Henry Cadbury

Henry Joel Cadbury (December 1, 1883 – October 7, 1974) was a biblical scholar, Quaker historian, writer, and non-profit administrator. A graduate of Haverford College, he was a Quaker throughout his life, though essentially an agnostic.^[1] Forced out of his teaching position at Haverford for writing an anti-war letter to the Philadelphia Public Ledger, in 1918, he saw the experience as a milestone, leading him to larger service beyond his Orthodox Religious Society of Friends. He was offered a position in the Divinity School at Harvard University, from which he had received his Ph.D, but he first rejected its teacher's oath for reasons of conscience, the Quaker insistence on telling the truth, and as a form of social activism. He later accepted the Hollis Professorship of Divinity (1934–1954). He also was the director of the Andover-Harvard Theological Library (1938–1954), and chairman (1928–1934; 1944–1960) of the American Friends Service Committee, which he had helped found in 1917. He delivered the Nobel lecture on behalf of the AFSC when it, together with the British Friends Service Council, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 on behalf of the Religious Society of Friends.

Select publications

• The Style and Literary Method of Luke (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1919)
• National Ideals in the Old Testament (New York: Scribner’s, 1920)
• The Knowledge Claimed in Luke's Preface (The Expositor, 1922, p. 401-420)
• The Making of Luke-Acts (New York: MacMillan, 1927)
• The Peril of Modernizing Jesus (New York: MacMillan, 1937)
• Jesus: What Manner of Man (New York: MacMillan, 1947)
• George Fox's Book of Miracles (Cambridge, Mass.: University Press, 1948)
• The Book of Acts in History (London: A. & C. Black, 1955)
• The Eclipse of the Historical Jesus (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1964)
• John Woolman in England: A Documentary Supplement (London: Friends Historical Society, 1971)
• Narrative Papers of George Fox (Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 1972)

"Quakerism and Early Christianity" (George Allen & Unwin LTD: 1957)

References

• Bacon, Margaret H., Let This Life Speak: The Legacy of Henry Joel Cadbury. U of Pennsylvania P, 1987. ISBN 0-8122-8045-8.

External links

• Philadelphia Inquirer obituary
• Biography was prepared by Sarah DeSantis, Spring 2009
• Nobel Peace Prize lecture