Bruce Fairgray Harris

Bruce Fairgray Harris was born on 7 March 1921, in Auckland, the eldest son of schoolteachers Arthur Leslie 'Les' Harris (1895–1984) and Jessie Melville nee Fairgray (1896–1971). His brothers were named Evan (Bruce's 'inseparable' friend), Donald, Robin and Murray. Les Harris, the son of a market gardener, served in WWI, returning to New Zealand with wounds to the head after being injured in the battle of Passchendaele, on the Western Front. 

Bruce was educated at a number of primary schools, as his father’s teaching and promotional appointments meant the family moved around the Auckland region. He had learned to read at home, with his parents teaching him phonetically, and absorbed a love for books and history. From 1929-1932, the growing family struggled through repeated salary cuts (applied across the board by the state authority), developing a sense of forced self-reliance. Bruce’s secondary education was at Auckland Grammar School (Prefect and Dux, 1938; prizes for English and Latin). Holidays were spent at the beach at Manly, where the family had a holiday cabin.  The family attended the Auckland Baptist Tabernacle,  and Christian conventions where, in 1930, Bruce responded to an invitation to accept Christ as saviour. He early shone as a Sunday School scholar and boy soprano. This academic capacity showed through in his classes at Auckland Grammar, where he considered the school 'blessed with really good masters'. Ironically, he did no history at Auckland Grammar, as he was a good student,and history was considered something for students who were no good at Science. [Professing History 1990]

In 1939, the year World War II broke out, Bruce matriculated to Auckland University College (Junior Rugby Team 1941) on scholarships (examination first in English, third in Latin and second overall). Despite his father's wish that he take mathematics (at the time Les was posted to the District High School, Ruawai), Bruce majored in Greek (with units in English and Philosophy) instead, at the insistence of the Classics Professor, E. M. Blaiklock.  'It was a very seminal time, really, thinking of the world events then. I can remember sitting in classrooms, when we were supposed to be listening to the lecturer, and looking at the newspapers under the desks.'  (Professing History, 1990).  The parallels between the rampaging of Phillip of Macedon through Greece, and the figure of Hitler rampaging through Europe, were not lost on our lecturer, who was Professor Blaiklock, to whom I owe a lot as a student and as a colleague for a long time.' [Professing History 1990] The Classics gave him a sense of history through Demosthenes and Thucydides. Furthermore, he entered university just as the question about the historicity of the New Testament documents was being taken up by evangelical scholars in the UK and Germany.  Harris' future colleagues Edward Musgrave Blaiklock (1903-1978) and Herbert Ralph Minn (1908-1996) were significant influences on students in the Evangelical Union, bringing to bear contemporary scholarship based on papyri to the study of New Testament Greek in ways which increased their historical interest. (Blaiklock had been influenced by the Scot W.M. Ramsay and the German scholar G. A. Deissmann, in particular the latter's Light from the Ancient East.) 

By 1942 young Bruce Harris had completed the BA, winning senior scholarships for Latin and Greek, while also entering army training (he opted for the artillery, as his father had) in 1941 (Service no: WWII 279154). In barracks, his Christian profession was seen as he prayed by his bed each night. His experience with the Open Brethren-established Everyman's Huts would in part be an inspiration for father Les Harris to co-found the pre-War 'Every Boys' and 'Every Girls' youth rallies in 1944 (these later spread to Australia and Ireland). Despite the disruption of conscription, he won first place in New Zealand senior Scholarships for Latin and Greek in 1941. 

In 1942, he and his brother Evan entered full time training, with Bruce being selected for further officer training. He served first with the coastal artillery on the Marlborough Sound, where military planners feared an amphibious Japanese assault. Resigning his 'conscripted' commission at home, Bruce volunteered to take a reduction in rank to join reinforcements being sent to Egypt for the NZ Expeditionary Force, which had been fighting in the North Africa campaign.  'I always remember standing on the deck of our troopship at night when we were sailing up the Red Sea, and the overwhelming sense of the historicity of the Biblical history coming upon me - that here we were not far from the Sinai, and so on.' [Professing History 1990] In Egypt he was re-commissioned, and joined the NZ forces who were transhipped to the Italian front, soon being engaged in numerous actions. By 1944 Harris was in a NZ artillery at Monte Cassino, during which he found faith and fellowship significant supports in what was perhaps the most gruelling of the NZEF engagements in Europe.  He would undertake a signals officer course, and returned to his unit as a Lieutenant, joining British forces in the fierce fighting inland from Pesaro. He suffered from hepatitis and other illnesses, spending time in army hospitals, before being sent as a liaison officer with the NZ Maori Battalion. In March 1945, he was posted to Divisional Artillery HQ, before returning to his old unit on promotion to Captain. The ability to visit Rome and many other locations - such as the Rubicon, and Lake Trasimene - 'were events in my own life that helped to shape an historical sense very strongly.' 

