Geza Vermes obituary

Geza Vermes, who has died aged 88, was one of the world's leading authorities on the origins of Christianity. In the early 1950s he completed the first-ever doctorate on the Dead Sea Scrolls – a risky topic to choose. In 1947, an Arab shepherd had chanced upon the first scrolls – texts written in ancient Hebrew and its sister language Aramaic – in a cave in the cliffs along the north-west shore of the Dead Sea. These were published rapidly, but reports kept circulating that more caves containing more manuscripts were being found. No scholarly consensus had yet emerged as to when the scrolls were written, or by whom. Wildly fluctuating dates were assigned to them, some even claiming that they had been copied in the middle ages.

From careful analysis of the published material, Vermes argued that the Jewish sect behind the scrolls originated at the time of the Maccabean crisis in the middle of the second century BCE. It was a brilliant hypothesis which gained many adherents and became academic orthodoxy. Vermes himself never saw grounds for modifying it throughout his career.

He was born in Makó, Hungary, to assimilated Jewish parents. His mother, Terézia, was a schoolteacher, and his father, Erno, a journalist and poet who associated with leading Hungarian intellectuals. When the family moved to Gyula, Vermes was enrolled in a Catholic primary school, and the family converted to Catholicism – "to give me a better chance", as he wrote in his autobiography. That may have been his father's intention, but his mother took the conversion seriously and became a devout Catholic. Vermes also seems to have taken it seriously enough to consider becoming a priest, when he graduated from the Catholic gymnasium. It was 1942 and life was becoming increasingly difficult for Hungarian Jews. The family's baptismal certificates proved useless to protect them. Vermes was desperate to further his education but saw little chance, as a Jew, of gaining a place at university. Entering the priesthood offered a way forward.

Turned down by the Jesuits, he was accepted by the diocese of Nagyvárad, and began life as a seminarian. The move was providential and saved his life, when, in March 1944, German forces occupied Hungary, setting up a puppet government, which, under Adolf Eichmann, rapidly began to implement against the Jews the Nazis' "final solution". Vermes's parents perished – exactly when, where and how he never discovered. With the aid of the church Vermes managed to remain hidden, and was liberated by the Red Army in Budapest in December 1944.

He resumed his studies for the priesthood, but as ordination approached, the thought of parish ministry appealed to him less and less. He was desperate to continue studying. An attempt to join the Dominicans was rebuffed, but he was admitted to the Order of the Fathers of Notre-Dame de Sion, and after a hair-raising journey across war-ravaged Europe he entered their house in Louvain, Belgium, in 1948. The nearby Catholic University of Louvain gave him the chance to become a licencié in theology and philosophy, and he completed his doctorate on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

His superiors then moved him to the Paris house of the Fathers of Sion. There he engaged with Paul Démann in a campaign, fought through the pages of the order's journal, Cahiers Sioniens, to challenge the anti-Judaism then rampant in the Catholic church. He broadened his education, meeting leading scholars such as André Dupont-Sommer and attending the classes of Georges Vajda. Renée Bloch introduced him to Jewish Bible commentary (midrash) – a field in which he later excelled.

On a visit to Britain, he was introduced by a mutual friend to Pamela, and, in late 1955, they fell in love. The situation was complicated and stressful. Pam was married with two young daughters. Vermes was a Catholic priest. It was resolved (reasonably amicably) by Pam separating from her husband, joining and subsequently marrying Vermes, and Vermes leaving the Fathers of Sion, and the Catholic priesthood.

Desperate for a job that would allow him to remain in Britain, he gladly accepted in 1957 a temporary lectureship in divinity in King's College (then a constituent college of the University of Durham, but now the University of Newcastle). There he cemented his international reputation with Scripture and Tradition (1961), a seminal study of early Jewish bible commentary, and with an English translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1962. The latter, steadily augmented as new scrolls were published, has not been out of print since.

When he was offered the position of reader in Jewish studies at Oxford in 1965 (promoted to full professor in 1989), some in the Jewish community decried the appointment, but buoyed by the support of Oxford luminaries such as David Daube, he dug himself into Oxford life. It was there I first met him, in 1967, when I joined a class he was teaching on the early Jewish law-code the Mishnah. Subsequently I did a doctorate with him on the Aramaic translations of the Bible.

His achievements at Oxford were immense. He took on the editorship of the Journal of Jewish Studies, turning it into one of the foremost in its field, and collaborated with Fergus Millar and Martin Goodman on a major revision of Emil Schürer's multi-volume classic The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. In Vermes's own truly epoch-making Jesus the Jew (1973), one of the earliest of his many studies of Jesus and the origins of Christianity, he helped launch the new quest for the historical Jesus.

He continued work on the scrolls, but felt he was treading water because the publication of the numerous texts had virtually ground to a halt. Worse still, the small editorial team to whom they had been assigned were barring access to the manuscripts to others willing and able to do it for them. Vermes was at the forefront of the battle to rectify this situation, and it was in part due to his well-fought campaign that in 1991 the unpublished scrolls were finally "liberated" (as he put it), and access granted to any scholar who wanted it. Vermes was invited to become an editor, and, together with myself, published the Cave 4 fragments of the Dead Sea Sect's rule-book, the so-called Community Rule.

Vermes helped build up Jewish studies as an academic discipline, acting as first president both of the British Association for Jewish Studies and of the European Association for Jewish Studies. He attracted a group of talented students to work with him, many of whom became scholars of distinction. Recognition followed thick and fast, including a fellowship of the British Academy, honorary doctorates from Edinburgh, Durham, Sheffield and the Central European University, Budapest, and a vote of congratulation by the US House of Representatives "for inspiring and educating the world".

When Pam died in 1993, he was devastated. But in 1995 he married Margaret, a younger friend, whom he and Pam had known for years. With Margaret came her son Ian from her former marriage. Vermes found himself, to his surprise and delight, playing in his 70s the role of paterfamilias. He was rejuvenated. His intellect and memory remained undimmed to the end, and only weeks before he died he was discussing a new book he planned to write.

He is survived by Margaret and Ian, and by Pam's daughters Tina and Anna.