LAKE, KIRSOPP

Biblical scholar; b. Southampton, England, April 7, 1872; d. Pasadena, Calif., Nov. 10, 1946. After education at St. Paul's School and Lincoln College, Oxford, he was ordained (1896) to the Anglican ministry and made curate of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford. While there he wrote one of his most important works, The Text of the New Testament (1900). In 1904 he joined the University of Leiden, Netherlands, as a professor of New Testament exegesis. Three years later he published Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, in which he cast doubt on the evidence of Christ's physical resurrection. In 1914 he went to Harvard University in the U.S., becoming successively professor of early Christian literature, Winn professor of ecclesiastical history (1919–32), and professor of history (1932–37). Lake's early scholarly work was historical, dealing particularly with St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. He later did important work in textual criticism and succeeded in identifying the Lake Group of manuscripts as part of the library used by Origen in commentaries written at Alexandria and Caesarea. Among his other publications are Earlier Epistles of St. Paul (1911), which emphasizes the influence of Hellenistic religions on primitive Christianity; Stewardship of Faith (1915), which was attacked by Roman Catholics as a denial of the divinity of Christ; and Beginnings of Christianity (5 v. 1920–32), written in collaboration with F. J. Foakes Jackson, an imposing introduction to the Acts of the Apostles.

[e. delaney]