LAKE, KIRSSOPP. — English philologist, born in Southampton on 7 April 1872, died in California in November 1946. He was professor of various theological disciplines at Leiden in Holland (1904–14), and subsequently at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1915–38). He distinguished himself especially through numerous palaeographical and critical investigations, above all into the Greek text of the New Testament, in which field he rendered distinguished services to biblical scholarship. Not so in the properly religious or theological sphere, since L., with a rationalistic mentality, conceived Christianity as the fusion of Jewish monotheism with the ideologies of the mystery religions, and did not recognize in Jesus a clear messianic consciousness.
A group of Gospel manuscripts takes its name from L.; he was the first to study them and to draw scholars’ attention to them. They are all minuscule manuscripts (11th–14th centuries) and are grouped around no. 1 in the series of minuscules according to the notation most commonly used (Tischendorf–Gregory). As a distinct type of text, this group was subsequently recognized and doubled in membership by von Soden, and more recent studies identified it as part of the great family known as Caesarean, and more particularly of its pre-Caesarean branch. Among all its cognates, this group 1 or λ (L.) is the one that most closely approaches the type—considered the best of all—of cod. Vat. B and its companions; hence its critical value.
Works by L.: Codex 1 of the Gospels and its allies, Cambridge 1902; Greek monasteries in south Italy, in Journal of theol. stud., 5 (1903–1904), pp. 22–41, 189–202; The earlier epistles of st. Paul, London 1911; The text of the New Test., 6th ed., there 1928; Dated greek minuscule manuscripts, 10 vols., Boston 1934–39; in collaboration with F. Jackson, The beginnings of christianity, 5 vols., London 1922–33; Paul, his heritage and legacy, 1934; Introduction to the New Test., 1937. Alberto Vaccari