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.

Peake popularized modern biblical scholarship, including the new "higher criticism." He approached the Bible not as the infallible word of God, but as the record of revelation written by fallible humans.

Early life Arthur Peake was born in Leek on 24 November 1865 into a family of long-established Primitive Methodists, of which his father was a minister. He had four brothers and two sisters. The family moved several times during Arthur's childhood, with longest stays at Leintwardine, from where Arthur attended Ludlow Grammar School, Stratford, where he studied at King Edward VI School in Stratford-upon-Avon, and King Henry VIII School, Coventry. There he won a classical scholarship to study at St John's College, Oxford.

Arriving in Oxford in 1883, he studied the classics without great success for two years,

Academic career In 1890-92 he was a lecturer at Mansfield College, Oxford, and from 1890 to 1897 held a fellowship at Merton College. 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. Selected publications 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) Germany in the Nineteenth Century (1915) A Commentary on the Bible (with the assistance of A. J. Grieve for the New Testament) (1919) The Servant of Yahweh: lectures given at London and Manchester, 1904-26 (1931) (edited posthumously) 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). A portrait of him is at the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester.