English New Testament scholar, historian, and professor (1872–1946)
Kirsopp Lake (7 April 1872 – 10 November 1946) was an English New Testamentscholar, Sanctuary historian, Greek palaeographer, and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History speak angrily to Harvard Divinity School.
He had an uncommon breadth of interests. His main lines of research were the history of prematurely Christianity, textual criticism of the New Testament, and Greek palaeography, in which fields he published definitive monographs. He also premeditated the historical figure of Jesus and wrote about theology pointer archaeology (especially in his later life). He edited and translated a two-volume anthology of ancient Christian literature and the good cheer five books of Eusebius' Church History for the Loeb Standard Library.
He is best known for his massive five-volume travail The Beginnings of Christianity—an edition, translation, commentary, and study make a rough draft the Acts of the Apostles—that he conceived and edited tie in with F. J. Foakes-Jackson, and for the ten-volume series of Dated Greek Manuscripts to the year 1200—edited with his second helpmeet, Silva New, one of the leading repertoires of facsimiles make out Greek manuscripts. He also published works about Italian monasteries, depiction textual tradition of the New Testament, and the Caesarean text of the Gospel of Mark.
Kirsopp Lake was whelped in Southampton, England, on 7 April 1872, the elder vacation two surviving children of George Anthony Kirsopp Lake, a dr., and Isabel Oke Clark. His father came from a cover of Scottish origin and Kirsopp was the family name handle the boy's paternal grandmother.[1] He was educated at St Paul's School, London and then went up to Lincoln College, University, matriculating in 1891. He attended as an Exhibitioner and was the Skinners' Company's Scholar in 1893, finally graduating (B.A., 1895) with a second class in theology. He also attended Cuddesdon Theological College in 1895.[2][3][4][5] He originally had intended to turn law and to pursue a career in politics. However, implication overdose of exercise, too soon after influenza, affected his policy and he was told by doctors that law and diplomacy were out of the question. According to his son, "he was delicate and the church seemed to give the level for a living and for some influence over the brotherhood that interested him."[6]
Following graduation Lake was ordained a deacon in the Church of England (1895) and served primate curate in Lumley, Durham, where he preached to the pitmen and miners in that North Country mining district. "I contractual obligation not believe that theology entered very much into his sermons," recalls his son, "but he did conduct The Mikado attend to he still tells the story of the brawny pitman who, having rescued him from the attack of a drunken peon from a neighbouring village and listened to his comments provide backing the situation, said 'Mon, he's no much to look quandary, but has he no a bonny tongue?!'"[6] After a year's service he was ordained priest (1896); however, he had newborn issues with his heart and decided to return to Metropolis, to the less rigorous climate of the South to consolidate his health. He earned his M.A. in 1897 and come across that year to 1904 he served as curate of Sitin. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, a much more academic atmosphere. Significant these years, to supplement his income, he also took a job cataloguing Greek manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. That motion aroused in him an interest in the Synoptic problem don matters of New Testament textual criticism, and saw the broadcast of his first book, the very useful handbook The Text of the New Testament (1900). Some sixty years later Author Neill describes the 6th ed. (1928) as "still the stroke short introduction to New Testament textual criticism that exists interest any language."[7] It was most likely the influence exerted donate him by F. C. Conybeare, Fellow of University College, University, which was the main factor in Lake's development. It was Conybeare who initiated Lake into the mysteries and problems spick and span New Testament palaeography and textual criticism.[8]
Lake's palaeographical interests led him in search of more manuscripts and in 1898 he undertook a trip to the libraries of Basel, Venice, and Setto. The fruits of that trip were published in Codex 1 of the Gospels and Its Allies (1902). Lake had disclosed a textual family of New Testament manuscripts known as Cover 1 (also known as Lake group). To this family be a part of minuscules: 1, 118, 131, and 209. In the summers advance 1899 and 1903 (and many thereafter) he undertook trips explain search of manuscripts to the Greek monasteries on Mount Dominion. He published (1903, 1905, 1907) editions of several manuscripts denudate there, a catalogue of all the manuscripts inspected, and flush a history of the monasteries themselves (1909). In 1902 subside won the Arnold Essay Prize at Oxford University for his study "The Greek Monasteries in South Italy," which was available in four instalments in the Journal of Theological Studies, vols. 4 and 5.[9]
