The Revd. Professor James Barr FBA (born March 20, 1924, Glasgow, Scotland; died October 14, 2006, Claremont, California) was a Scottish Old Testament scholar.
He held professorships at Manchester, and at Vanderbilt University in the United States of America. He was Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford from 1976 to 1978 and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford from 1978 to 1989.
Arguably his most influential work was ...
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The Revd. Professor James Barr FBA (born March 20, 1924, Glasgow, Scotland; died October 14, 2006, Claremont, California) was a Scottish Old Testament scholar.
He held professorships at Manchester, and at Vanderbilt University in the United States of America. He was Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture at Oxford from 1976 to 1978 and Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford from 1978 to 1989.
Arguably his most influential work was The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961), in which he criticized the tendency of many scholars to rely on linguistically flawed arguments, such as arguments from etymology or based upon misconceptions about the relation between Hebrew thought and language. Much of the critique was built upon the work of French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. In turn, Barr's student Moisés Silva built on Barr's work in Biblical Words and Their Meaning (1983).
He was also an outspoken critic of conservative evangelicalism, which he attacked in his 1977 book...
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