Robert M. Grant, influential historian of ancient Christianity, 1917-2014

Robert McQueen Grant, whose incisive studies of ancient Christianity made him one of his field’s most influential scholars, died June 10 at his home in Hyde Park. He was 96.

Grant was the Carl Darling Buck Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he taught from 1953 until his retirement in 1988.

A prolific and widely respected theologian, Grant wrote more than 30 books and numerous articles over a career that spanned more than six decades.