Burnett Hillman Streeter

Burnett Hillman Streeter (born Nov. 17, 1874, Croydon, Surrey, Eng.—died Sept. 10, 1937, near Basel, Switz.) was an English theologian and biblical scholar, noted for his original contributions to knowledge of Gospel origins.

Educated at Queen’s College, University of Oxford, Streeter spent most of his life there, becoming chaplain in 1928 and provost in 1933. He was ordained in 1899 and for 15 years (from 1922 to 1937) was a member of the Archbishop’s Commission on Doctrine in the Church of England. He wrote or contributed to a dozen volumes in the fields of philosophy of religion, comparative religion, and New Testament studies.

Streeter became widely known as a student of the New Testament. His most important work was The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (1924), in which he originated a “four document hypothesis” (including a Proto-Luke) as a solution to the synoptic problem and developed the theory of “local texts” in the manuscript transmission of the New Testament. This work was followed by The Primitive Church (1929), in which he argued that there were three systems (not one) of church government in the earliest Christian churches.

Streeter’s other works included Foundations: A Statement of Christian Belief in Terms of Modern Thought, by Seven Oxford Men (1912), The Chained Library (1931), Reality: A New Correlation of Science and Religion (1926), and The Buddha and the Christ (Bampton Lectures, 1932).