Rev. Dr. David John Lane (1935-2005)†
Jacob
Thekeparampil
SEERI
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
George A. Kiraz
James E. Walters
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2005
Vol. 8, No. 1
For this publication, a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
license has been granted by the author(s), who retain full
copyright.
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv8n1oblane
Rev. Dr. David John Lane (1935-2005)†
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol8/HV8N1OBLane.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute,
vol 8
issue 1
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
Syriac Studies
Obituary
David Lane
File created by XSLT transformation of original HTML encoded article.
[1] David
Lane was born in 1935, in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, into a
family in which grandparents, parents, aunts, and uncle were
all school-teachers. Wartime and family circumstances led him
to being educated at 9 different schools before going to
Hurstpierpoint College, a Church of England boarding school for
‘the middle class’, where a vocation to the
priesthood was identified and nurtured. After two years’
army service with the Royal Signals, which took him to Egypt
for a year, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, to read
Theology. Encouraged by one of Britain’s leading Hebrew
scholars, Sir Godfrey Driver, he went on to read a second
undergraduate degree, Oriental Studies (Hebrew with Aramaic and
Syriac). He learned Syriac under L.H. Brockington, the reviser
of the much-used Robinson’s Syriac Grammar. Of
great value for his work in New Testament and Syriac was being
introduced to Mishnah and Jewish medieval commentaries
by Dr. David Patterson, later the founder and Director of
Oxford’s Centre for Hebrew Post-Biblical Studies.
[2] From
there he went as a student for priesthood to the College of the
Resurrection, Mirfield (just a few miles from his birthplace).
While there he won, by examination, the Oxford University
Hall-Houghton Syriac Prize. Instead of completing a second year
at Mirfield, he was asked by the Community of the Resurrection
to go to their seminary, Codrington College, Barbados, West
Indies. There he found himself teaching New Testament and
Greek, and later being Director of Studies. He was made a
deacon in Barbados, May 1962, and ordained priest in December
that year.
[3] In 1965
he returned to the UK, and for a year was assistant priest in a
parish in Oxford. Then he went to Pembroke College Oxford as
Associate Chaplain, and was awarded the Kennicott Hebrew
Fellowship. This enabled him to begin work on the Peshitta of
the Old Testament, again with encouragement of Sir Godfrey
Driver. It also began a very fruitful association with the
Peshitta Institute in Leiden, then directed by Professor P.A.H.
de Boer. Incidentally while at Pembroke he had the chance of
teaching Syriac to a slim young Indian, Deacon George, who
stayed with the Cowley Fathers. That Deacon George is now
Geevarghese Mar Ivanios. 1967 saw Lane as a tutor at St.
Stephen’s House, an Anglican seminary in Oxford, where he
continued University teaching in elementary Hebrew, tutored
theology students from many colleges, and continued work on
Peshitta Qoheleth. He retained a connection with
Pembroke College as its Lecturer in Theology.
[4] In 1971
Lane was invited to go as an Assistant Professor in Near
Eastern Studies in the University of Toronto. This began a
major period of Syriac activity: for the Leiden Peshitta
Qoheleth had been finished, and a revision of John
Emerton’s Wisdom of Solomon and Song of
Songs followed, to be joined by work on
Leviticus. For two summers he was a Visiting Professor
at the Peshitta Institute, assisting with the edition of
Genesis and Exodus, and with I and II Kings. The
Leviticus work produced the Leiden Peshitta edition of
that book, and a monograph which took Peshitta studies out of
simple text criticism of the Old Testament into the wider field
Syriac church history and liturgy, suggesting the theme of the
second Leiden Peshitta Symposium, ‘The Peshitta as
Translation’. His published work to this point
enabled Oxford University to award him the degree of Bachelor
of Divinity: in Oxford this degree (based on publications) is
of a higher standard than, and senior to, a D.Phil. In 1976
came his first participation in the Symposium
Syriacumat Chantilly, also Dr. Jacob
Thekeparampil’s first, though it was at the 1980
Symposium at Goslar that they first properly met. At Goslar,
too, he was among the group of Syriac scholars whom the Indian
bishops approached with the idea of SEERI.
[5] Although
a tenured Associate Professor, in 1983 Lane accepted an
invitation to join the staff of his old seminary, the College
of the Resurrection. There he became Director of Studies, then
Vice-Principal, and in 1990 Principal. He was also an Honorary
Lecturer in Old Testament at the University of Leeds. With the
encouragement of the Community of the Resurrection, of which he
is an Oblate member, he completed his work on the Peshitta, and
then began work on Syriac Fathers, especially
Shubbalmaran, 7th century metropolitan of
Kirkuk. Participation in the European Symposia
continued, and from 1990 participation in the SEERI
Symposia also. Articles and book reviews were asked
for and produced, but the most important Syriac activity was
his increasing involvement with SEERI when its Director invited
him to come as a guest Professor for the Syriac MA classes
recently begun at SEERI under the aegis of Mahatma Gandhi
University.
[6] In fact,
since retirement from the College of the Resurrection in 1997
Lane’s whole time has been given to Syriac affairs, so
that this, his 70th year, sees the publication in
Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO) of
the two volumes (Syriac text and English version) of
Shubhalmaran’s Book of Gifts, a notable addition
to the range of Syriac ascetic writings currently available.
More recently there has been work on Jacob of Sarug’s
verse homilies. However, through the years there has been time
for priestly activity in the way of taking services and
preaching, and for associations with parishes in Toronto and
Cambridge. There has also been some little time for interests
in railways and gardening: his photographs of British steam
railways have appeared in journals and in books on railway
history; literary interests led him to be President of the Sir
Walter Scott Club of Toronto. He is currently on both the local
and national committees of the Scottish Rock Garden Club, with
a special interest in the alpine crevice plants known as
auriculas their leaves are like the little ears of
bears. They are small and beautiful in detail, and bred by
humans: appropriate for someone whose early interest was in
textual variants and the taxonomy of manuscripts.
[7] [David
Lane passed away on Sunday, the 9th Jan. 2005 during
his visit to SEERI (St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute),
Kottayam, Kerala, India. May his soul rest in peace!]
Notes
† This autobiography was prepared by David
Lane for the St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute (SEERI),
Kottayam, where he had been engaged in academic work when he
passed away. This was submitted for publication in Hugoye by
Rev. Fr. Jacob Thekeparampil of SEERI.