He died at
BournemouthBournemouth is a large coastal resort town in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. According to the 2001 Census the town has a population of 163,444, making it the largest settlement in Dorset. It is also the largest settlement between Southampton and Plymouth...
and was succeeded in the episcopate by Westcott, his schoolfellow and lifelong friend.
He served as
President of the first day of the 1880
Co-operative CongressThe Co-operative Congress is the national conference of the UK Co-operative Movement. The first of the modern congresses took place in 1869 following a series of meetings called the "Owenite Congress" in the 1830s...
.
Publications
The corpus of Lightfoot's writings include essays on biblical and historical subject matter, commentaries on
Pauline epistlesThe Pauline epistles, Epistles of Paul, or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen New Testament books which have the name Paul as the first word, hence claiming authorship by Paul the Apostle. Among these letters are some of the earliest extant Christian documents...
, and studies on the
Apostolic FathersThe Apostolic Fathers are a small number of Early Christian authors who lived and wrote in the second half of the first century and the first half of the second century. They are acknowledged as leaders in the early church, although their writings were not included in the New Testament...
. His sermons were posthumously published in four official volumes, and additionally in the Contemporary Pulpit Library series.
External links
- Works by Joseph Barber Lightfoot at the Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
- Bibliographic page on Lightfoot, Project Canterbury