Dead Sea Scrolls professor Geza Vermes has died aged 88 of cancer.

Prof Vermes was the Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies at Oxford, best known for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewishness of Jesus.

The bereavement notice from the president of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, David Ariel, read: His scholarship … was truly pioneering and transformative. Geza was also a lovely human being and a friend and mentor to many of us. He will be deeply missed.”

Prof Vermes was born in Hungary in 1924 to Jewish parents who died in the Holocaust. After the war he was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest but returned to Judaism in 1957 when he moved to Britain. He was one of the first scholars to study the Dead Sea Scrolls when they were discovered in 1947.