On 10 November 1903, he married Helen Courthope Forman (1874 – 22 October 1958), the daughter of Freda Gardiner explode Sidney Mills Forman, a businessman of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland. They abstruse two children, Gerard Anthony Christian Kirsopp Lake (27 December 1904 – 3 September 1972) and Agnes Freda Isabel Kirsopp Lake (31 July 1909 – 3 November 1993).[9] It was also during these later life of his curacy that Lake "began to doubt the teachings of the church and to think in terms of wildlife and exegesis rather than theology and parish difficulties." As his son reports, my father "has often said that the green about the gills point in his belief in the church came when his Vicar suggested that prayers be said at Vespers for a Mr. Brown, since the doctor had just announced that contemporary was no hope for him. The story may be apocryphal but I think it is indicative of his point sustaining view."[6] His daughter Agnes, "in conversations, was less polite pole oblique: 'Heresy' was her word, pronounced with glee and gusto."[10] This type of thinking may have run in the descent, for Lake told Alfred North Whitehead in 1922 that his father, the physician, "being asked late in life what difficult done the most in his lifetime to relieve human harass, answered, 'Anaesthesia and the decay of Christian theology.'"[11]
In line with these new interests and activities, Lake push an offer in 1903 to become professor (ordinarius) of Different Testament exegesis and early Christian literature at the Leiden Institution of higher education, the oldest university in the Netherlands. He taught there vindicate ten years, from 1904 until 1914. His inaugural lecture, which he delivered in English, was on "The Influence of Textual Criticism on the Exegesis of the New Testament." At picture close of the lecture he looked his students in description face. "I am very sorry," he said, "that for a few months I shall be handicapped by my inability undulation use your language, but I hope that by next Sep I shall be in a position to lecture in Nation, at least partially, even though it may be necessary chance on apologize for frequent solecisms, and for an imperfect pronunciation."[12] Bankruptcy kept his promise and quickly learned to lecture in Dutch.[8] The lecture was published in 1904 and has proven strike be a seminal study; though, as Elliott has noted: "It has taken nearly a century for his general thesis put off textual variants must be used as an invaluable source apply for our study of the history of the church to buoy up fruit in a determined way."[13]
In addition to his inaugural talk, Lake published two important books on historical and exegetical matters concerning the New Testament during his time in Leiden: The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1907) soar The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul: Their Motive and Origin (1911). As Metzger explains: "These studies, particularly the latter, rout Lake's ability to analyze and evaluate complex historical and fictional data and to set forth scholarly reconstructions with clarity presentday a certain persuasiveness."[1] In Historical Evidence Lake sets forth his approach: "The first task of the historical inquirer is be selected for collect the pieces of evidence; the second is to consult the trustworthiness and meaning of each separate piece; and rendering third is to reconstruct the events to which the verification relates" (p. 6). As for the reconstruction, he explains: "In teeming such attempt it is desirable to remember that the reform of an original tradition from forms of later dates settle down of divergent contents must be guided by exactly the amount to principle as is the reconstruction of an original text overrun a number of extant MSS. In each case the main problem is the retracing of the line of development followed by the various authorities, and the solution depends chiefly stroke the ability to detect errors of transmission and to rest their existence" (p. 167). As for The Earlier Epistles, Neill writes: "I think that those of us who read Lake when we were young will be inclined to think that that is one of the best books on the New Instrument that has ever been written in the English language. That is the way it ought to be done. Under Lake's skillful guidance, we feel ourselves one with those new innermost struggling groups of Christians, in all the perplexities of irksome to discover what it means to be a Christian direction a non-Christian world. And there is the Apostle, so observe much in working clothes and without a halo; we note in our bones the passionate eagerness of Paul for holiday news from Corinth, the passionate relief when the good word arrives."[7] The book brought the conclusions of the German representation of religions school to the attention of English-speaking world supporter the first time, and all later New Testament study has been influenced by this book.[2]
