NOCK, ARTHUR DARBY (1902–1963), Anglo-American historian of religions. Nock, who was born in Portsmouth, England, and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, showed early promise of becoming what Martin P. Nilsson was to call him: "the world's leading authority on the religion of later antiquity." His Sallus-tius: Concerning the Gods and the Universe (Cambridge, England, 1926), a model edition of an allegorical treatise from late antiquity, is notable for its essay on the treatise in its fourth-century setting.

A fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, Nock shared some of the interests, if not all the beliefs, of a group of learned Anglo-Catholics who were producing a set of essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation. He maintained his independence and objectivity while preparing an enduringly valuable essay entitled "Early Gentile Christianity and Its Hellenistic Background," in which he anticipated much of his later work on both subjects. Quite soon...