Burnett Hillman Streeter

Burnett Hillman Streeter (17 November 1874 – 10 September 1937) was a British biblical scholar and textual critic.

Life

Streeter was born in London and educated at The Queen's College, Oxford. He was ordained in 1899 and was a member of the Archbishop’s Commission on Doctrine in the Church of England (from 1922 to 1937). In 1910, Streeter formed a group of Oxford dons known as The Group, which met weekly to discuss theological topics. He attended the 1935 Nuremberg Rally. He wrote a dozen volumes in the fields of philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and New Testament textual studies.

He was Dean Ireland's Professor of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture at the University of Oxford from 1932 to 1933, when he became Provost of Queen's College.

The most important work of Streeter was The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (1924), in which he proposed a "four document hypothesis" (instead "two-source hypothesis") as a new solution to the synoptic problem. In this work, he also developed the theory of "local texts" in the manuscript transmission of the New Testament (pp. 27–50). Johann Leonhard Hug was his forerunner.

Streeter found a new textual family: Caesarean text-type. He remarked a close textual relationship between Codex Sinaiticus and Vulgate of Jerome.

Streeter and his wife, Irene, were the only passengers on a Koolhoven FK.50, HB-AMO which crashed into Mount Kelleköpfli on a flight from Basel to Bern on 10 September 1937. The crew started the descent to Basel in low visibility due to foggy conditions. The plane hit Mount Kelleköpfli located near Waldenburg, 25 kilometers southeast from the Basel airport. The pilot Walter Eberschweiler and the Streeters were killed immediately, while the radio operator/navigator Hans Huggler survived the accident, but was severely wounded.

Works

• Foundations: A Statement of Christian Belief in Terms of Modern Thought, (Macmillan and Co.: London 1912).
• Immortality: an Essay in Discovery Coordinating Scientific Psychical and Biblical Research (Macmillan Company: New York 1917)
• Woman and the Church (London 1917)
• God and the Struggle for Existence (New York 1919)
• The Message of Sadhu Sundar Singh: A Study in Mysticism and Practical Religion, (New York 1921).
• The Spirit: the Relation of God and Man, Considered from the Standpoint of Recent Philosophy and Science (New York 1922).
• The Four Gospels, a Study of Origins treating of the Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, & Dates, (1924).
• Reality: A New Correlation of Science and Religion, (London 1926); reprinted subsequently.
• Primitive Church Studied with Special Reference to the Origins of the Christian Ministry, (1929).
• The Chained Library, (1931).
• The Buddha and the Christ, Bampton Lectures (1932).

Further reading

• John M. Court, Burnett Hillman Streeter, (17 November 1874 – 10 September 1937), in: ExpT 118.2006, Nr.1, S. 19-25.

External links

• Encyclopædia Britannica
• Streeter, The Four Gospels
• Reality