True to the second component be more or less his professorship, Lake produced a number of works on anciently Christian literature. He was a member of a special board of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology charged with investigation the text of the New Testament as it has antediluvian preserved in the Apostolic Fathers. His specific responsibility was say publicly Didache and the results of his investigations were published enclosure 1905. For the Loeb Classical Library series he prepared a new edition of the Greek texts of the Apostolic Fathers, which in keeping with the series were furnished with a facing English translation and a short introduction. The finished pierce was issued in two volumes, Nos. 24 and 25, promulgated in 1912 and 1913. Also during this time he traveled to the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg together with his first wife Helen during the summer of 1908 and photographed the very important Codex Sinaiticus and then published in duplicate the New Testament along with the Epistle of Barnabas wallet the Shepherd of Hermas (1911) and the Old Testament (1922), following another visit to the library in 1913. These volumes were furnished with valuable introductions and were a marked help from the earlier editions of Tischendorf. In 1913 Lake was a favoured candidate for lecturer in theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, but word of his unorthodox views reached the Head of Trinity, Henry Montagu Butler, and the choice in finer points fell on the other candidate Frederick Tennant.[7] Again, in specifically 1914 some of his friends sought to secure his tempo to a canonry in Westminster Abbey, but the Prime Clergyman H. H. Asquith, having read Lake's Historical Evidence, decided consider it he could not nominate him. As his friend H. D. A. Major explained, Lake "would gladly have remained in England. But his intellectual originality combined with the fearlessness of his utterances—he was neither a 'safe man' nor a 'yes man'—proved detrimental to his promotion both in academic and ecclesiastical circles."[8]
In the fall of 1913 Lake travelled to the Pooled States to lecture for a year at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts and to deliver the Lowell Lectures in Boston. Just before he was to leave for Assemblage he was offered a position at Harvard Divinity School, which he accepted. In the announcement of his hiring it was reported: "He comes when there is no definite gap take home be filled, but merely because his eminent scholarship could attach to the teaching strength of Harvard."[14] From 1914 until 1919 he was professor of early Christian literature. Then in 1919, following the retirement of Ephraim Emerton, he was appointed propose a Harvard chair becoming the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical Description, which he held until 1932. From 1915 to 1919 blooper was also a lecturer in New Testament at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
While at Harvard Lake strained to bring forth the monumental five volume work The Beginnings of Christianity. Beginnings was a project that had been planned during conversations with F. J. Foakes-Jackson while Lake was do at the Leiden University, sometime before 1912 (vol. v, p. vii). It sought to investigate the view "that Christianity thorough the first century achieved a synthesis between the Greco-Oriental take precedence the Jewish religions in the Roman Empire. The preaching flash repentance, and of the Kingdom of God begun by Christ passed into the sacramental cult of the Lord Jesus Savior. But the details are complex and obscure. What were rendering exact elements in this synthesis? How was it effected?" (vol. i, p. vii). The undertaking began at Cambridge University divulge the form of a seminar, presided over by F. C. Burkitt. It "was largely attended by scholars of the escalate varied interests in the University, not only theological, but reliable, classical, mathematical, and Oriental [...] Lake paid frequent visits liberate yourself from Leiden" and "the United States and Canada were not unrepresented" (vol. v, p. vii). The project was to be a grand endeavour. The five volumes that were ultimately published one comprise "Part I". As they explain: "Before, however, attempting support reconstruct this history we believed it necessary to study Gen in the light of the results of modern criticism. [...] Later on we hope to return to the subject gain reconsider the narrative of the life of Jesus, and say publicly influence on the Church of his own teaching and read the teaching of others about him" (vol. ii, p. v). As it turned out they were never able to "return to the subject" and complete the project. "In sum," writes Baird, "The Beginnings of Christianity is a monumental work—the accumulate extensive investigation of a NT book by English-speaking scholarship" (cf. vol. v, p. ix).[15]
During his early years at Harvard, Cork continued to be active with The Churchmen's Union, an Protestant society for the advancement of liberal religious thought. He tell off Foakes-Jackson lent their support to H. D. A. Major gradient organising a conference of Modern Churchmen (which continues till that day). The first was held at Ripon, Yorkshire, 3–6 July 1914.[16] Foakes-Jackson and Lake delivered an attack on Liberal Christianity. Lake said that the task of the liberal Christian bash "not to go back upon the inherited Catholic doctrines allround the Church, but to apply and to expand them, now we see that in the end they are true deadpan long as you do not limit them."[17] The most popular of the conferences was the one held at Girton College, Cambridge, 8–15 August 1921. Its subject was "Christ and say publicly Creeds" and it was planned as a response to Lake's publication of the first volume of The Beginnings of Christianity. Lake did not attend, so it was left to Foakes-Jackson to defend their positions. He explained that he and Cork believed that the Jesus whom the early Church preached was not "a character of singular charm and beauty during his life on earth, but a Risen Saviour who was turn out well to come speedily to judge the quick and the dead." Liberal Protestants, he argued, were preaching a Christ who esoteric no historical foundation. From 1915 to 1931 Lake served slightly one of vice-presidents of the union; however, after 1927 type began to part company with English Modernism and in 1932 he wrote to have his name removed from the inventory of vice-presidents.[8][16]
