J. NEVILLE BIRDSALL was a formidable biblical scholar whose commitment to textual criticism did much to foster the discipline and to pass it on to another generation.

He was born in Leicester in 1928 and brought up as a Baptist. In 1946 he went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, to read English. Transferring to theology, he became enthralled by textual criticism. He was elected in 1952 to a studentship in divinity of Trinity College, where he studied the New Testament quotations in the works of the 9th-century Byzantine patriarch Photius. His work was published in a series of articles for the Journal of Theological Studies, for which Birdsall would write and review for 50 years.

He trained for the Baptist pastorate in Cambridge, and while serving congregations in Harlow, Thaxted, Hertford and Coningsby, did part-time doctoral research at the University of Nottingham into an important 9th-century manuscript of Paul, containing comments claiming a descent from the school of Origen in the 3rd century.

A common pattern with the Photius research emerged — both studies required thorough knowledge of Greek from several periods, of early Christian and Byzantine history, and of Greek palaeography as well as expertise in evaluating variant readings. This work was completed in 1959, and parts were published.

In 1956 he was appointed a lecturer at the University of Leeds; in 1961 he moved to the University of Birmingham, where he stayed until his retirement in 1986. These 25 years saw considerable changes to the university and the department of theology. Birdsall made notable contributions to both as a stalwart of the Association of University Teachers. He was president of the Birmingham branch at the time of a sit-in in 1968, and showed wisdom and courage in some difficult situations, resisting pressure from extremists while representing to the university the importance of responding positively to the situation.

In departmental debates about the scope and requirements of a theology degree, he championed traditional linguistic and historical skills in a context of new concepts of the curriculum. It is to his and his colleagues’ credit that the department today can boast that it preserves both visions intact. In 1983 he was appointed Professor of New Testament studies and textual criticism.

Birdsall had a great interest in oriental languages. He liked to say that he learnt a new one when each of his four children was born. It was with Georgian, a language preserving ancient and fascinating Christian materials, that he became most closely associated. He made a series of significant contributions to our knowledge of Georgian and Armenian literature, in particular the forms of New Testament text on which Georgian versions were based. In 1965-66 he was visiting associate professor of Caucasian languages at the University of California, Los Angeles, lecturing particularly in Georgian. He was also a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society.

In the early 1970s these interests took a back seat when he was appointed executive editor of the International Critical Greek New Testament Project. This Anglo-American project had been collating variant readings in the Gospel of Luke from several hundred Greek manuscripts and early translations, but was in the doldrums. Taking a three-year absence, Birdsall knocked a vast deal of material into publishable shape. The volumes were published under his successor Keith Elliott (1984 and 1987), but his contribution and the standards he had set himself were essential to the undertaking.

He and his wife Irene had at one time planned to enter the mission field, but academe overtook that ambition. Nevertheless, the desires to work for the spread of the Christian message and to support developing countries remained. They established an education fund for children in the Saki region of Nigeria with which they had formed strong links. As a token of gratitude for this, he was honoured by the Okere of Saki, Uba Amibola Oyedokun II, who invested him with the title of “Alawajoye of Saki” in 2001.

Even in retirement, Birdsall continued to attend conferences, notably the Oxford Patristics Conference, Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas and the Birmingham Colloquia on the textual criticism of the New Testament.

He was a man of fierce loyalty to his discipline. He was not afraid of an argument, and although tenacious was able to take a point or change his mind. He had a wide range of interests, and was extremely clubbable. He also showed courage in adversity, when Irene died after a long illness in 1998, and in his own final illness, lecturing impressively in Birmingham just a few weeks before his death.

He published no book, except for editing a memorial volume for his teacher R. P. Casey and for his contribution to the Gospel of Luke. But he published 100 articles, many of them the fruit of the kind of primary research which requires many months of study, and was a great writer of immensely detailed and frequently trenchant reviews, in which he not only retraced the author's steps, but often undertook additional journeys. A selection of his articles was in preparation with his assistance, and will appear this year.

J. Neville Birdsall, New Testament scholar, was born on March 11, 1928. He died on July 1, 2005, aged 77.