Robert Charles (scholar)

Robert Henry (R. H.) Charles, FBA (Cookstown, 6 August 1855–Westminster, 1931) was an Irish Anglican theologian, biblical scholar, professor, and translator from Northern Ireland. He is known particularly for his English translations of numerous apocryphal and pseudepigraphal Ancient Hebrew writings, including the Book of Jubilees (1895), the Apocalypse of Baruch (1896), the Ascension of Isaiah (1900), the Book of Enoch (1906), and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (1908), which have been widely used. He wrote the articles in the eleventh edition of Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) attributed to the initials "R. H. C."

He was born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, on 6 August 1855 and educated at the Belfast Academy, Queen's College, Belfast, and Trinity College, Dublin, with periods in Imperial Germany and Switzerland. He gained a D.D. and became Professor of Biblical Greek at the Trinity College. In 1906, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy and four years later he was appointed Fellow of the Merton College, Oxford.^[1][2][3] He also became Archdeacon of Westminster in 1919, serving until his death in 1931. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.