In 1946 a Rhodes scholarship took Harris to Balliol College, Oxford, where his tutor for 'Greats' (literae humaniores) was Russell Meiggs (and for a shorter period Peter Fraser). While in England, he was involved in evangelical Anglican circles - a family story holds that it was Harris who gave J. I. Packer (who as a year ahead of him at Oxford, but - having come direct from school - quite a bit younger) his first New Testament Greek lesson. (Albert and Meyer 2022)  'I owe a tremendous amount as a Christian to those years too, because the Christian cause was really pretty strongly represented. A lot of us were ex-servicemen, but there were also the usual numbers coming through from British schools, so we were a mix.' [Professing History 1990]  'The beauty of that training' at Balliol 'was that we were dealing with primary documents the whole time, [and] had to read our Greek and Latin sources.' In addition, students had to research, prepare and defend an essay every week - 'a very rigorous business'. His lecturers were some of the greats, and he would later model his own style upon some of them: Ronald Syme, himself a product of Auckland University, Hugh Last, the Camden Professor of Roman History; A J. Toynbee (about whose vast theories Last made 'acid remarks') and others. As a Christian classicist, he found the ancients in his Philosophy courses (such as Plato and Aristotle) quite condign, but also felt quite under ideological pressure from the British 'moderns' (particularly the Logical Positivists such as A J Ayer, who held that that "all propositions in ethics and religion were strictly meaningless") then dominating the scene. The discovery of the Puritan divines, however, both for him and for the younger circle around Jim Packer, was transformative, as was the ability to hear such leading Christian thinkers as Stephen Neill and C. S. Lewis. 

I always remember hearing C.S.Lewis speak, as I quite often did at Oxford. He addressed our College in Hall one Sunday night after dinner, and made an overwhelming case as an apologist for serious inquiry into the claims of the Christian faith, no matter what your background. He almost had fellows putting up their hands and saying 'What must I do to be saved?!' And he said, 'Oh no, oh no! you go and see your college  chaplains!' But that was a magnificent example of powerful apologetics - and one owes it to onesself, and of course every other way, to take the claims of Christianity seriously. [Professing History 1990] 

The writings of the 'Orthodox Modernist' Dean of St Paul's, Walter Matthews, 'really helped to steady me as a Christian', and he learned from the well of Scottish theology under Balliol's master, the philosopher A.D. Lindsay (Lord Lindsay of Birker), whose father had been T.N. Lindsay, the great Reformation historian. [Professing History 1990] 

While in England, at a Scripture Union Conference at Highleigh in Hertfordshire, Bruce met and later married Pamela Mary nee Williams  (in St Wilfred's Haywards Heath) on 15 March 1949. The daughter of Ernest Charles Williams and Annie Dorothy nee Goodall, Pamela was born on 2 May 1925 (White Cottage, East Grinstead); together they would have four sons (Mark Fairgray, b. 1950 while they were still in Oxford; Jonathan, b. 1953; Stephen, b. 1956; and Timothy, b. 1959). 

As 'jobs in universities were few and far between', Bruce applied for a vacancy at Auckland University College: 'I was on the high seas, I think, on the way back when I heard that I had been appointed to it'. [Professing History 1990]  From 1950 to 1969, while living at Ruemuera in Auckland (9 Spencer St), he was Associate Professor in the Auckland Classics department, and adding graduate degrees in Divinity and PhD (on Dio Chrysostom), he became a leader in NZ public education as Chairman of the Board for the group of state 'Grammar Schools' in Auckland.  Having had his vision opened at Balliol, he deliberately began to develop his theological reading (taking at BD externally through London), in addition to continuing work on classical historians such as Thucydides and Tacitus. 'And although neither of them were, of course, professional psychologists, they had an amazingly deep understanding of human nature.' [Professing History 1990] 

In the years 1957–1961, Bruce wrote a series of daily Bible Study notes for The Scripture Union, including on 1, 2 and 3 John; Acts; Galatians; Luke and Romans. He dedicated them to his parents, without whom these notes would never have been written’.

