Marvin Hoyle Pope

Marvin Hoyle Pope (June 23, 1916 – June 13, 1997) was a scholar of ancient Semitic languages, including Ugaritic and Iron Age Hebrew. He served in the faculty of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University 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 that created the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation of the Bible, specializing in the Old Testament.

Biography Marvin Pope was born on June 23, 1916, in Durham, North Carolina to Charles Pope and Bessie Cleveland Sorrell Pope. He attended Duke University as an undergraduate, where he said he signed up for a Hebrew language course by mistake, yet stuck it out. After earning his bachelors in 1938, he earned a masters degree in Hebrew in 1939. 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 and the Ugaritic texts found in 1928–29. The Ugaritic language is somewhat similar to Biblical Hebrew and offers a rare chance for comparison and cognates; he used this expertise to offer retranslations of the Book of Job and the Song of Songs, as well as a better understanding of how ancient scribes compressed their writings.

Pope served on the Biblical revision committee of the National Council of Churches from 1960 until his death. At first, the committee only published new editions of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) with minor adjustments, but eventually work began on a full new translation. This translation would become the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), published in 1989.

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.

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