J. Rendel Harris lecture notes

James Rendel Harris was born in Plymouth, England on January 27, 1852 to Elisabeth Corker and Henry Marmaduke Harris, and he married Helen Balkwill in 1880. Harris became a Quaker in 1885 after a ten year journey towards the faith. After graduating as a Wrangler in Mathematics from Cambridge he went on to lecture in mathematics in Clare College at Cambridge before becoming Professor of New Testament Greek at Johns Hopkins from 1882 to 1885. Isaac Sharpless recruited Harris to come to Haverford, where he remained from 1886 to 1891 serving as Professor of Ecclesiastical History. Harris was reportedly known for his intelligence and sense of humor, often demonstrated in his twice-weekly sermons. Supposedly he could also quote Shakespeare from memory. He was instrumental to the creation of the Haverford College Studies which began publication in 1889, and he contributed to the Haverford College libraries with the donation of the Gustav Baur collection in 1889. Harris took a leave of absence from Haverford during the 1889 school year during which time he gathered the manuscript collection described in this finding aid. In 1892 Harris began teaching again at Cambridge, however, he soon left this position to become the head of Woodbrooke, an education settlement started by George Cadbury to train young Quakers. Harris became curator of manuscripts at the John Rylands Library in Manchester beginning in 1918. While affected by a progressively impairing blindness starting in the 1920s, Harris continued his research until his death in 1941.

A regular traveler to the Middle East in search of manuscripts, Harris also participated in humanitarian work, supporting the Armenians during the Ottoman campaign of genocide. His largest scholarly contributions include beginning the study of testimonia, where he proposed that early Christian writers drew from one book of Biblical quotations. While working at the John Rylands Library he discovered among the manuscripts in his collection a copy of the Odes of Solomon which had been thought to be lost. Later in life he worked on issues of population migration particularly regarding Egypt.