A printable bibliography (but without hyperlinks) is available on the companion bibliography page.

More of Childs Online

Following Childs' death on 23 June 2007, several bloggers commented on the loss. I myself posted a tribute. I also tracked other mentions in the blogosphere for a while. And at the request of Georg Steins, I posted an official letter from Osnabrück.

Two obituaries appeared shortly: one by Frank Brown for Yale Divinity School, and one by Christopher Seitz for SBL. The Christian Century, which noted the news in July, followed up in September with a fuller article, "How Scripture Speaks," by Stephen Chapman.

Notable among older online material is an interview (Fall 2000) conducted by WJK upon the publication of Childs' Isaiah commentary.

The biography that follows is excerpted from Gerald Sheppard, "Childs, Brevard (B. 1923)," in Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters (ed. Donald K. McKim; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 575-584. C. Seitz suggested the amendment to paragraph four.

Biography

"Brevard S. Childs's contributions to biblical interpretation, though they are rooted in the study of the Old Testament and Jewish Scripture, bridge a wide range of disciplines, including the history of Jewish and Christian biblical interpretation, an Introduction to the New Testament independent from his Introduction to the Old Testament at Scripture, traditiohistoircal studies of Israelite traditions, and Christian theology. Any assessment of his work requires some understanding of what is at stake for him in each of these fields.

"Adding to this complexity, Childs has shown an ability to change his mind on issues and approaches over time. Ambiguities or lacunae at later stages in his work cannot be uncritically clarified by appeal to earlier positions. Yet what persists from his earlier work may remain presupposed by later formulations. He may be considered one of the most important biblical scholars of the twentieth century, because he has not only kept track of changes in disciplines related to his field but has also made original contributions to them.

"For these reasons Childs's work mirrors major shifts in biblical hermeneutics after World War II...

"Childs (b. September 2, 1923) grew up in Southern Presbyterian churches [sic—He was baptised Episcopalian in Columbia SC. It was only when he moved north to Queens (a consequence of his father's ill health) that the family attended the Presbyterian Church. He and Ann attended an anglican church in Cambridge.] and studied at the University of Michigan (A.B. and M.A.). After serving in the army in Europe during World War II, he earned his B.D. at Princeton Theological Seminary before pursuing a doctorate at the University of Basel, Switzerland. At Basel Childs studied Old Testament with Walther Eichrodt, among others. In addition to his studies in Basel, he took advantage of Near Eastern scholarship at Heidelberg University.

"In Basel Childs met his wife, Ann, who had attended some of Karl Barth's lectures with him. This was an exciting period for theological study. Besides the vigorous table talk among the visiting and local students, inexpensively published journals of essays and debates between theologians, biblical scholars and historians further stimulated the intellectual atmosphere.

"At the University of Basel Childs completed his dissertation on the problem of myth in the opening chapters of Genesis just at the the time when Walter Baumgartner replaced Eichrodt as the senior Old Testament scholar. Creating consternation at the time, Baumgartner informally refused to accept the methodology of Childs's dissertation, so Childs had to change his plans in order to undertake a full revision, now informed by a new grasp of form-critical analysis. That obligation helps explain why Childs became one of the leading tradition historians in North America. The revised dissertation, Der Mythos als theologische Problem im Alten Testaments (1953), was never published, though Childs circulated major portions of it under the title A Study of Myth in Genesis 1–11 (1955) among his wide network of English-speaking scholarly friends.

In 1954 Childs began teaching Old Testament at Mission House Seminary and in 1958 accepted a teaching position at Yale Divinity School..."

Childs was the Sterling Professor of Divinity at Yale University, where he remained an emeritus professor until his death on 23 June 2007.