William McHardy

McHardy was born on 26 May 1911 in Cullen, Banffshire, Scotland, the son of Alexander S. McHardy, a schoolmaster.[1] He was educated at Fordyce Academy, a school in Fordyce, Aberdeenshire, that became known as the "Eton of the North", where his father was Rector.[3][4] He then studied divinity at the University of Aberdeen.[2] He had intended to become a minister of the Church of Scotland, but discovered a talent for languages while at Aberdeen and decided on an academic career.[1] Therefore, he entered the University of Edinburgh to study Semitic Languages and graduated with the Scottish first degree of Master of Arts.[1][2] He then moved to England and undertook post-graduate studies at St John's College, Oxford.[1] His thesis was a study of the Syriac translation of the Book of Ecclesiasticus entitled A preparation for an edition of a critical text of the Syriac version of Ecclesiasticus.[5] He graduated as a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in 1943.[6]

McHardy began his academic career while still a doctoral student. In 1942, he was appointed a research fellow in Syriac at the University of Birmingham and curator of its Mingana Collection.[2] In 1945, he joined the University of Oxford as a lecturer in Aramaic and Syriac.[1] In 1947, he was ordained as a Minister of the Church of Scotland.[7] He moved to the University of London in 1948 and was appointed Samuel Davidson Professor of Old Testament Studies.[2] Only in his mid-thirties, he was unusually young to be a professor.[1]

In 1960, he was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford.[8] This required a change in university statutes to open up the chair to those who were not Anglican clergymen.[1] He officially took up the appointment on 1 October 1960.[9] In 1978, he stepped down from the Regius Professorship and retired from academia.[10][11]

McHardy was involved in the production to two editions of The Bible: the first was the New English Bible (NEB) and the second was its successor, the Revised English Bible (REB).[3] In the mid-1940s, he was selected to be one of the academics translating the Old Testament for the NEB.[1] From 1961, he headed the group of scholars responsible for translating the Apocrypha. The NEB was published in 1970.[2] The translation met with mixed reviews and it was only three years later when work on a revised edition began. In 1973, he was appointed Director of the REB project.[3][12] After guiding its translation for 15 years, the REB was published in 1989.[2]

In 1941, McHardy married Vera Kemp.[3] Together, they had one daughter, Alison, who became a medieval historian, completed an Oxford doctorate,[13] and taught at the university of Nottingham.[2] His wife predeceased him, dying in 1984.[3]

As a child, McHardy contracted polio.[1] He was left disabled and used crutches or a wheelchair to move around.[3]

In March 1958, McHardy was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity (DD) degree by the University of Aberdeen.[14] In the 1990 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his role as Director of the Revised English Bible project.[12]

• Thomas, D. Winton; McHardy, W. D., eds. (1963). Hebrew and Semitic Studies: Essays Presented to G. R. Driver. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198154273.