Baker Academic

Monday, May 12, 2014

RIP Maurice Casey—Chris Keith

Last weekend James Crossley shared the sad news that Maurice Casey has passed away.  Dominic Mattos at T&T Clark/Bloomsbury has now shared some thoughts on the T&T Clark blog as well.  I never met Maurice, and the first I ever heard of him was in graduate school.  It was the first time I heard the story of the dinner at the St Andrews early Christian monotheism conference, where Larry Hurtado toasted to "an early high Christology," James Dunn toasted to "a high Christology," and Maurice, not to be outdone, toasted to "a Christology."  From the stories I hear, I am clearly the poorer for not knowing Maurice personally.  As a scholar, Maurice moved the needle on issues and often set the agenda.  I'm thinking here especially of his work on the Son of Man problem and his massive Jesus of Nazareth.  This is a sad loss and I'm grateful for his contributions.  If any readers of the Jesus Blog have good Maurice Casey stories to tell, please do so in the comments and let us honor his life and work.

2 comments:

  1. I remember giving a paper at the Annual Seminar on the Use of the OT in the NT (at Hawarden) sometime in the 1990s, where Maurice was a regular (I always found him to be a friendly "character" at conferences [I know some scholars would dispute this construction]). My paper was on Matthew's use of Hosea 11. In question time Maurice asked whether I had considered the Syriac commentators on Hosea. I responded that I hadn't reached that stage in my research yet, but was interested in how he thought they were relevant (neat escape I'm sure you'll agree). Maurice then gave a two minute summary which I forgot to write down because initially I had assumed he was basically bluffing, and only too late realised that I had things to learn from him. And after the paper there was plenty of banter and some liquid refreshment.

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  2. Thanks for this, Peter. (And yes, that is a great escape strategy. I'm guilty of using it myself now and again.)

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