Book Review: Before I Forget: An Illustrated Autobiography of Murray J. Harris

I was recently listening to a podcast where Scot McKnight (Julius R. Mantey Chair of New Testament at Northern Seminary, Lisle, IL, USA) was asked to name some wise people whom he had encountered. The first name he mentioned was Murray Harris, whom he knew when he was a student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the 1970s and Harris a faculty member, when he was writing his PhD at Tyndale House in the 1980s when Harris was Warden. McKnight also knew Harris when he was on the faculty at Trinity when Harris was a colleague. McKnight describes Harris on the podcast as “the ultimate form of Christian wisdom.”

I have known Harris for almost the same length of time. I first encountered him in the late 1970s when he taught New Testament at BCNZ (now Laidlaw College, 1978–1981) and at Eden Chapel (now Eden Community Church) where he and Jennifer attended, as also my wife and I with our young family. Harris’s influence on me has also been significant. He founded Tyndale College (a part-time school of theology for University Graduates) in 1980 (pp. 78–81) and invited me (a young accountant who had never been to university) to become the Associate Registrar, with my main task being the care of the small but growing library, and of course, I sat in on the seminars. He encouraged me to go to Regent College in 1981, and it was at his suggestion that I wrote my Regent College thesis on the book of Hebrews, then (in his words), “a neglected book in NT studies.” That began a lifelong love relationship with Hebrews, culminating in the publication of my PhD thesis Hebrews and the Temple in 2017, around thirty-five years later. After Regent College, I was Registrar of Tyndale College until it was absorbed by BCNZ in 2000 (79) and in 2002, I became Registrar of the Tyndale Graduate School of Theology, BCNZ’s postgraduate school. Harris’s challenge to the Tyndale students (and to me) was to close “the gap between their professional competence and their knowledge of the Faith that would enable them to contribute distinctively to the life of the Church” (78)

It is a pleasure, then, to review this brief (I read it in an afternoon), elegantly written, illustrated autobiography. It has fourteen chapters, arranged topically rather than chronologically, with chapters on his education, teaching career, writings, and memories, both happy and painful. It ends with a short chapter on God and his guidance, noting that “it is much easier to trace his will in retrospect than in prospect” (96). I can attest to that. At the end is an Appendix with a chronology of Harris’s life, his membership of learned societies, and a list of selected publications.

There are twenty-one illustrations and photographs scattered through the book, plus four in the frontispiece, some in colour and others monochrome. One interesting illustration (79, although it would have been better a couple of pages earlier and with a caption) is his worksheet for the revision of Rom 3:24–30 for the NIV. I recall him saying one day at Tyndale College that Rom 3:25 was the most important verse in the most important chapter of the most important book in the NT. Particularly enjoyable to me are the numerous people Harris mentions, some of whom have also crossed my path over the years, and places and events that I had been aware of, now enlarged with Harris’s perspective as well as my own.

Harris gives his reasons for writing an autobiography in the Preface (xiv). It is to encourage five groups of believers: (1) young people, to excel in their studies of whatever discipline they pursue; (2) married believers to remain faithful, “whatever the future holds with regard to their health”; (3) all believers to be creative in defending and spreading the good news; (4) graduates of tertiary institutions “to become knowledgeable in the Faith and to be involved in their local churches”; and (5) that all believers recognise God’s guiding hand in their lives “as the God of serendipities and as the Sovereign Lord.” As I reflect on Before I Forget and on Harris as I have known him, I think it is true to say that he has demonstrated in life and the circumstances that he has found himself in, that he has remained faithful in the first four, and God has remained faithful in the fifth.

This is an exquisite little book that is a pleasure to read. Read it and be encouraged in your Christian life and witness as you think of a young Kiwi whose working life started as the teacher of thirty-two eight--year-olds at Meadowbank Primary school (22), and culminated with his appointment as Professor Emeritus of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School/Trinity International University (100). I started with an anecdote from Scot McKnight. I am sure that anecdotes such as this could be repeated many times over, such has been Harris’s influence in his teaching career, his Bible translation work, and his writings over the years.
Philip Church is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Theology, Laidlaw College.