In 1960, he and Pamela again visited the UK with four of their sons, as Bruce undertook a sabbatical based around a PhD on Dio Chrysostom and his context in Bythynia. PhDs were unusual accomplishments in antipodean universities at the time, as an Oxbridge honours degree was considered sufficient for most tasks. Bruce's work on Dio was not only the first PhD in Classics in New Zealand, but it reinforced his love for the history of ideas.  

In 1970 Harris was attracted by the recently appointed E A Judge to the fledgling Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and 'was quickly recruited to comparable commitments, for example as Chairman of the History Teachers' Association of NSW.'  A contentious place in the midst of the global student revolutions and the radicalization of university staff, Judge would remember that 'Bruce Harris's great community gift has surely been to disarm contention by declining to have a war with anyone.'  [Judge 2020] 

Harris taught across many areas of Ancient History, with a specialty in Greek history, language, and thought. The first course that he was involved in (indeed founded) at Macquarie was entitled 'Periclean Athens', reflecting his attraction for the fifth century BC. His explorations of the flow of ideas of the Hellenistic period into the Roman period fed into the core unit around which much of Macquarie's ancient history curriculum would develop, 'The Classical Tradition of Thought'.  Within Judge's schema for the new school, 'the philosophy of our ancient history teaching [and research]' emphasized 'the relevance of the study of early Christianity as a great phenomenon in its own right'. [Professing History 1990] 

In 1971 Bruce Harris founded and was long the editor of the journal Ancient Society: Resources for Teachers. In 1986, a  collective tribute to him on his retirement was published as volume 16.1 (1986)

In 1979 he was elected head of the School of History, Philosophy and Politics at Macquarie University, serving two consecutive terms (1979-1984)

In 1986, still ranked Associate Professor of History, he retired from Macquarie University but remained a significant force behind the University's Ancient History extension work.  In 1987 Harris was a moving force in the foundation of the 'Society for the Study of Early Christianity' within the Ancient History Documentary Research Centre at Macquarie, of which he was appointed founding Chairman and subsequently elected President. This, his teaching, and the scholarship which developed around a vibrant school under E. A. Judge, helped make Macquarie the leading centre for Ancient History in schools, possibly in the Southern Hemisphere but certainly within Australia.

On the Queen's birthday 2020, at his age of 99,  Harris was appointed a Member in the Order of Australia  'for significant service to higher education, to veterans, and to the community'. His wife Pamela, to whom he had been married for 72 years, died after a brief illness on 28 August 2021.  Bruce would live to the age of 101, living firstly with his son, Mark, his chief carer over the last year of his life, and then in Donnington Court, in the Anglican Retirement Village at Castle Hill.

Bruce Harris died on 30 July 2022. A service was held on 8 August at  St Matthew's Anglican Church, West Pennant Hills, followed by a burial at Macquarie Park Cemetery. 

Three of Bruce and Pamela's sons (Mark, Jonathan and Stephen) became eminent teachers in  Sydney secondary schools, while another (Tim) took Anglican orders, and after serving in Sydney, was rector of St. Matthew’s Kensington, Adelaide before later (at the time of his father's death) being appointed Bishop for Mission and Evangelism in the Diocese of Adelaide. 

Select Publications:

1951: A Christian world-view

1959: The Failure of Lucretius: An Address to the Auckland Classical Association

1961: Cicero as an academic: a study of De natura deorum

1962: Plato: summary of a course of six lectures

1964: Bithynia under Trajan: Roman and Greek views of the principate.

1964: Freedom as a political ideal: a series of five lectures

1966: The moral and political ideas of Dio Chrysostom: with special reference to the Bithynian speeches

1968: Comedy in European literature

1970: Auckland classical essays: presented to E.M. Blaiklock

1983: The Idea of a university: a series of nine lectures.

Sources:

Obituary, Sydney Morning Herald 11 August 2022

Albert and Meyer Funeral Directors, Funeral Livestream, https://bit.ly/3Q8HDq1, 8 August 2022.

Harris, Bruce F. (tss by Mark F. Harris), TSS Personal Reminiscences (family holdings). 

Harris, Bruce F. with Mark Hutchinson, 'Professing History III: Bruce Harris', Lucas: An Evangelical History Review, no. 10, Dec 1990.

Judge, E. A., 'SSEC founding president honoured by the Crown', SSEC Newsletter August 2020, p. 2.

Rallies Northern Ireland, http://www.ralliesni.com/pages/history-of-the-rallies. And see NZ Rally, https://www.nzrally.org.nz/history-of-nz-rally/.

Richardson. W. F., 'Blaiklock, Edward Musgrave', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 2000. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/5b28/blaiklock-edward-musgrave (accessed 11 August 2022)