Burrows, Millar

Millar Burrows (1889-1980), professor of Biblical literature, was born in Cincinnati on October 26, 1889. He graduated from Cornell University in 1912. He received his divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in 1915 and the same year was ordained a minister in the Presbyterian Church. He was a rural pastor in Texas until 1919, and taught at Tusculum College in Greenville, Tennessee. He came to Brown as assistant professor of Biblical literature and history of religions after receiving his doctorate from Yale in 1925. Promoted to professor, he served as department chairman before leaving in 1934 to become Winkley Professor of Biblical theology in the Yale Divinity School. He was chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and literatures at Yale Graduate School from 1950 until his retirement in 1958. In 1931-32 he was on leave of absence from Brown to serve as director of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. He was again director of the school in 1947-48, but was away on a trip to Baghdad when some ancient scrolls found in a cave were brought to the school. On his return he was shown the manuscripts, which came to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and, after that devoted himself to the study of the scrolls, on which he became an authority, publishing The Dead Sea Scrolls in 1955, and More Light on the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1958. When Burrows visited Brown in 1956 to lecture on the Dead Sea Scrolls, his lecture was so popular that it had to be rescheduled from Lower Manning to Upper Manning and finally to a very crowded Sayles Hall. He received an honorary degree from Brown in 1961. He died in 1980.