Xavier-Léon Dufour was one of the greatest liberal Bible scholars of the 20th century. As such, he often found himself at odds with the conservative Catholic hierarchy, not least with Pope Pius XII himself.

Using historical and critical scholarship to challenge more fundamentalist approaches to the Bible was not, he insisted, to deny the divine element in the origin of Scripture. But the text as we have it today was written by men at specific periods of history.And a critical study of both the men and the history, Dufour maintained with passion, was vital to an understanding of the sacred text.

The new scholarship which had its origin in the work of 19th-century German Protestant scholars, met resistance both from the Catholic hierarchy and from parts of the Protestant establishment. Dufour himself was accused of seeking to deprive priests of their faith.

He received anonymous letters, and was denounced from the pulpit by some French bishops. But with his pellucid intellect and meticulous scholarship, he took on his powerful critics.

Many of Dufour's once controversial ideas have since found wide acceptance, and the Second Vatican Council acknowledged the value of historical scholarship. But the debate over “the historical Jesus” remains divisive, and not just in Catholic circles. An important recent development in the debate is Pope Benedict XVI's 2007 book Jesus of Nazareth, which seeks to reconcile “interior friendship with Jesus” with “a figure that makes sense and feels right in historical terms”. Dufour's scholarship was matched by a charismatic personality and a stubborn passion to transmit the word of God. He joined the Jesuits at l7. His training at Jesuit faculties in both France and Rome lasted more than a decade.

His main work and lasting enrichment of biblical studies was his Vocabulaire de Théologie Biblique. Written with dozens of co-editors, this became a basic textbook and was translated into 24 languages. It injected new life into biblical studies worldwide. For it met the urgent need for a new Catholic approach to biblical studies following the seminal doctrinal developments of Vatican II.

Dufour also made himself a specialist on St John's Gospel, sometimes considered as the most difficult of all the gospels, and he published a fourvolume commentary on it. The final volume appeared in 1996 when Dufour was already 85. But the power and crystal lucidity of his intellect never waned.

Xavier-Léon Dufour, theologian and Bible scholar, was born on March 7, 1912. He died on November 13, 2007, aged 95