Lake, Kirsopp, 1872-1946

Lake taught early Christian literature and history at Harvard.

Kirsopp Lake (1872-1946) was a British biblical and patristic scholar and textual critic. He was born in Southampton, England, and died in South Pasadena, California. He was ordained into the Church of England and was curate of St. Mary the Virgin (Oxford, England) from 1897 to 1904, and was then a professor of early Christian literature at the University of Leiden until 1913. After 1914 he was a professor of early Christian literature at Harvard University. In 1919 he was appointed to a Harvard chair as Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History. He retired from Harvard in 1938. Lake was interested in archaeology and participated in many expeditions to the Near East. He visited Mount Sinai, Mount Athos, Turkey and Iraq. His excavations were cut short by World War II. In the early twentieth century, Lake discovered a textual family of New Testament manuscripts known as Family 1 (also known as Lake group). He also examined textual family Family II, and compared its text with text Codex Alexandrinus. Lake married his second wife, Silva New in 1932. Born in 1898, she was an accomplished scholar in her own right, and was a professor of Classics at Bryn Mawr College.

British-born scholar of Early Christianity; professor at Harvard Divinity School.