Vale, Wayne Meeks

Tributes have flowed for New Testament scholar Wayne A. Meeks, who passed away on 10 January. He was 91.

Dr Meeks was one of the foremost authorities on the social world of the Apostle Paul, on John’s Gospel, and on Christian morality.

His 1983 book, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, received the Biblical Archeological Review Award for Best Book on the New Testament, and the American Academy of Religion Award. 

The Dean of Yale Divinity School Greg Sterling wrote a statement on the School’s website acknowledging Dr Meeks’ death.

“I write with a heavy heart to inform you of the death of Wayne A. Meeks, Woolsey Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies and a towering figure in New Testament and Early Christian Studies who was a dear friend of the Divinity School for many years,” he wrote.

“Wayne Meeks had an impact on the study of early Christianity that is hard to exaggerate. His book The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul… was that rare book that every scholar and student in the field had to read. It won awards including the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence and Biblical Archaeology Review Award for Best Book on the New Testament.”

“With this book and in partnership with Abraham Malherbe, a member of our faculty, Wayne put the social history of early Christianity on the map for New Testament studies globally. The two trained a group of exceptionally talented students who have had notable careers of their own.”

John Barclay is Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University. He remembered Meeks as, “an utterly brilliant scholar — careful, creative, ground-breaking, and deeply intelligent. He is for me in a class of a tiny number of top New Testament scholars of all time. His ability to write beautiful, crafted prose was a sign of his cultivated, clear mind, and his cultural reference points were wide and deep.”

“Faith’s ironies”

Dr Meeks grew up in Alabama. He earnt his PhD at Yale, after time working in university chaplaincy in Memphis, Tennessee.

Experiences as a southerner was a theme in his work, as he interrogated his experiences in faith and morality. Awareness of the contradictions inherent in the Southern racial divide that existed in everyday life led Dr Meeks to probe and question Christian ethics. The stark contradictions of Southern gentility and racial violence propelled him to call for justice and just action. In a 2002 book chapter called “The Irony of Grace”, he commented on the irony found in these contradictions, which he said he also found in Christian doctrine — and what he labeled “faith’s ironies.”

In addition to his books about the New Testament and teaching at Yale, Dr Meeks was a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. A festschrift honoring his work was published in 1995, The Social World of the First Christians: Essays in Honor of Wayne A. Meeks, edited by L. Michael White.

Insights sends our condolences to Wayne Meeks’ friends and family.