BURKITT, FRANCIS CRAWFORD

Orientalist, exegete, and Church historian; b. London, Sept. 3, 1864; d. Cambridge, England, June 5, 1935. Although he received his degree in mathematics at Cambridge University (1886), he soon became interested in the study of Hebrew. In 1903 he began his university career at Cambridge as instructor in paleography and religion. In 1905 he was elected a member of the British Academy. By then he had made Syriac his special field of study and was the first to recognize the importance of the Syriac palimpsest from the Monastery of St. Catherine at Mt. Sinai, which he published under the title Evangelion da-Mepharreshe (Cambridge 1904). Although he also devoted himself to the study of the OT, his more important contributions were concerned with the NT. In this field he was one of the pioneers in England of the new trend in biblical studies, particularly by his book The Gospel History and Its Transmission (Edinburgh 1906; 3d ed. 1920). He made important contributions also in the field of Church history, especially in that of Franciscan studies. Finally, his works on manichae ism and gnosticism are still of considerable value. The list of his numerous publications takes up ten pages of fine print in the Journal of Theological Studies 36 (1935) 337–346.

Bibliography: a. souter et al., Journal of Theological Studies 36 (1935) 225–254. j. f. bethune-baker, The Dictionary of National Biography from the Earliest Times to 1900 (London 1885–1900) 124–125.

[j. m. sola-sole]