WESTCOTT, BROOKE FOSS. - Protestant exegete, born in Birmingham on 12 January 1825, died in Auckland on 27 July 1901. He studied at Cambridge (1844–48), where in 1870 he took a degree in theology, having already become an Anglican minister (1851).
In the same year he taught at Cambridge as regius professor; in 1881 he was appointed a member of the Ecclesiastica Courts Commission, in 1884 a canon of Westminster, and in 1890 bishop of Durham as successor to his friend Lightfoot, with whom he had collaborated.
Among the works of W., some of which are of a popularizing and moral character, mention should be made of: A general survey of the history of the Canon of the New Testament (London 1855; 7th ed. ibid. 1896); An introduction to the study of the Gospels (ibid. 1860); A general view of the English Bible (ibid. 1868; 3rd ed. ibid. 1905); The Gospel according to st. John (already published in 1880 in the Holy Bible edited by Cook, and then separately in London in 1908); The Epistles of st. John (ibid. 1883; 5th ed. ibid. 1905); The Epistle to the Hebrews (ibid. 1889; 3rd ed. ibid. 1906). In these and other works W. shows himself an acute exegete, averse to bold hypotheses and highly attentive to textual criticism. In this latter field, in collaboration with F. I. A. Hort, he produced a valuable edition of the New Testament (The New Test. in the original Greek, 2 vols., Cambridge-London 1890–96; vol. I contains the text and vol. II an extensive introduction and appendix). Of a modern edition of his work, only the Vangelo di s. Marco, edited by S. C. E. Legg (Oxford 1935), has appeared.