The collection includes correspondence, research materials, teaching materials, photographs, awards, and books. Major research subjects include the New Testament, especially Pauline letters; Christian theology; Judaism; and the issue of territorial imperative with regard to land.
The first series, containing multiple accessions, includes correspondence, manuscript materials, article reprints, student papers, lecture notes, course reading materials, sermon notes, student notebooks relating to courses taken at the University of Wales Memorial College in Brecon, general research subject files, research notes relating to teaching at Duke University, Columbia University, Princeton University, Union Theological Seminary, and Texas Christian University.
Accession UA2014-0065 contains personal and professional correspondence, scholarly materials and books from Davies' personal library. The collection also contains materials related to Davies' Feschrift, an honor celebrating Davies'contributions to the field of biblical theology.
Accession UA2022-0072 contains books published by W.D. Davies or with references to Davies, and Davies' Burkitt Medal for Biblical Studies and State of Israel medal. Also, inlcudes diplomas awarded to Rachel Davies.
W. D. (William David) Davies was born in Carmarthenshire, Wales, United Kingdom, and educated at the University of Wales (B.A.from Cardiff, 1934; B.D. from Breccon, 1938) and Cambridge University (B.A. 1940, M.A. 1942). Davies received his doctorate (D.D. operis causa 1948) from the University of Wales.
In 1941, Davies was ordained into the Congregational Church at Fowlmere, England. He taught at Yorkshire United College, Bradford, Yorkshire, from 1946 to 1950 before moving to Duke for five years as a professor of Biblical theology (1950 to 1955). From 1955 through 1959 he was professor of religion at Princeton University, where he helped start the graduate program in Religion. He was then appointed Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York, as well as adjunct professor at Columbia University, from 1959 to 1966. He rejoined the Duke faculty in 1966 as George Washington Ivey Professor of Advanced Studies and Research in Christian Origins. He stayed until his retirement in 1981. He then became the Bradford Professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas and in 1986-87 he was a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, UK. He also taught at the University of California at Berkeley (1971-1972) and at the University of Strasboroug, France (1973-1974).
Davies held numerous fellowships and received several awards and honors. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, (from which he also received the Burkitt Medal in Biblical Studies in 1965), an Honorary Fellow of Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam College, a Fellow of the Bellagio Center, Italy, and Fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research. He was a recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and received honorary doctorates from the University of St. Andrews, the Pacific School of Religion, Uppsala University and the University of Wales, the latter being an honorary doctorate in literature. Davies also served as honorary president of the Society for Biblical Literature and President of the Society of New Testament Studies (1976), which met in the United States for the first time that year at Duke University. He was a member of the executive committee of the World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem (1965).
Among his published works are the Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (1948), the The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (1966), and the The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine (1974). His popular the Invitation to the New Testament (1966) was a selection of the Book of the Month Club. He was also co-editor of the the Cambridge History of Judaism and along with a former student published an International Critical Commentary on Matthew (3 vols).
W.D. Davies married Eurwen Llewelyn in 1942 in Wales. The couple had one daughter, Rachel M. Davies. W.D. Davies died June 12, 2001 in Durham, NC, and Eurwen L. Davies died on January 16, 2002.
Processed by Emily Glenn, October 2002
Encoded by Sherrie Bowser, June 2007
Accessions A84-35, A89-70, A90-102, A92-94, A2001-21 were merged into one collection, described in this finding aid.
Accession UA2014-0065 was incorporated into the collection by Elizabeth Hannigan, May 2016.
Accession UA2022-0072 added by April Blevins, May 2023.
