Donald Wiseman
English scholar (1918-2010)
Donald John Wiseman (25 October 1918 – 2 February 2010) was a biblical scholar, archaeologist and Assyriologist. He was Professor of Assyriology at the University of London from 1961 to 1982.
Early life and beliefs
Wiseman was born in Walderton, a hamlet just northeast of Emsworth, Hampshire in 1918. His father, Air Commodore P. J. Wiseman had travelled in the Middle East with the RAF and that had led to him writing a number of books on archaeology and the Bible. P. J. Wiseman formulated what is known as the Wiseman hypothesis, which suggests that many passages used by Moses or other authors to compose the Book of Genesis originated as histories and genealogies recorded in Mesopotamian cuneiform script on baked clay tablets, handed down through Abraham to later Hebrews. His mother Gertrude May, née Savage (1888–1971), was the daughter of a naval officer. Donald was the third of five children. The Wiseman family belonged to the Plymouth Brethren.
Wiseman came under the influence of the Crusaders, an evangelical Christian youth organisation, and professed faith at the age of nine, being baptised by full immersion in 1932. He taught himself the Hebrew alphabet from the section headings of Psalm 119.
“Donald Wiseman” enters the record as english scholar (1918-2010). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Donald, Wiseman and English can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Donald Wiseman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.