Joseph Barber Lightfoot

Joseph Barber Lightfoot 1828-89, English prelate and scholar. A fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, he became Hulsean professor of divinity (1861) and Lady Margaret professor (1875). In 1871 he became a canon of St. Paul's, London; in 1879 he was consecrated bishop of Durham. He was learned in biblical and early Christian literature. From 1870 to 1880 he was one of the revisers of the King James Version of the Bible. He published commentaries (3 vol., 1865-75) on St. Paul's epistles to the Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. His editions of the Apostolic Fathers include Clement of Rome (1869) and Ignatius and Polycarp (1885).

Bibliography: See Lightfoot of Durham (ed. by G. R. Eden and F. C. Macdonald, 1932).

Lightfoot, Joseph Barber (1828–89) English NT scholar. After a long academic life at Cambridge, he became bishop of Durham in 1879. His main work was on the epistles of Paul and the Apostolic Fathers, and he defended the trustworthiness of Acts against the speculations of the Tübingen school. On the origin of the Christian ministry he maintained that government of a diocese by single bishops emerged from a more primitive system of a college of presbyters.

Lightfoot, Joseph Barber (1828–89), Bp. of Durham from 1879. He held high academic posts at Cambridge and from 1870 to 1880 he was a member of the Company of Revisers of the NT. His critical work on the NT and the Fathers was marked by wide erudition, lucid presentation, freedom from technicalities, and avoidance of sectional controversy. It included commentaries on St Paul's Epistles, an edition of Clement of Rome (1869), and his famous Ignatius (1885), which disposed of W. Cureton's suggestion that only the three Epistles in the Syriac recension were genuine.