English theological scholar, born at Holme Pierrepont, Nottinghamshire, on the 1st of August 1843, the son of William Sanday, a well-known breeder of sheep and cattle. He was educated at Repton and Balliol College, Oxford, afterwards becoming a scholar of Corpus Christi. He took a first-class in classical moderations in 1863, a first in the final classical schools in 1865, and was ordained in 1867. He became a fellow and lecturer at Trinity in 1869, and in 1876 was chosen principal of Hatfield Hall, Durham. In 1883 he was appointed Ireland professor of Exegesis at Oxford, and in 1891 Lady Margaret professor of Divinity, a post which he held till 1919. He died at Oxford on the 16th of September 1920.
As a theological and biblical critic of the apologetic school Sanday took a very high place. His chief works are The Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel (1872); The Gospels in the Second Century (1876); The Oracles of God (1891); The Early History and Origin of the Doctrine of Biblical Inspiration (1893); Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (with Dr. Headlam, 1895); Outlines of the Life of Christ (1905; a republication of an article in Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible); Christologies, Ancient and Modern (1910) and Personality in Christ and in Ourselves (1911).
