Reginald Fuller, 92, priest and scholar of New Testament

LOS ANGELES -- The Rev. Reginald H. Fuller, a British-born New Testament scholar and author who wrote several books about the historical Jesus and the early Christian Church's growing understanding of his divinity, died April 4. He was 92.

Father Fuller, an Anglican priest, died at Westminster-Canterbury retirement community in Richmond, where he had been a resident. The cause was complications after surgery for a broken hip, according to a statement on the website of Virginia Theological Seminary, where Father Fuller was professor emeritus.

Known for solid critical analysis combined with what he once referred to as "a firm commitment to the orthodox teachings of the church," Father Fuller wrote more than 10 books, including "A Critical Introduction to the New Testament," published in 1965, which has been used as a textbook in some Christian seminaries.

His interest in Christology, the doctrine of the identity and nature of Jesus Christ, was apparent in his 1965 book "The Foundations of New Testament Christology," which explores how the early church developed its understanding of Jesus.

Father Fuller's "The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives," published in 1971 and reprinted with a new introduction in 1980, looks at how the early followers of Jesus came to understand the meaning of the events of the first Easter.

Father Fuller also translated works by several leading German theologians, including "The Cost of Discipleship," by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, an outspoken opponent of Nazism who died in a concentration camp in 1945.

Father Fuller was on the committee of scholars that worked on the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible in the early 1980s.

Born in Horsham, England, on March 24, 1915, Father Fuller was ordained a priest in the Church of England in 1941 and taught at several universities in Great Britain before he came to the United States in 1955.

He became an Episcopal priest in 1956 and began teaching at the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Ill. He later taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York before joining the faculty of Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria in 1972.

Father Fuller graduated from Cambridge University in England and studied at the University of Tuebingen in Germany for one year before he started his teaching career. He married Ilse Barda in 1942.

They had three children, all daughters.