Maurice Wiles
Anglican priest and academic
Maurice Frank Wiles, FBA (17 October 1923 – 3 June 2005) was an Anglican priest and academic. He was the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford from 1970 to 1991.
Life and academic career
Wiles was educated at the Tonbridge School in Kent. He was awarded a scholarship at Christ's College, Cambridge, but his studies were interrupted by the war. He and his brother, Christopher John Wiles (1919–2014), were sent early in February 1942 to learn Japanese and cryptography at the secret Bedford Japanese School run by Captain Oswald Tuck RN. Both of them did well on the course and were posted to Bletchley Park. After a year in the Japanese Military Attaché section, Maurice became joint chief translator in the Japanese Forces section, while Christopher became chief translator in the Japanese military attaché section. After the war he returned to Christ's College and then continued his studies at Ridley Hall.
After ordination in 1950 he spent two years as curate at St George's, Stockport, but then returned to Ridley Hall as chaplain. From 1955 to 1959 he was a lecturer in New Testament Studies at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He again returned to Cambridge as dean of Clare College and university lecturer in early Christian doctrine.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maurice Wiles” 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.