John W. Rogerson

Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield

The Bible and Criticism in Victorian Britain

In his series of lectures, Rogerson has a curious focus: ‘scholars who were dismissed from their posts’. He chooses F. D. Maurice, forced to resign from King’s College in 1853, and William Smith, expelled from the Free Church College in 1881. Along with biographical information, Rogerson concentrates on their ideas. While Smith wrote that some works of Moses were post-exilic, Maurice believed that punishment in hell was not eternal. Rogerson responds to and contextualises these controversial views.

Biography

John William Rogerson was born in 1935 in London. According to Professor David J. A. Clines, ‘There proved to be almost no area to which Old Testament Studies could be related in which John Rogerson did not make himself a master’. Ordained in the Church of England in 1964, he joined the theology department at the Durham University that same year. In 1979, he was appointed Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield, leading yearly visits to the Holy Land. Retiring in 1996, he achieved emeritus status and holds the title of Canon Emeritus of Sheffield Cathedral.

Secretary of the British Society of Old Testament Study for many years, Rogerson served as President in 1989. He was awarded honorary degrees from Aberdeen, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, and Freiberg University. Major works include The Supernatural in the Old Testament (1976), Anthropology and the Old Testament (1984), Atlas of the Bible (1989), The Bible in Ethics (1995), and Chronicle of the Old Testament Kings (1999). A Festschrift in his honour, The Bible in Human Society, was published in 1995.

Published/Archival Resources

Published as Bible and Criticism in Victorian Britain.