With the death of Professor C. F. D. Moule the academic world has lost a fastidious scholar who combined a passion for exact truth about the New Testament with modesty and a capacity for friendship with people of very different types and ages.

After a curacy at Rugby from 1934 to 1936, he was to spend most of his life in Cambridge, first as tutor and vice-principal of Ridley Hall, 1936-44; the as Dean of Clare, 1944-51; then as Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity until 1976, when he moved back to Ridley Hall.

Moule was a masterly teacher, and generations of Cambridge students enjoyed the clarity, wit and precision of his lectures on New Testament theology and ethics. He published a series of volumes on the New Testament, all marked by freshness and careful observation. His Idiom-Book of New Testament Greek (1953), primarily a study of linguistic usage, already showed a powerful interest in the doctrinal and ethical consequences of his observations.

A number of compact commentaries and small books on the thought of the New Testament were followed by The Birth of the New Testament (1962, revised edition 1981). This acute work, translated into several European languages, remains among the most attractive of introductions to New Testament study. A sequel entitled The Phenomenon of the New Testament appeared in 1967. The Origins of Christology (1977) was awarded the Collins theological book prize, and was followed by The Holy Spirit, (1978), another important focus of his work, and the steady flow of scholarly articles included several influential ones. Some of these were collected in Essays in New Testament Interpretation (1982) and Forgiveness and Reconciliation (1998).

All these books maintain the learned conservatism of much English biblical scholarship, confident that serious historical work would tend to confirm Christian belief. But the apologetic interest never predetermined the conclusions and Moule’s evident piety was combined with a remarkable independence of spirit. He was critical of some central emphases of his evangelical tradition, rejecting impersonal theories of the atonement and sitting light to the doctrine of inspiration. He was in no sense a party man, but he remained an orthodox as well as a loyal churchman, unhappy with the criticisms of the doctrine of the Trinity ventured by some of his closest colleagues.

Charles Francis Digby Moule was born in 1908, the son of the Rev H.W. Moule and a member of a family learned both in classical antiquity and in Chinese studies. He was educated for the first ten years by his parents in China, then at Weymouth College and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After gaining firsts in both parts of the classical tripos he turned to theology, and went to Ridley Hall to be trained for ordination under Paul Gibson, who, with Charles Raven, became a lasting influence in his life.

Moule’s modesty went with an iron self-discipline and ordered inner life. He rose daily by 6am for study and meditation, and his personal devotion affected everything; above all, the way in which he did his scholarly work.

Carelessness or arrogance of any kind made him wince, and his adverse judgments could seem the more devastating because they issued from such a generous man. To practical men, too, he could sometimes be uncomfortably demanding. But he possessed deep powers of sympathy and understanding, and his gracious rooms in the Old Court at Clare were a port of call both for visiting scholars and for former members of the college and undergraduates. People of all ages and interests would come for scholarly advice, for pastoral counsel or for the simple renewal of friendship, and did not go away disappointed.

For many years he was secretary of the Clare Association, and in that capacity kept careful record of changes of address, marriages and appointments of old members of the college, events that would evoke personal letters in his own hand. He acquired a large family of godsons and goddaughters to whom he was unfailing.

Moule was a disinterested scholar who nevertheless did not suppose erudition to be the chief end of his life. Even dons could be in his company and be unaware of his great learning. He appeared as much at home in a camp for underprivileged children, or in a struggling parish, as in a packed Cambridge lecture-room full of students hanging on his words.

From 1955 to 1976 he was also canon theologian (non-residentiary) of Leicester Cathedral. He became an honorary Doctor of Divinity of St Andrews in 1958 and of Cambridge in 1988. He was a Fellow of the British Academy, 1966, and president of the International Society for New Testament Studies, 1967. Emmanuel elected him an Honorary Fellow in 1972.

He retired to Sussex in 1980, and for the last four years of his life he lived in a residential home in Dorset.

The Rev Professor C. F. D. Moule, priest and theologian, was born on December 3, 1908. He died on September 30, 2007, aged 98