REV PROFESSOR JOHN C O'NEILL

John O'Neill was once of the most stimulating and controversial New Testament scholars of his day, who challenged most of the assumptions of current scholarship. While most students of the New Testament believe that the gospels of Matthew and Luke are based on Mark, O'Neill argued that this solution to the problem of the relationship of the first three, synoptic gospels was far too simplistic, and that it could not have been Mark's Gospel as we have it that was the basis of Matthew and Luke.

Conventional scholarship assumes that if a document contains even a primitive reference to the doctrine of the Trinity it must belong to the Christian era, but O'Neill was convinced that the idea of the Trinity was alive before Jesus, which allowed for a radical revision of the dating of some of the New Testament documents.

When he turned his attention to the letters attributed to Paul, O'Neill became convinced that Paul wrote some of all of them but not all of any of them. He believed that an original letter of Paul, of about five thousand Greek characters, was to be found in parts throughout the letters which bear Paul's name, which also include long passages of Jewish sayings and attacks on the Jewish law which belong to a century after Paul wrote.

John O'Neill was born in Melbourne and graduated in history from the university there. He studied for the ministry at Ormond Theological College and then undertook research into the Book of Acts with Dr John Robinson, later Bishop of Woolwich at the University of Cambridge. On completion of his PhD he returned to teach at Ormond College until he was appointed Dunn Professor of New Testament at Westminster College, Cambridge, the training centre for ministers of the then Presbyterian Church of England. While his main responsibility was within Westminster College he taught courses ("colloquies" he preferred to call them) in the University Divinity Faculty.

In 1975-6 O'Neill delivered the Cunningham Lectures in the University of Edinburgh in which he developed his thesis that Jesus went to Jerusalem, convinced that his death he would gain from God time for his followers and the people of the city to repent. He took the view that Jesus knew that he was the Son of God, although, being fully human, he also knew that he could be wrong. New Testament scholars have discussed at length why, if Jesus was the Messiah, he was apparently so reticent about claiming that he was. O'Neill was convinced that because it was blasphemy for anyone to claim to be Messiah; Jesus had to rely on others giving the title and role to him.

While most scholars accepted the conventional wisdom that Jesus of Nazareth had been a charismatic preacher of God's reign and kingdom who had no intention of establishing the church, O'Neill, typically, took a contrary view. He believed that Jesus instructed his disciples to preach God's word and administer sacraments of baptism and the eucharist. The disciples, O'Neill believed, fell into two categories: those who chose to follow Jesus in his itinerant and quasi-monastic life, and those who continued to live within society but were committed to Jesus' message.

Very few of O'Neill's views found acceptance within the community of New Testament scholars, but this never deterred him from expressing them with conviction, nor did it stop his colleagues from recognising that however idiosyncratic his views, they were based on deep scholarship and a wide knowledge of the literature not only of the New Testament but of the inter-testamental period immediately before Jesus.

In 1985 he was appointed to the chair of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology in Edinburgh, and became a minister of the Church of Scotland. He was a stimulating teacher who was never afraid to share his own conclusions with students but who never imposed his views on them. He took great pains over his lectures. If he taught a course in two successive years he always revised his lectures to make sure that they reflected his attitude to the most current thinking. He was a scholar who was prepared to change his mind. He took enormous pleasure in any success which came to former students. Colleagues in other disciplines and those who shared with him a passion for the New Testament recognised in John O'Neill a man of considerable intellectual stature and massive personal integrity.

When told a few weeks ago, without any warning, that he was suffering from terminal cancer he reacted with typical courage, calmness, deep faith and concern for those closest to him. He is survived by his wife, the writer Judith O'Neill and his three daughters Rachel, Catherine and Philippa

Rev Professor John Cochrane O'Neill, born 8 December 1930, died 30 March 2003