Kirsopp Lake

Kirsopp Lake (7 April 1872 – 10 November 1946) was an English New Testament scholar, Church historian, Greek palaeographer, and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School.

He had an uncommon breadth of interests. His main lines of research were the history of early Christianity, textual criticism of the New Testament, and Greek palaeography, in which fields he published definitive monographs. He also studied the historical figure of Jesus and wrote about theology and archaeology (especially in his later life). He edited and translated a two-volume anthology of ancient Christian literature and the first five books of Eusebius' Church History for the Loeb Classical Library.

He is best known for his massive five-volume work The Beginnings of Christianity—an edition, translation, commentary, and study of the Acts of the Apostles—that he conceived and edited with F. J. Foakes-Jackson, and for the ten-volume series of Dated Greek Manuscripts to the year 1200—edited with his second wife, Silva New, one of the leading repertoires of facsimiles of Greek manuscripts. He also published works about Italian monasteries, the textual tradition of the New Testament, and the Caesarean text of the Gospel of Mark.

Kirsopp Lake was born in Southampton, England, on 7 April 1872, the elder of two surviving children of George Anthony Kirsopp Lake, a physician, and Isabel Oke Clark. His father came from a family of Scottish origin and Kirsopp was the family name of the boy's paternal grandmother. He was educated at St Paul's School, London and then went up to Lincoln College, Oxford, 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. He originally had intended to read law and to pursue a career in politics. However, an overdose of exercise, too soon after influenza, affected his heart and he was told by doctors that law and politics were out of the question. According to his son, "he was delicate and the church seemed to give the opportunity for a living and for some influence over the society that interested him."

Following graduation Lake was ordained a deacon in the Church of England (1895) and served as curate in Lumley, Durham, where he preached to the pitmen and miners in that North Country mining district. "I do not believe that theology entered very much into his sermons," recalls his son, "but he did conduct The Mikado and he still tells the story of the brawny pitman who, having rescued him from the attack of a drunken navvy from a neighbouring village and listened to his comments on the situation, said 'Mon, he's no much to look at, but has he no a bonny tongue?!'" After a year's service he was ordained priest (1896); however, he had further issues with his heart and decided to return to Oxford, to the less rigorous climate of the South to improve his health. He earned his M.A. in 1897 and from that year to 1904 he served as curate of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford, a much more academic atmosphere. During these years, to supplement his income, he also took a job cataloguing Greek manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. That activity aroused in him an interest in the Synoptic problem and matters of New Testament textual criticism, and saw the publication of his first book, the very useful handbook The Text of the New Testament (1900). Some sixty years later Stephen Neill describes the 6th ed. (1928) as "still the best short introduction to New Testament textual criticism that exists in any language." It was most likely the influence exerted over him by F. C. Conybeare, Fellow of University College, Oxford, which was the main factor in Lake's development. It was Conybeare who initiated Lake into the mysteries and problems of New Testament palaeography and textual criticism.

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 Rome. The fruits of that trip were published in Codex 1 of the Gospels and Its Allies (1902). Lake had discovered a textual family of New Testament manuscripts known as Family 1 (also known as Lake group). To this family belong minuscules: 1, 118, 131, and 209. In the summers of 1899 and 1903 (and many thereafter) he undertook trips in search of manuscripts to the Greek monasteries on Mount Athos. He published (1903, 1905, 1907) editions of several manuscripts uncovered there, a catalogue of all the manuscripts inspected, and even a history of the monasteries themselves (1909). In 1902 he won the Arnold Essay Prize at Oxford University for his study "The Greek Monasteries in South Italy," which was published in four instalments in the Journal of Theological Studies, vols. 4 and 5.

On 10 November 1903, he married Helen Courthope Forman (1874 – 22 October 1958), the daughter of Freda Gardiner and Sidney Mills Forman, a businessman of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland. They had 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). It was also during these later years of his curacy that Lake "began to doubt the teachings of the church and to think in terms of history and exegesis rather than theology and parish difficulties." As his son reports, my father "has often said that the turning 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 there was no hope for him. The story may be apocryphal but I think it is indicative of his point of view." His daughter Agnes, "in conversations, was less polite and oblique: 'Heresy' was her word, pronounced with glee and gusto." This type of thinking may have run in the family, for Lake told Alfred North Whitehead in 1922 that his father, the physician, "being asked late in life what had done the most in his lifetime to relieve human suffering, answered, 'Anaesthesia and the decay of Christian theology.'"

In line with these new interests and activities, Lake accepted an offer in 1903 to become professor (ordinarius) of New Testament exegesis and early Christian literature at the Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands. He taught there for 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 the close of the lecture he looked his students in the face. "I am very sorry," he said, "that for a few months I shall be handicapped by my inability to use your language, but I hope that by next September I shall be in a position to lecture in Dutch, at least partially, even though it may be necessary to apologize for frequent solecisms, and for an imperfect pronunciation." He kept his promise and quickly learned to lecture in Dutch. The lecture was published in 1904 and has proven to be a seminal study; though, as Elliott has noted: "It has taken nearly a century for his general thesis that textual variants must be used as an invaluable source for our study of the history of the church to bear fruit in a determined way."