32 Facts About Kirsopp Lake

Kirsopp Lake was an English New Testament scholar, Church historian, Greek palaeographer, and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School.

Kirsopp Lake studied the historical figure of Jesus and wrote about theology and archaeology.

Kirsopp Lake 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.

Kirsopp Lake 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.

Kirsopp Lake's father came from a family of Scottish origin and Kirsopp was the family name of the boy's paternal grandmother.

Kirsopp Lake was educated at St Paul's School, London and then went up to Lincoln College, Oxford, matriculating in 1891.

Kirsopp Lake originally had intended to read law and to pursue a career in politics.

Kirsopp Lake had discovered a textual family of New Testament manuscripts known as Family 1.

Kirsopp Lake published editions of several manuscripts uncovered there, a catalogue of all the manuscripts inspected, and even a history of the monasteries themselves.

In line with these new interests and activities, Kirsopp Lake accepted an offer in 1903 to become professor of New Testament exegesis and early Christian literature at the Leiden University, the oldest university in the Netherlands.

Kirsopp Lake taught there for ten years, from 1904 until 1914.

True to the second component of his professorship, Kirsopp Lake produced a number of works on early Christian literature.

Kirsopp Lake was a member of a special committee of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology charged with investigating the text of the New Testament as it has been preserved in the Apostolic Fathers.

In 1913 Kirsopp Lake was a favoured candidate for lecturer in theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, but word of his unorthodox views reached the Master of Trinity, Henry Montagu Butler, and the choice in consequence fell on the other candidate Frederick Tennant.

Kirsopp Lake did not attend, so it was left to Foakes-Jackson to defend their positions.

From 1915 to 1931 Kirsopp Lake served as one of vice-presidents of the union; however, after 1927 he began to part company with English Modernism and in 1932 he wrote to have his name removed from the list of vice-presidents.

On 18 August 1932, Kirsopp Lake obtained a Reno divorce from his first wife Helen, whom he had been separated from for five years.

Kirsopp Lake was 26 years his junior, married, with three children.

Kirsopp Lake would continue to collaborate with Lake for the rest of his life.

The divorce caused such a stir that Kirsopp Lake was forced to resign the Winn chair on 28 September 1932 and became professor of history in Harvard College, a position he held until his retirement in 1938.

In later years, Kirsopp Lake became increasingly involved in archaeological expeditions.

Kirsopp Lake had remarkable abilities as an organiser and an uncanny skill in finding the necessary money to fund his various undertakings.

Kirsopp Lake received internal injuries when bumped by a camel, but continued the journey, and was carried by litter to the top of the mountain.

In 1929, Lake approached John Winter Crowfoot of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem 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 Kirsopp Lake was there for four seasons, accompanied again by Silva and Blake.

Kirsopp Lake was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a corresponding member of the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, and in 1941 honorary fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford.

Lake's daughter Agnes Kirsopp Lake Michels was a noted classical scholar.

Kirsopp Lake told me the stories of the classics and, long before I could understand them, read to me a strange assortment of Browning and the Bible; Swinburne, Tennyson, and Josephus.

Kirsopp Lake's grandson Anthony Lake is a diplomat who held high US federal government positions including as National Security Advisor under US President Bill Clinton.

Kirsopp Lake died of arteriosclerotic heart failure at his home in South Pasadena, California on 10 November 1946.

Kirsopp Lake is buried at Glen Haven Memorial Park, San Fernando, California.