chapter 48 Samuel Rolles Driver 1846–1914 Samuel Rolles Driver was born in Southampton on 2 October 1846, the only son of Rolles and Sarah (née Smith) Driver, an originally Quaker family. After attending Shirley House School in Southampton, he went in 1862 to Winchester College, where he won a number of prizes: Lord Saye and Sele’s prize for Senior Part, Fifth Book (1862); Lord Saye and Sele’s prizes for Senior Part, Sixth Book, and for Natural Science, and Senior Duncan Mathematical Prize (1864); and the Warden and Fellows’ Prize for Greek Iambics, and Lord Saye and Sele’s prize for Senior Part, Sixth Book (1865). These awards reflect his interest in mathematics and natural science as well as in classics. In addition, he started to learn Hebrew. In 1865 he was awarded a Classical Scholarship at New College, Oxford, where he was placed in the first class in Classical Moderations and in the sec- ond class in Mathematical Moderations in 1867, and in the first class in the Final Honour School of Literae Humaniores in 1869. He was elected a Fellow of New College in 1870, and appointed a Tutor in Classics in 1875. Alongside Driver’s interest in classics, his study of Semitic languages continued. While still an undergraduate, he was awarded the Pusey and Ellerton Hebrew Scholarship in 1866, and he was later awarded the Kennicott Hebrew Scholarship in 1870, the Hall-Houghton Senior Septuagint Prize in 1871, and the Houghton Syriac Prize in 1872. His first publication was A Commentary upon the Books of Jeremiah and Ezeqiel by Mosheh ben Shesheth, edited from a Bodleian MS. with a Translation and Notes (1871), an amazingly capable and mature study of a medieval text by a man of only twenty-five. Further evidence of his interest and expertise in Post-biblical Hebrew was seen in 1877 in The Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah According to the Jewish Interpreters, II: Translation (1877), in which he collabo- rated—doubtless as the junior partner—with A. Neubauer. Later still, Driver was the author of A Commentary on the Book of Proverbs Attributed to Abraham Ibn Ezra, edited from a MS. in the Bodleian Library (1880). Driver’s main interest was, however, in Classical Hebrew and the Old Testament. His scholarly ability and maturity appeared in A Treatise on the Use of the Tenses in Hebrew (1874), probably his most original work, of which later editions were published in 1881 and 1892. It was primarily because of this book (thus according to Cowley, p. 541) that he was invited in 1875 to join the Old Testament Revision Company in preparing the Revised Version of the © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�834��_�50 samuel rolles driver 1846–1914 689 Old Testament, which was completed in 1884 (and of which Driver said in his commentary on the Minor Prophets, p. xi, that the marginal readings ‘nearly always contain renderings, or readings, superior to those adopted in the text’). This brought him into contact with William Robertson Smith, the Scottish scholar who was dismissed in 1881 from his chair at the Free Church College in Aberdeen because of his acceptance of critical views about the Old Testament, and whose work influenced Driver’s thinking. In this same period, Driver pub- lished various articles and book reviews, and shared with T.K. Cheyne the Old Testament part of the Variorum Bible (1st edn, 1876). Until his mid-thirties Driver had remained a layman, but on 18 December 1881 he was made deacon by the Bishop of Salisbury in Salisbury Cathedral. E.B. Pusey died on 16 September 1882. He is remembered chiefly as a leader of the Oxford Movement, but he had also been the Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University of Oxford and a Canon of Christ Church since 1828. His theo- logical views were highly conservative, and he was strongly opposed to critical views of the Old Testament, especially as they had been developed in Germany. The appointment of his successor was likely to have an influence on the future development of Old Testament and Hebrew studies in England, and so the atti- tude of the next holder of the Chair to biblical criticism was important. The appointment was a royal one, and the effective choice lay in the hands of the Prime Minister, at that time W.E. Gladstone. Among those who hoped to be appointed was A.H. Sayce, later to become the first Professor of Assyriology at Oxford University. He tells us that for ‘some years past he [Pusey] had assumed that I should be his successor, and had more than once told me so. But the Conservative Government was now out of office, and though Gladstone and I were personal friends, I was now regarded as one of the leaders of “German” critical theology at Oxford, and I knew that he considered me to be “unsafe”’ (Reminiscences, p. 213). Sayce ‘belonged to what was known as “the Broad-Church party” at Oxford, and by both votes and writings helped to support it’. He was nevertheless a friend of H.P. Liddon, who wrote to Gladstone and ‘did his best to secure my appointment’, but Gladstone replied: ‘under no circumstances could I give him an ecclesiastical appoint- ment’ (p. 34; cf. p. 213)—and the Regius Chair of Hebrew was attached to a canonry at Christ Church. Gladstone’s views on biblical inspiration were highly conservative, and it is unlikely that he would have appointed Driver to the Regius Professorship of Hebrew if he had had reason to believe that his opinions on the subject were very different. So far, Driver’s work had been primarily concerned with the Hebrew language, the translation of the Old Testament, and medieval Jewish exegesis, rather than with biblical criticism. He already had a good reputation .