Marvin Hoyle Pope (June 23, 1916 – June 13, 1997) was a scholar of ancient

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese, Modern South Arabian languages and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by mo ...

s, including

Ugaritic Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...

and Iron Age Hebrew. He served in the faculty of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

from 1949 to 1986 before taking emeritus status, but continued work as a research scholar afterward. He served on the committee of the

National Council of Churches The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, usually identified as the National Council of Churches (NCC), is a left-wing progressive activist group and the largest ecumenical body in the United States. NCC is an ecumenical partners ...

that created the

New Revised Standard Version The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) is a translation of the Bible in American English. It was first published in 1989 by the National Council of Churches, the NRSV was created by an ecumenical committee of scholars "comprising about thirt ...

(NRSV) translation of the Bible, specializing in the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

Biography

Marvin Pope was born on June 23, 1916, in

Durham, North Carolina Durham ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County, North Carolina, Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County, North Carolina, Orange County and Wake County, North Carol ...

to Charles Pope and Bessie Cleveland Sorrell Pope. He attended

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

as an undergraduate, where he said he signed up for a

Hebrew language Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language unti ...

course by mistake, yet stuck it out. After earning his bachelors in 1938, he earned a masters degree in Hebrew in 1939. He went to

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is List ...

for his doctoral studies, where he studied under Albrecht Goetze and . He earned his PhD in 1949. The same year, he became a member of the faculty of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale. He would eventually hold the named chair position of Louis M. Rabinowitz Chair of Semitic Languages and Literatures. Pope became an expert on the city of

Ugarit Ugarit (; , ''ủgrt'' /ʾUgarītu/) was an ancient port city in northern Syria about 10 kilometers north of modern Latakia. At its height it ruled an area roughly equivalent to the modern Latakia Governorate. It was discovered by accident in 19 ...

and the

Ugaritic texts The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered in 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic language, Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic langua ...

found in 1928–29. The Ugaritic language is somewhat similar to

Biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...

and offers a rare chance for comparison and

cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language. Because language change can have radical effects on both the s ...

s; he used this expertise to offer retranslations of the

Book of Job The Book of Job (), or simply Job, is a book found in the Ketuvim ("Writings") section of the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Poetic Books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. The language of the Book of Job, combining post-Babylonia ...

and the

Song of Songs The Song of Songs (), also called the Canticle of Canticles or the Song of Solomon, is a Biblical poetry, biblical poem, one of the five ("scrolls") in the ('writings'), the last section of the Tanakh. Unlike other books in the Hebrew Bible, i ...

, as well as a better understanding of how ancient scribes compressed their writings. Pope served on the Biblical revision committee of the

from 1960 until his death. At first, the committee only published new editions of the

Revised Standard Version The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is an English translation of the Bible published in 1952 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. This translation is a revision of the American St ...

(RSV) with minor adjustments, but eventually work began on a full new translation. This translation would become the

(NRSV), published in 1989. He served at Yale until 1986, when he took on a position as Senior Research Scholar. He held a position of visiting scholar at the Institute Ugarit-forschung at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (, until 2023 , WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of study in 15 departments, it is Germany's ...

in Münster, West Germany, in 1986 and in 1990. He was also a member of various scholarly committees and organizations, including the

American Oriental Society The American Oriental Society is a learned society that encourages basic research in the languages and literatures of the Near East and Asia. It was chartered under the laws of Massachusetts on September 7, 1842. It is one of the oldest learned ...

, the American Society for the Study of Religions, and the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL). Pope's first wife, Helen Thompson Pope, died in 1979. His second wife, Ingrid Bloomquist Pope, survived him. Pope died on June 13, 1997 at the First Church of Round Hill in

Greenwich Greenwich ( , , ) is an List of areas of London, area in south-east London, England, within the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Greater London, east-south-east of Charing Cross. Greenwich is notable for its maritime hi ...

Selected works

* * * (2nd edition 1975, 3rd edition 2000) * Festschrift *

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pope, Marvin H. 1916 births 1997 deaths Religious studies scholars Duke University alumni Yale University alumni Yale University faculty Christian Hebraists Old Testament scholars People from Durham, North Carolina American Hebraists Ugaritic language and literature