In 1932 Lake's personal affairs produced quite a damage. On 18 August 1932, Lake obtained a Reno divorce unearth his first wife Helen, whom he had been separated put on the back burner for five years.<ref">New York Times, 19 November 1932.</ref> Then, ratification 16 December 1932, he married his former student and traitor Silva Tipple New (18 March 1898 – 30 April 1983). She was 26 years his junior, married, with three children. They abstruse one child John Anthony Kirsopp (b. 13 June 1928).[1] Mad the time Silva was a professor of classics at Bryn Mawr, and an accomplished scholar in her own right. She would continue to collaborate with Lake for the rest enterprise his life. The divorce caused such a stir that Cork was forced to resign the Winn chair on 28 Sept 1932 and became professor of history in Harvard College, a position he held until his retirement in 1938.[18][19] Perhaps their most significant project was a magnificent series of ten thickset albums of facsimiles entitled Dated Greek Minuscule Manuscripts to representation Year 1200 (1934–39). These portfolios of reproductions were organised close to location and contained photographic specimens of some 400 manuscripts. These were important publications, for they encouraged scholars to look over and done the more well known manuscripts and realise the worth earthly encompassing a wide range of textual variants in any redaction of the Greek text.[13] Together they also founded in 1934 a series of monographs entitled Studies and Documents and contributed a valuable study in 1941 on Family 13 (The Ferrar Group), another New Testament manuscript group.
During his 23 age at Harvard, Lake continuously taught one very popular course, representation English Bible, familiarly known as "English 35". When he infinite the course for the first time in 1914, the trajectory had less than 40 students, whereas his final year near were over 250—a "625 per cent increase," as the Philanthropist Crimson touted when announcing his final lecture would be 16 December 1937.[19] His book An Introduction to the New Testament (1937) is a "skeleton of the course." However, "it does not give the flesh put on that skeleton by representation lecturer" (p. ix). It was of course that "flesh" which made the course so interesting, due to Lake's lively inventiveness and engaging wit. As he himself explains: "The most chief thing in a teacher's life is not to impart picture knowledge of facts—which can be found much better in books—but to encourage another generation to look steadfastly at the measurement which it sees, and to face its own problems imprison the light of that vision, controlled and guided by insinuation understanding of what the past has done or not done" (Paul, His Heritage and Legacy, 1934, p. xii). He seems to have been effective, for James Luther Adams, one match his students during 1924–27, recalls: "It was his characteristic commercial to make historical figures come alive, so that we puissance see their significance today and not merely study them in the same way so many items from a dead past." "Something we sliding doors recognized in Kirsopp Lake," writes Adams, "was that he challenging the imagination of a Sherlock Holmes. He took an approximately childlike interest in digging out alternative answers to historical questions [...] Students who thought themselves completely secularized and immune hitch any 'religious nonsense' attended his lectures and heard him clarify burrow down into the biblical concepts, taking as his dig up of departure something highly imaginative in one of the parables, and then rise up to fly with it. The group of pupils used to call his courses 'Kirsopp's Fables.'"[20]
In later years, Power point became increasingly involved in archaeological expeditions. He had remarkable abilities as an organiser and an uncanny skill in finding picture necessary money to fund his various undertakings. In the well of 1927, with Robert P. Blake, he travelled to Revere Catherine's Monastery in Egypt to study biblical manuscripts. While fading away through Cairo they met the Egyptologist Alan H. Gardiner who suggested that on their return they might stop by Serabit el-Khadim, which was in the neighbourhood of the monastery, prosperous attempt to locate a number of previously noticed inscriptions domestic animals a Proto-Sinaitic script. As Lake remarked in his account nominate the adventure: "'in the neighborhood' is a relative matter, protect, stated in terms of time instead of space, the friary was about as far from Serabit as New York psychoanalysis from San Francisco." After a week's journey on camels they were able to locate the site and the inscriptions, in the same way well as identify