Thanks to Jean Putmans for tracking down a copy of volume 12 of The Bulletin of the Bezan Club. This, as far as I know, was the last issue of the Bulletin. The issue contains several comments that indicate another volume was expected (“Our next issue…” etc.), but it seems that it never appeared. I had assumed that events in Germany in 1938 had led to the dissolution of the Club. But I recently saw that Alessandro Falcetta, the biographer of Rendel Harris, has made an intriguing alternative suggestion:

“The twelfth issue of the bulletin was published in 1937. The secretary of the club, Plooij, had died in 1935 and had been replaced by Johannes de Zwaan of Leyden, a former student of Rendel’s at Woodbrooke. Several other members had also died, including Mingana, and obituary notices had almost become a fixed feature of the bulletin. Rendel had turned eighty-five and for the first time there was no contribution from him. He was no longer a driving force behind the club. Now, it was de Zwaan’s job to carry on the bulletin, but, though he had plans for a new issue, he never came to publish it. Probably, the reason was that the bulletin had to give way to a new enterprise. In 1937, during a conference in Edinburgh, de Zwaan met [with] Herbert G. Wood,… George Boobyer and other scholars. There he proposed to them the idea of forming a New Testament society. The following year, a number of scholars met at Carey Hall…and formalized the foundation of the Societas Novi Testamenti Studiorum (SNTS), of which de Zwaan was elected first president. The SNTS is today the most important association of its kind. One wonders whether de Zwaan had in mind the Bezan Club when he outlined his project in Edinburgh.”¹

This seems like a plausible scenario.²

A second feature of volume 12 that stood out is a curious coincidence. The issue contains three articles by none other than Robert Eisler (1882-1949), whom I mentioned in a recent post in connection to his (baseless) identification of a marble bust in Copenhagen as a portrait of the Jewish historian Josephus. In the Bulletin, Eisler has written a (sort of?) obituary for Arthur C. Clark (1859-1937), Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at Oxford from 1913-1934, an article on Paul and the “pillars” in Galatians, and an article on Acts 19:14. This seems to be Eisler’s first appearance in the Bulletin (he is not listed on the first page among the members of the Club).

A third interesting aspect of this volume is the last article: “The textual relations of Codex Bezae in Matthew by Miss Ad. H.A. Bakker.” This would be Adolphine Henriette Annette Bakker (1907-1984), author of A Study of Codex Evang. Bobbiensis (1933). She is listed among the members of the Club on the first page of this issue along with “Mrs. Sylva New-Lake,” i.e. Silva Tipple New Lake (1898-1983). So, it seems that by at least as early as 1937, the Club had admitted women as members.

The other issues of the journal can be found here.

1. Alessandro Falcetta, The Daily Discoveries of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter: A Biography of James Rendel Harris (T&T Clark, 2018), 455. ↩︎
2. On the early history of the SNTS, see this page and its link to an article by G.H. Boobyer. ↩︎