Bruce Manning Metzger (9 February 1914 – 13 February 2007)

Born  in Middletown, Pennsylvania
Educated Lebanon Valley College, PA (BA, 1935)
Princeton Theological Seminary (ThB 1938, ThM 1939)
  Teaching Fellow, NT Greek (1938)
  Assistant Prof (1944), Associate Prof (1948), Professor (1954)
  George L. Collard Prof of NT Language and Literature (1964)
  Retired, Prof Emeritus (1984)
Princeton University (MA, 1940; PhD [Greek and Latin classics] 1942)
  Instructor in NT
Ordained in the Presbyterian Church USA (1939)

Married Isobel Elizabeth Mackay (1944)
  two sons: John Mackay Metzger and James Bruce Metzger

President, Society of Biblical Literature (1971), Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (1971),
  North American Patristic Society (1972), Society for Textual Scholarship (1995)
Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1969 and 1974)
Visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge (1974) and Wolfson College, Oxford (1979)
Elected corresponding fellow of the British Academy (1978)
   and received its F.C.Burkitt Medal for Biblical Studies (1994)
Eected to the American Philosophical Society (1986),
Honorary doctorates: Lebanon Valley College,  Findlay College, University of St Andrews,
  University of Münster, Potchefstroom University (South Africa)
Received three Festschriften (1981, 1985 and 1994).

Served on United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament committee, to edit, along with Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, and Allen Wikgren, the United Bible Societies' edition of the Greek New Testament. (1966)
Chair of the Committee on Translation of the American Bible Society 1964–70
Member of RSV translation team; from 1957 he served on the committee that translated the RSV Apocrypha and in 1972 he chaired the sub-committee that translated 3 and 4 Maccabees and Psalm 151 for an expanded version of the RSV Apocrypha.
Chair of the Committee of Translators for the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible 1977–90

Lectured in New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain (including London, Leeds and Dublin) and Europe, South America, South Africa, Korea, Japan, and throughout North America; presented academic lectures at more than one hundred institutions on six continents, and delivered more than 2500 sermons or studies in churches belonging to a wide variety of denominations.


Author:
The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (1964; 2nd ed., 1968; 3d enlarged ed., 1992; 2005 4th edition with Bart D. Ehrman, ISBN 0-19-516122-X);  translations include German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian, and Russian;

Metzger Book

The Early Versions of the New Testament: Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations (1977);

The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (1987).[3]

List of Words Occurring Frequently in the Coptic New Testament (Sahidic Dialect) (1961) 

Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Palaeography (1981).

Published hundreds of articles, covering (among other topics) textual criticism, philology, palaeography and papyrology, classical topics, Greco-Roman religions, the Hebrew Bible, the Apocrypha, the New Testament, patristics, early church history, and Bible translation. Also (in at least two dozen journals) reviews of hundreds of books written in eight languages.


Papyrological Publications

Personally: Unfailingly polite and kind as part of his Christian witness; encyclopedic mind. In his dress and conduct he was the quintessential Eastern, Ivy League scholar and gentleman, a bit formal and correct, and usually wearing a three-piece suit. He had a knack of always finding something nice to say about a person or a book, an engaging sense of humor, and an apparently endless supply of amusing anecdotes.

 
Metzger Autobiography