Dr Rex A. Mason, who died on 17 February 2025 at the age of 98, was a distinguished scholar of the Old Testament, who also spent periods in the local church as a Baptist minister. Indeed, his writing and teaching as an academic was imbued with the same ease and warmth of manner, personal concern for the individual, and light touch of humour that he brought to his pastoral work. Students at Regent’s from 1975 to 1993 will without doubt think of him not just as a tutor but as a friend, and will remember the hospitality offered by him and his delightful wife Audrey (a graduate of Lady Margaret Hall and teacher of Modern Languages). Audrey herself died in August 2023 after more than 70 very happy years of marriage. Wherever Rex was, there was laughter to be found, as well as acute thinking. It was his past students who wanted (even demanded) his portrait in Helwys Hall, and one of them commissioned it.

After service in the Royal Navy at the end of World War II, Rex read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, when one of his tutors was C. S. Lewis. He prepared for ministry by taking the advanced degree of B.D. at Regent’s Park College (left 1951), and after a pastorate in central London served as minister of Upminster Baptist Church from 1954 to 1957, where the author of this note received his first theological education by listening to his talks to children at the age of seven. After serving as a local minister in Cardiff, Rex taught at Spurgeon’s College, London from 1965–1975, during which time he took a PhD at King’s College, London. From there he came to Regent’s as Fellow in Hebrew and Old Testament Studies and Senior Tutor, and was also University Lecturer and lecturer at Mansfield College. He served as Chair of the Board of the Faculty of Theology from 1988-1990.

Rex was a renowned specialist in post-exilic Judaism: among his books was Preaching the Tradition, in which he developed a view of the Israelite prophets as ‘re-preaching’ prophetic words from the past for new generations, a thesis that both reflected his own experience as a preacher of some brilliance, and which attracted considerable interest in the community of scholars of the Hebrew Bible. He received a book of essays in his honour on his seventieth birthday, was elected President of the Society for Old Testament Studies in 1997 and not long afterwards was honoured with the degree of Doctor of Divinity by the University of Oxford for his published work. Another Oxford scholar of distinction in the Old Testament, John Barton, once rightly remarked that “there are many people who appreciate his particular genius for combining deep seriousness with glorious hilarity”.

Dr Mason’s memorial service will be held on Wednesday 23rd April at 2pm at Sutton Baptist Church.

Written by Prof Paul S. Fiddes