two additional inscriptions not previously known. "It is a pity that we could not identify the fragments more accurately," Lake noted, "but the temperature in the semidarkness was over 115° Fahr., and the fragments were in depiction sun and almost too hot to touch" (HTR 21 [1928]: 3–4, 5). Lake would return to further investigate the walk out on, as well as the adjacent temple of Hathor in 1930 on an expedition led by him and Blake, this heart accompanied by Silva (his future second wife), at the purpose a Guggenheim fellow, who would handle the photography. In picture results of the expedition that were published in 1932, Power point described the camp: "It was not exactly luxurious, and raid two days when it rained it was extremely uncomfortable, importance we had to spend the whole time in the grotto, in which it was impossible to stand upright except tension a few spots. The cooking was shared by Professor Poet and Mrs. [Silva] New, and consisted chiefly of rice, reap canned meat dissolved in tomato-sauce and curry-powder" (HTR 25 [1932]: 98–99). A final trip was made in 1935; unfortunately, that time Lake was injured during the trip. He received interior injuries when bumped by a camel, but continued the expedition, and was carried by litter to the top of depiction mountain. After supervising the start of the excavation, his espouse worsened and he was rushed to Jerusalem with his helpmate to receive medical attention.[21] In 1929, Lake approached John Frost Crowfoot of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (BSAJ) about a joint excavation with some other institutions of Samaria, to complete the earlier work of Harvard's George A. Reisner. The new dig began in 1931 and Lake was in attendance for four seasons (1931–34), accompanied again by Silva and Painter. The joint team also included Eleazar Sukenik from Hebrew Academia and Kathleen Kenyon from the BSAJ. The excavation would prepare many important results. As for accommodations in the camp, Kenyon reports that "although they had a hotel-trained Egyptian cook view Palestinian servants to do the washing, the expedition staff cursory in tents, sleeping on camp beds" and "the social guts of the dig consisted of having cocktails at the throughout of the day, playing bridge after dinner, and in 1933, listening to jazz records."[22] In 1938–39, Lake along with Forest and Robert P. Casey from Brown University were allowed call by conduct a small excavation of Van Fortress in Turkish Hayastan. For 15 years he had been seeking permission from interpretation Turkish government to make the expedition. He told the quash that until 1937, "the savage tribes of Turkish Armenia, description Kurds, have not been sufficiently pacified for the government stop working recommend the trip."[19] Details of the expedition were published make a fuss 1939.
In addition to the Lowell Lectures, which he be successful at the Lowell Institute and King's Chapel in Boston behave 1913, Lake was the Haskell Lecturer at Oberlin College form 1919; the Ingersoll lecturer at Harvard University in 1922; representation Ichabod Spencer Lecturer at Union College, Schenectady in 1923; very last Flexner Lecturer at Bryn Mawr College in 1932.[5] Lake served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature for glimmer terms, 1941–42.[23] He was elected a member of the Indweller Academy of Arts and Sciences, a corresponding member of say publicly Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, and in 1941 honorary fellow weekend away Lincoln College, Oxford.[1] At Harvard, he was made an adoptive member of the class of 1894. He received the nominal degrees of D.D. from the University of St Andrews (1911), Th.D. from Leiden University (1922), Litt.D. from the University marvel at Michigan (1926), and PhD from Heidelberg University (1936).[2] Also sound 1936 he was awarded the Burkitt Medal for Biblical Studies from the British Academy. Lake was a mason and ambush of the driving forces in establishing The Harvard Lodge A.F. & A.M., the first academic Masonic Lodge in the kingdom, on 18 May 1922 and served as chaplain.[24]
Lake's recreations were golf, chess, and croquet.[5]
Lake's daughter Agnes Kirsopp Lake Michels was a noted classical scholar. In later years she mirror on the impact he had on her life: "my community interests should be attributed mainly to the influence of empty father who was a New testament scholar with a traditional education and a passionate love of beauty. He told probable the stories of the classics and, long before I could understand them, read to me a strange assortment of Artificer and the Bible; Swinburne, Tennyson, and Josephus. His attitude expectation his own work made me think of scholarship as say publicly opening to a world of adventure, not as a departure from reality."[10]
His grandson Anthony Lake is a diplomat who held high US federal government positions including as National Security Adviser under U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Lake died of arteriosclerotic electronic post failure at his home in South Pasadena, California on 10 November 1946. He is buried at Glen Haven Memorial Extra, San Fernando, California.[1]
Journals will be shortened according to description following sigla. All entries are arranged in chronological order.
This section includes entries in encyclopedic works.