J. Rendel Harris

James Rendel Harris (27 January 1852 in Plymouth, Devon – 1 March 1941) was an English biblical scholar and curator of manuscripts, who was instrumental in bringing back to light many Syriac Scriptures and other early documents.

His contacts at the Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai in Egypt enabled twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson to discover there[1] the Sinaitic Palimpsest, the oldest Syriac New Testament document in existence.

He moved to the United States in 1882 following his wife who was at the time engaged in missionary work,[6] and was appointed professor of New Testament Greek at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US (1882–85).

In 1888–1889, while on leave from Haverford, he travelled to Palestine and Egypt, purchasing 47 rolls and codices written in Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopic.

Included among the topics on which he wrote are: the Apology of Aristides (1891), the Didache, Philo, the Diatessaron, the Christian Apologists, Acts of Perpetua, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon (1909), the Gospel of Peter, and other Western and Syriac texts, and numerous works on biblical manuscripts.

[11] In 1933, a Festschrift was published in his honor, called Amicitiae Corolla: a volume of essays presented to James Rendel Harris on the occasion of his 80th birthday.