Per Beskow was born on December 23, 1926, as son of the postmaster Erik Janzon and Elsa Nygren.[5] He belonged to the Beskow family through his grandmother Anna Beskow.[6]
Between 1974 and 1985 he was an associate professor of religious history in Lund. In 1979 he founded Collegium Patristicum Lundense together with other researchers. He also published a series of translations of patristic texts. In his work "Strange Tales about Jesus" (1983), he criticized the research of Edmond Székely, proving the falsification of his work in the Vatican archive and the Austrian National Library.[7]
From 1985 to 1992 he was a senior lecturer in church history at the Department of Theology in Lund.
From 1989 he was an employee of the National Encyclopedia and wrote about 1,000 articles in the subject of religion and continued with updates of NE's online edition. Beskow was a member of the Nathan Söderblom Society and the Science Society in Lund.
In 2011, he received the Anders Nygren Prize from the Faculty of Theology at Lund University. Artos & Norma book publisher founded 2014 Per Beskow's prize for younger academics/writers who work within the meeting between theology, society and culture. The 2014 award went to Associate Professor Jayne Svenungsson.
He died on March 3, 2016, in Visby on the island of Gotland.[8]
Publications
His Strange Tales (1985) is a collection of essays and researches into modern apocrypha, what Beskow later (2011) preferred to term "mystifications." These included investigations into Edmund Bordeaux Szekely's hoax "Essene Letter" (1937) and others. Strange Tales was one of the first books to cast doubt on Morton Smith's Secret Gospel of Mark. Smith responded by threatening to sue Fortress Press.[9]Strange Tales (1985) also covered, in English, the subject of his earlier Jesus i Kashmir : Historien om en legend (1981) dealing with claims of Jesus' travels to India. Beskow updated his researches on these "mysteries" in The Blackwell Companion to Jesus (2011).
Bibliography
Rex Gloriae: The Kingship of Christ in the Early Church (thesis), 1962.
Theological dictionary, 1975.
Tron's roads (first published in 1973 with the title Religion Studies for Class Teacher Education), 1980, 10 edition 2003.
Findings and cheats in the bible world, 1979 extended and processed edition 2005.
Jesus in Kashmir, 1981.
Strange Tales about Jesus, 1983.
Easter, 1986.
Maria in cult, art, vision, 1991.
Scandinavian Christianity in European perspective (together with Reinhardt Staats), 1994.
The Christian Church: from the Apostles to the Renaissance (together with Jan Arvid Hellström and Nils-Henrik Nilsson), 1995.
Theological dictionary, 1999.
Lectio divina: a guide to Christian spirituality, 2000.
Cistercian, 2008.
The icon: presence and source (together with Samuel Rubenson, Britt-Inger Johansson, Lars Gerdmar and Paul Meyendorff) 2011.
The Saints, 2012
Translation and commentary on patristic texts:
Solomon's ode (together with Sten Hidal), 1980.
Desert language of the desert fathers, 1982.
Melito by Sardes, About Easter, 1984.
Ambrosius of Milan, About the Sacraments, About the Mysteries, 1989.
Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis, 1992.
Egeria, Travel Letter from the Holy Land (commentary), 2006.
The Apostolic Fathers (together with Olof Andrén), 1992.
Has participated in the Swedish Patristic Library 1998–2008.
Red. by Birgitta of Vadstena, pilgrim and prophet (together with Annette Landen), 2003.
Employees in Forums Religionlex, 1996, 2006.
Scientific papers in various publications.
Articles in magazines, including in Signum and Pilgrim.
Participated in the 1980s on the cultural side of Sydsvenskan.
Sources
National encyclopedia, CD edition, 2000.
References
^Sveriges befolkning 1970, CD-ROM, Version 1.04, Sveriges Släktforskarförbund (2002).
^Bio-bibliographies de 134 Savants. (Répertoires, Tome I). p 51 Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin, Université de Liège - 1979 Per E. BESKOW Born in Stockholm in 1926. Studies at Uppsala (in Paris 1953-54 with P. Daniélou). Doctor of theology in 1962. Lecturer of Comparative Religion (religionshistoria) at Uppsala 1966.
^The Blackwell Companion to Jesus ed. Delbert Burkett - 2011 CHAPTER 28 Modern Mystifications of Jesus Per Beskow "Within Christian circles, there has always been literature that attempts to supplement the narratives of the gospels and to reinterpret the events in the life of Christ..."
