MHS - Vita

Mahlon H. Smith Background

The son & namesake of a Methodist minister, M. H. Smith was raised in various parishes across northern New Jersey and graduated (B.A.) with honors from Rutgers College in 1961 as a Henry Rutgers scholar in English (thesis title: The Theology of T. S. Eliot). During his senior year he was president of the NJ Methodist Student Movement. As recipient of a National Methodist Scholarship & Ezra Squire Tipple Scholarship, MHS attended the Theological School of Drew University where he focused on NT & historical theology, graduating in 1964 with High Honors (B.D.). Primary mentors: Robert W. Funk, Carl Michalson, Gerhard Ebeling, Franz Hildebrand, Karlfried Froehlich & John Godsey.

Long an ecumenical activist, MHS spent the next year --- as recipient of Drew's Pilling Traveling
Fellowship --- at the school of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven,
Belgium), taking courses with Franz Neirynck and others. While a guest at Holy Cross College in Rome (Sept 1965) he was invited to serve as a student guide at the opening of the second session of Vatican II. Awarded the Cardinal Cushing Fellowship by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies (Toronto, Canada), MHS concentrated on theology, philosophy & history, graduating with high honors in 1976. Major mentors: Arthur Gibson, Walter Principe & Edward Synan. His licentiate dissertation on the Azyme Controversy of 1054 focused his attention on divergent eastern and western church views of Christian origins and led to further investigation of the historical roots of differences between the synoptic gospels & John.

While working on his dissertation, MHS returned to NJ to become an ordained elder in the United
Methodist Church. A part-time position at his alma mater, teaching introductory courses in Old & New Testament, turned into a career opportunity when Rutgers College established its own department of religion in 1970 to complement the older department at Douglass College across town. For the next fifteen years MHS concentrated on developing Rutgers' undergraduate religion program. When the University merged the departments of its New Brunswick colleges into a single Faculty of Arts and Science, MHS was elected the first chair of the united NB Department of Religion (1980-1985).

Returning to full-time teaching & research in 1985, MHS was invited to participate in the initial phases of the Jesus Seminar, a North American think-tank devoted to the publication of historical research on the formation of Christianity. Participation in a 1973 summer seminar in Israel on the Jewish origins of Christianity had already led him to concentrate on the problem of Jesus' relation to development of various Jewish factions in the first-century. From 1991-1996 MHS served as program chair of the second phase of the Jesus Seminar's research, focused on gospel reports of the activity of Jesus. In February 2000 he co-moderated an Internet conference of international scholars on Materials & Methodology in Historical Jesus Research.

In 1996 MHS began technical training in electronic publishing that led to the creation of websites for the Department of Religion at Rutgers University and the Jesus Seminar of the Westar Institute. His Virtual Religion Index has received Internet awards & international recognition as a premiere academic resource for research in religion. He has also authored several electronic texts for analysis of the gospels that are used & recommended by academic researchers world-wide (see Publications).

MHS is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, and a regent of the Westar Institute. He is on the editorial board of FORUM and the translation panel of the new
Scholars Version of the NT. He is on the advisory committee of Synoptic-L (the international e-mail conference of scholars researching the synoptic problem) & XTalk (an e-mail list for research on the historical Jesus & Christian origins).

Last updated: 02/10/00