Lincoln Douglas Hurst (May 6, 1946 – November 11, 2008), also known as "Lincoln Hurst", "L. D. Hurst", or "Lincoln D. Hurst", was an American scholar of the Bible, religious history and film. He wasEmeritusProfessor at theUniversity of California, Davis (1983–2006), and adjunct professor atFuller Theological Seminary,Pasadena, California (1987–2008).
Born in Chicago and raised inArlington Heights, Illinois, Hurst graduated fromArlington High School, and later received the Bachelorof Arts degree in history from Trinity College (nowTrinity International University),Deerfield, Illinois (1969). He was then grantedtheMaster of Divinity (1973) andMaster of Theology (1976) degrees fromPrinceton Theological Seminary (where he worked under the lateBruce M. Metzger) andtheDoctor of Philosophy (1982) degree fromOxford University (Mansfield College),England, where he worked under the lateG. B. Caird. Anglican BishopN.T. Wright also did his doctoral work under Caird, and three years after Caird's death Hurst and Wright co-edited a volume in his memory. Hurst also acted as Caird's family-appointed literary executor, insofar as some of Caird's work was left hanging in mid-air when he died. Before taking up a post at theUniversity of California, Davis in 1983, he was an instructor at BloomfieldCollege, New Jersey (1973–74), lecturer (1979–80) and junior dean (1980–81) atMansfield College,Oxford, and visiting fellow atPrinceton Theological Seminary (fall, 1982). He was a lifelong proponent ofanimal welfare. Committed to preserving the memories ofG. B. Caird andErrol Flynn, he spent the final weeks of his life writing about the historic achievements of both men. Hurst died suddenly from a heart attack in November 2008.
Having written extensively on theEpistle to the Hebrews, Hurst's work has also focused on a variety of other topics, includingethics in religion, theAramaic language of the Gospels and Acts, theDead Sea scrolls, the development of early Christian thought about Jesus,New TestamentTheology, and the relationship of religion and film. His work has shown a maverick tendency, with a willingness to take up unpopular positions that go against the mainstream. His discussion of Hebrews (Hurst 1990) accordingly is unconcerned about the identity of the unknown author - a common preoccupation - but is rather directed at uncovering the particular religious milieu out of which he or she came. He is insistent that the author was not a disciple of eitherPlato orPhilo, or that he was a former member of theQumran community - prevailing views for much of the twentieth century. The writer instead was a mainstream first century Christian who was heavily influenced byPaul the Apostle and the JewishApocalyptic tradition. He also maintains, against virtually all scholars and commentators, that the first chapter of Hebrews is designed to illustrate not thedeity of Christ, but his perfecthumanity. The first-century writer wishes his readers to know that in Jesus God has restored the human race to its proper predestined place "above theangels" (Psalm 8:4-6; Hurst 1987). His interest in the question of theHistorical Jesus led him to question the linguistic techniques by which the majority of scholars have attempted to reconstruct Jesus's original Aramaic words beneath the later Greek gospels (Hurst 1986). The ethical dimensions of Jesus's teaching is another area into which he has delved; he considers Jesus's ethics to be indissolubly linked toRealized eschatology - the idea (associated withC. H. Dodd) that for Jesus theKingdom of God had already, in substantial form, arrived in the teaching, life, and death of Jesus (Hurst 1992). A central facet of Christian doctrine since the early centuries of the church has been thePre-existence of Christ, and this is another area that has attracted his attention.
His claim (followingG. B. Caird) thatPaul the Apostle represents both the earliest and the highest thinking about Jesus in the New Testament (as opposed, for instance, to theGospel of John) runs counter to the view of the majority of scholars, and in this case he has had a notable disagreement withUniversity of Durham theology ProfessorJames Dunn (Hurst, 1986); he and Dunn have appeared in the same volume "discussing" the question (Martin and Dodd, 1998). Hurst's interest in the subject ofNew TestamentTheology, sparked by his posthumous completion of G. B. Caird's work of that title, remains a continuing thrust of his research.The messianism of theDead Sea scrolls has been one of the most widely discussed topics of the past sixty years in western religious circles; here it has been almost a dogma among scholars that the members of theQumran community were idiosyncratic in that they expected not one, but two Messiahs. Hurst has stood against this idea, claiming that the members of the desert sect held to a thoroughly orthodox Jewish belief in one Messiah (Hurst 1999) (there is little, if any, evidence that his arguments in this regard have made even a negligible impact on the field). He is also concerned to explore the influence of Christianity in general, and the Bible in particular, on the films of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries - especially those that use the Bible symbolically in "modern" settings (Hurst 2004).
In addition to studies in religion and the Bible, Hurst has maintained a long interest in the history of film. For most of his life he studied cinema as anavocation, but in his later years it consumed an increasing amount of his time. For approximately ten years he taught a popular course on film at the University of California, Davis, where his work tended to center on the relationship of film and music andof film and religion. He was an accredited film historian, having appeared in many documentaryfeatures (on DVD and television, including Britain (the BBC) and Australia (the ABC)) dealing with various aspects of some of the most significant films in American cinematic history. He displayed a special fondness for crime films, having publicly commented on three of what he considered (in addition toThe Godfather trilogy) to be among the most historically crucial:Angels with Dirty Faces,The Roaring Twenties and (most significantly)White Heat.He is seen notably in features accompanying the Warner Brothers DVD releases of the classic 1941 release of "The Maltese Falcon", and in various 'signature collection' DVDs, including those ofHumphrey Bogart andErrol Flynn, featuring on the commentaries alongsideMartin Scorsese,Eric Lax,Michael Madsen, andTheresa Russell, among others. In 2005 he recorded the full-length audio commentary for the Warner Home Video DVD release of the 1939 classicJames Cagneycrime film,The Roaring Twenties, included in "The WarnerGangsters Collection".
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