CK Barrett died on 26 august, aged 94. He was not only a fine biblical scholar (and all around good guy, from what I can read) – he was also an excellent communicator. When I was studying Romans, Barrett’s Reading Through Romans was a favourite commentary amongst the students because in it Barrett presented good scholarship in an extremely readable form. Barrett was one of the people who showed me early in my theological/biblical studies that it is possible (and extremely desirable) to write so that your reader doesn’t need a dictionary and to read your writing through mulitiple times in order to follow your argument. This gave me hope that I could actually pass the subject! He was certainly one of the giants on whose shoulders we now stand (thanks to Ben Witherington via Michael Halcomb for this image.)
As an aside, I remain perplexed by the number of scholars who seem to think that the aim of writing is to sound erudite, rather than to communicate ideas – or maybe it’s because in this ‘publish or perish’ academic climate, people don’t have the time to polish their work for readability. 
I first read about this in a digg post by James McGrath, linking to his longer post on Exploring our Matrix.
[...] which is a touching tribute. Others who have commented on his passing include Judy Redman whose post refers to the debt that contemporary scholars owe him. I knew him not as an academic guide, rather [...]