Arthur Peake

Arthur Samuel Peake (1865-1929) was an English biblical scholar, born at Leek, Staffordshire, and educated at St. John's College, Oxford. He was the first holder of the Rylands Chair of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis in the University of Manchester, from its establishment as an independent institution in 1904. He was thus the first non-Anglican to become a professor of divinity in an English university. From 1892 he had been tutor at the Primitive Methodist Theological Institute in Manchester, which was renamed Hartley College in 1906. He was largely responsible for broadening the curriculum which intending Primitive Methodist ministers were required to follow, and for raising the standards of the training. Peake was also active as a layman in wider Methodist circles, and did a great deal to further the reunion of Methodism which took effect in 1932, three years after his death. In the wider ecumenical sphere Peake worked for the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches, serving as president in 1928, and was a member of the Conference on Faith and Order held in Lausanne in 1927. He published and lectured extensively, but is best remembered for his one-volume commentary on the Bible (1919), which, in its revised form, is still in use.

In 1890-92 he was a lecturer at Mansfield College (Congregational), Oxford, and from 1890 to 1897 was fellow at Merton College. In 1895-1912 he served as lecturer in the Lancashire Independent College, from 1904 to 1912 also in the United Methodist College at Manchester. In 1892 he had become tutor in the Manchester Primitive Methodist College and in 1904 Rylands professor of biblical exegesis in Victoria University. The University of Aberdeen made him an honorary D. D. in 1907. Among Dr. Peake's publications are:
* "A Guide to Biblical Study" (1897)
* "The Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament" (1904)
* "The Religion of Israel" (1908)
* "Critical Introduction to the New Testament" (1909)
* "Heroes and Martyrs of Faith" (1910)
* "The Bible: its Origin, its Significance, and its Abiding Worth" (1913)
* "A Commentary on the Bible" (with the assistance of A. J. Grieve for the New Testament) (1919)

Dr. Peake also wrote separate commentaries on Hebrews (1902; Century Bible), Colossians (1903; Expositor's Greek Testament), Job (1905; Century Bible), Jeremiah (1910-12; Century Bible), and Isaiah xl-lxvi (1912).

For his papers, see [http://rylibweb.man.ac.uk/specialcollections/collections/guide/atoz/peake/] .

References

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