Of his latest article about Scottish church history, Paul James-Griffiths of Christian Heritage Edinburgh writes, “This week’s focus is on Professor F.F. Bruce, a Scottish New Testament scholar who very much became a household name for evangelicals as a defender of the Bible for generations. I remember reading his book, The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable? when I was an undergraduate studying ancient history. This book, along with Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict, was a lifeline for me as a new Christian.”
Dr Jim Packer once wrote: “Frederick Fyvie Bruce (‘Fred’ to his friends, ‘F.F.’ to his students) became the midwife of the present-day renaissance of evangelical biblical scholarship. Bruce was a very Scottish Scotsman…” During a time in which extreme liberals stalked the corridors of Bible colleges, and dominated Western theology with their scalpels in hand, ready to dissect and destroy faith in God’s Word, barely a whisper of academic defence of Scripture was heard. One of the lonely voices that appeared for the evangelical cause was F.F. Bruce (1910-1990), the John Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester in England. Packer goes on to say that Bruce “supervised more Ph.D. students in biblical studies, both Old and New Testament, than any other theological teacher in British history.” His clear insight, academic integrity, and adherence to the historical Christian faith, was like a stone being dropped in a pond: the ripples he caused have literally impacted the world, inspiring generations of students to take the Bible in their hands and accept it as God’s Word.
F.F. Bruce was born in Elgin in Scotland in 1910, during the year of the great Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. His father, Peter Fyvie Bruce, was an itinerant evangelist with the Plymouth Brethren, but he encouraged his son to test all things and hold on to that which is good. F.F. Bruce studied Latin and Greek at the University of Aberdeen where he excelled in the Classics, and went on to receive his master’s degree. From there he continued his studies in the Classics at the University of Cambridge, and pursued training in Indo-European philology at the University of Vienna. He was appointed as an assistant lecturer in Greek at the University of Edinburgh, followed by a stint at the University of Leeds. His academic prowess was recognized, so that in 1947 he was invited to become Professor of Biblical History and Literature at Sheffield University. From 1959-1978 he was the Ryland Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester.
Well-known for his unusual combination of humility, academic excellence, and integrity, Bruce sought to challenge the ultra-liberalism of his time. His special expertise was the New Testament. When his book, The New Testament Documents: Are they Reliable? first came out in 1943, it was like a breath of fresh air to evangelicals, bringing them renewed confidence, and a means of challenge to the liberals. My copy in 1982 shows that this little, powerful book, has been in such demand that it had been reprinted 18 times up until that date. This book itself was the catalyst for many works by other scholars during the last 43 years, showing that his pioneering work has impacted the world. Here are some quotations from F.F. Bruce about the reliability of the New Testament, taken from the above-mentioned book:
“The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. And if the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond all doubt.”
“The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar. It is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ theories.”
F.F. Bruce died in Buxton, Derbyshire, in 1990. Although the “Dean of Evangelical Scholarship” had passed away, he was a seed sown in fertile soil that produced a harvest of thousands of evangelical scholars, for the enrichment of churches worldwide.
“Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3, NKJV).