Michael Douglas Goulder

At last, a biblical scholar in whom there is no guile! Those were my thoughts in 1969, when as an Oxford undergraduate I attended the Speaker’s Lectures in which Michael argued that Matthew was a midrashic expansion and adaptation of Mark.

A few years later, while I was a doctoral student and ordinand in Birmingham, I had the privilege of coming to know him personally. He combined massive erudition with a razor-sharp intellect. Totally unpretentious and invariably gracious, he nonetheless took great delight in demolishing specious arguments - not least when confronting renowned experts in his field. ‘Blow away the mist and you blow away the mystery’, I can hear him chuckling. He loved playing devil’s advocate but there was never any doubt in my mind that he was on the side of the angels. In those days he would often give up his spare time to educate parishioners at his local parish church, All Saints Kings Heath. I vividly remember observing him with a group of Sunday-School children. He had them spell-bound! Of course they no longer believed in Father Christmas and fairies, they told him! Before long they were confessing that they also harboured doubts about Jesus walking on the water and multiplying the loaves. All well and good! Having established common ground, he proceeded to commend to them a vibrant liberal Christianity shorn of mystification.

On leaving Birmingham, I became a curate on the south coast but I met Michael again in Tübingen where he invited me to attend a congress of New Testament scholars as his guest. On that occasion he hinted that he was becoming increasingly sceptical. Even so, I was numbed to learn in 1981 that he had renounced his orders and the Christian faith. In retrospect, this was largely because I was slowly moving in a similar but less well-defined direction. I eventually reinvented myself as specialist in Islam and because I was often abroad we lost touch. Our paths crossed only three times in the past two decades. On each occasion I derived immense pleasure from his company.

My thoughts and deepest sympathies are with Clare and others who were near and dear to him. It is hard to believe that his life is extinguished. He continues to shine so brightly in my firmament.