Samuel Rolles Driver - Definition and Overview

Samuel Rolles Driver (October 2, 1846 - 1914), English divine and Hebrew scholar, was born at Southampton.

He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he had a distinguished career, taking a first class in Literae Humaniores in 1869. He was awarded the Pusey and Ellerton scholarship in 1866, the Kennicott scholarship in 1870 (both Hebrew), and the Houghton Syriac prize in 1872. From 1870 he was a fellow, and from 1875 also a tutor, of New College, and in 1883 succeeded Pusey as regius professor of Hebrew and canon of Christ Church.

He was a member of the Old Testament Revision Committee (1876-1884) and examining chaplain to the bishop of Southwell (1884-1904); received the honorary degrees of doctor of literature of Dublin (1892), doctor of divinity of Glasgow (1901), doctor of literature of Cambridge (1905); and was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1902. Dr Driver devoted his life to the study, both textual and critical, of the Old Testament.

Among his numerous works are commentaries on:

• Joel and Amos (1897)
• Deuteronomy (1902)
• Daniel (1901)
• Genesis (1909)
• the Minor Prophets, Nahum to Malachi (1905)
• Job (1905)
• Jeremiah (1906)
• Leviticus (1894 Hebrew text, 1898 trans. and notes)
• Samuel (Hebrew text, 1890).

Among his more general works are:

• Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew (1892)
• Isaiah, his Life and Times (1893)
• Introd. to the Literature of the Old Test. (1897, ed. 1909)
• Sermons on Subjects connected with the Old Testament (1892)
• The Parallel Psalter (1904)
• Heb. and Eng. Lexicon of the O. T. (in collaboration, 1906)
• Modern Research as illustrating the Bible (1909); articles in the Ency. Brit., Ency. Bibl. and Hastings Dict. of the Bible

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.