My father, Ronald Clements, who has died aged 94, was a theologian who taught for a few years at Cambridge College and King’s Faculty London, and have become one of many pre-eminent British students of the Outdated Testomony.
Ronald’s many books included Abraham and David: Genesis 15 and Its Which means for Israelite Custom (1967); Prophecy and Custom (1975); Outdated Testomony Theology: A Recent Strategy (1978); A Century of Outdated Testomony Examine (1983); Knowledge in Theology (1992); and Jerusalem and the Nations (2011), in addition to commentaries on Exodus, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
Elected president of the Society for Outdated Testomony Examine for a yr in 1985, he additionally served as that physique’s overseas secretary and edited quite a few different books, together with The World of Historical Israel: Sociological, Anthropological and Political Views (1989).
In 2013 he was awarded the Burkitt Medal by the British Academy in recognition of particular service to biblical research.
Ronald was born in South Woodford, east London, to Elizabeth (nee Cook dinner), a manufacturing facility employee, and her husband, George, a police officer. He went to Buckhurst Hill county highschool earlier than finding out at Spurgeon’s Faculty in South Norwood, south London, for the Baptist ministry.
Shifting on to check theology at Christ’s Faculty, Cambridge (1954-56), in 1955 he married Valerie Suffield, a secretary, whom he had met at South Woodford Baptist Church youth group of their teenagers.
Ronald then moved to Sheffield College, the place he turned the primary PhD pupil of FF Bruce, the influential evangelical scholar. Whereas he was at Sheffield he additionally served as a minister at Baptist church buildings within the Southey Inexperienced district of town, after which Stratford-upon-Avon. His PhD thesis turned his first e book, God and Temple: The Concept of the Divine Presence in Historical Israel, revealed in 1965.
After occurring to show theology and Hebrew at Edinburgh College (1960-67), Ronald was appointed as a lecturer in Outdated Testomony literature and theology at Cambridge College and a fellow of Fitzwilliam Faculty. In 1983 he turned the Samuel Davidson professor of Outdated Testomony at King’s Faculty London till his retirement in 1992.
All through his profession Ronald was keen about displaying that the Outdated Testomony addresses points which might be related for the church and society at present. His Christian religion remained alive as he continued his research into his 90s alongside a love of flying and mannequin plane, amongst many different issues. Along with an in depth theological library, he left a outstanding assortment of aviation historical past books.
Valerie died in 2021. He’s survived by their daughters, Gillian and me, and 5 grandchildren.
