Addition to Henry J. Cadbury papers

Henry Cadbury (1883-1974), son of Joel and Anna Kaign Cadbury and a descendant of John Bartram, was a Quaker and member of Twelfth Street Monthly Meeting in Philadelphia. He received a B.A. from Haverford College in classics and philosophy in 1903 where he served as editor-in-chief of the Haverfordian in his senior year, was involved in the YMCA, tennis club, student newspaper, music club and student government. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with honors. He received an M.A. in 1904 and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1914. His doctoral dissertation done under George Foot Moore and James Hardy Ropes was “The Style and Literary Method of Luke.” In expanded form this was published as The Making of Luke-Acts (1927). He taught Latin and history at Westtown School, 1905-08 and Greek and biblical literature at Haverford, 1910-19. In his early years at Harvard (1919-1920 and 1921-22), Cadbury was part of the English department, respectively as Assistant and as Instructor. From 1921-26 he served as Assistant Professor of New Testament.

“The alternative to war is not inaction and cowardice; it is the irresistible and constructive power of goodwill,” a quote from Cadbury, illustrates an important tenet of his philosophy. In the summer of 1920, he inspected the Friends’ feeding centers in Germany for a million German children. Together with Kirsopp Lake, Cadbury produced volumes IV and V of The Acts of the Apostles (1933) devoted to commentary and intricate interrelated notes. Cadbury continued to publish “Lexical Notes on Luke-Acts” throughout his life, which in 1955 was published in The Book of Acts in History.

In 1926, when the union of Andover and Harvard came to a close, Cadbury accepted a professorship in biblical literature at Bryn Mawr College which he held until 1934 when he returned to Harvard as Hollis Professor of Divinity and a “voting member” of the Department of Classics. Cadbury’s Lowell lectures were published as The Peril of Modernizing Jesus (1937) the Shafer lectures at Yale became Jesus: What Manner of Man (1947). Beginning in 1930, Cadbury prepared the American Revised Version of the Bible of 1946 along with Dr. Robert Pfeiffer and Dean Willard Sperry.

In 1954, after his retirement from Harvard, Cadbury agreed to spend two years living and lecturing at Pendle Hill, the adult Quaker study center in Wallingford, Pa. Cadbury was an historian and editor of the Quaker tradition, writing on, editing or re-editing the “literary remains” of those such as George Fox, Robert Barclay, William Edmundson, William Penn, John Woolman, John Hepburn, Cyrus Pringle and many other Quakers, both European and American.

From 1938, Cadbury served as Director of the Andover Harvard Library. Cadbury wrote on the topics of peace, social justice and the state within a Quaker context. He was a founder (in 1917) and chair of the American Friends Service Committee from 1928-1934 and 1944-60 and honorary chair, 1960-1974. His acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, in the name of the American Friends Service Committee in 1947 was “Quakers and Peace.”

Cadbury was a member and officer in a wide range of societies and bodies: the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Quaker and other historical societies, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); American Philosophia Society (APS). He was secretary of the American Schools for Oriental Research, a founder of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas; secretary and president of the Society for Biblical Research.

Married to Lydia Brown Cadbury in 1916, they both ran the Backlog Camp for Friends and friends. Together they were prominent in the “consolidation” (reunification?) of Cambridge Friends Meeting. Henry Cadbury was the author of 10 books, the last three published when he was 88 years old. He received an honorary degree from Haverford in 1933, and served as chair of the Board of Trustees at Bryn Mawr College for 22 years. He helped establish relief activities in France, Germany, Russia, Poland, Serbia, Hungary and Austria during WW I. In his latter years, he maintained a close relationship with Haverford College. Beginning in 1954 until 1963, HJC taught Quakerism at Haverford. In 1963 he gave the Mary Farnum Brown Library Lectures which were published under the title The Eclipse of the Historical Jesus. He received six honorary degrees.

(Information from obituary notices and articles about Henry Cadbury)