Nathaniel Schmidt (May 22, 1862 – June 29, 1939) of Ithaca, New York, was a Swedish-American Baptist minister, Christian Hebraist, orientalist, professor, theologian, and progressive Democrat.
Background Schmidt was born at Hudiksvall Municipality, in the historical province of Hälsingland, Gävleborg County, Sweden. His parents were Lars Peter Anderson and Fredericka Wilhelmina Schmidt. Taking his mother's name when he became an adult, Schmidt married Miss Ellen Alfvén, of Stockholm, Sweden on September 26, 1887. She was the daughter of Anders Alfvén and Charlotta Christina Axelson Puke. Their daughter, Dagmar A. Schmidt, Cornell Class of 1918, (Mrs. Oliver S. Wright, b. 1896), lived in Rockville Center, New York, at the time of the Schmidt's death (1939). He was an avid rower, swimmer, and hiker. He lived on Ithaca's Six Mile Creek.
He received his primary and secondary education at the Hudiksvall Gymnasium, graduating in 1882. He studied scientific and linguistic studies at the Stockholm University from 1882 to 1884. In the summer of 1884 he emigrated to the United States and entered Hamilton Theological Seminary (Colgate University), from which he took his Master of Arts in 1887. In 1887 Schmidt received his Master of Arts from Colgate University, the same year he took a degree from Hamilton Theological Seminary. During 1896, Schmidt studied Ethiopic and Arabic literature, history and theology, at the University of Berlin,Schmidt, Nathaniel (Nordisk familjebok / Uggleupplagan. 24. Ryssläder - Sekretär / ) Swedish studying under scholars such as August Dillmann, Eberhard Schrader, Friedrich Dieterici, Otto Pfleiderer, and Adolf von Harnack. The Jewish Institute of Religion conferred a doctorate of Hebrew letters upon him in 1931. Benjamin N. Cardozo was the commencement speaker."Cardozo Advocates Pursuit of an Ideal," The New York Times (May 25, 1931).
Theology A few years prior to his death and reflecting on his life's work, Schmidt used a speech before the Society for Ethical Culture to note that theology, as an area of study, could survive and maintain its influence as a science dealing with religious phenomena only if it increased its level of scrutiny and found new ways of practical application.Asserts Theology is at the Crossroads; Prof. Nathaniel Schmidt Says It Must Change as Alchemy Once Did, N.Y. Times (March 2, 1931). Schmidt reserved some of his more caustic critique for Christian denominations holding to practices which no longer served the purposes upon adoption."Legacy of the Quakers," The New York Times (Feb. 9, 1903). Schmidt's theology was literal and non-traditional. He found no evidence in Scriptures for the miraculous birth of the Christ, nor did the traditional love songs of David prophesy the coming of the Messiah."Free Religion Association; Various Conceptions of Jesus Expounded at a Meeting in Boston," The New York Times (June 1, 1901, reporting on a meeting of the Free Religious Association of America).
In 1930, Albert Einstein prompted a theological discussion through the New York Times Magazine. Eight renown theologians responded to the physicist's views on religion. The Reverend John Haynes Holmes of the Community Church endorsed Einstein's view and noted that it answered one half of two essential questions in human existence. The first question, what is this world? The answer to that question is provided by "Science." The second question, what can be done with the world? The answer to that question is provided by "Religion." In laying out this analysis, Reverend Holmes noted, "[t]his is surely what Professor Nathaniel Schmidt means when he says in this recent book, "The Coming Religion," that religion is "man's consciousness of some power in nature determining man's destiny, and the ordering of his life in harmony with its demands."Professor Einstein's "Cosmic Religion": A Symposium; Eight Ministers Define Religion in Light of the Scientist's Statement (Nov. 16, 1930). The commenter then continued by noting that Schmidt's work in The Coming Religion established the theological framework for theology half of Einstein's two-question dichotomy. There is a sense in Schmidt's work of the late 1920s and early 1930s that the First World War changed the nature of people's religious beliefs. In particular, he observed that traditional manifestations of religious expression were in decline, but that the boundaries of religious expression were expanding, and "the essence of religion gaining in clarity, purity and depth."Negro Plight Held Worse Under NRA, N.Y. Times (Dec. 11, 1933). With respect to the study of the Hebraic roots of Western culture, Schmidt's final position was that the expansion of historical knowledge, a widening of the historians subject-matter reach, had lessened the importance of Hebrew heritage.Prof. Schmidt, 77, of Cornell, Dead, N.Y. Times (July 1, 1939).
Career For two years (1887–1888) Schmidt was pastor of the First Swedish Baptist Church in New York City. He resigned in fall 1887 to take a position as professor of Semitic languages and literatures at Colgate University (1888–1896). Schmidt was also full professor of Semitic Languages and Literature in Hamilton Theological Seminary. Schmidt later held the same position at Cornell University (1896–1932) for thirty-six years. He was the founder of Colgate University's Assyriology program. A year after taking his masters from Colgate, he was appointed professor of Semitic Languages and Literature. Though the teaching of Hebrew was his primary tasking at Colgate, he developed a two-hour course in the history of Babylonia and Assyria. Following his departure for Cornell, Schmidt's work was taken up by Colgate's George Ricker Berry (1865–1945).G. Wade Meade, Road to Babylon (1974) at 38.
Oriental studies at Cornell Nathaniel Schmidt's Cornell work was part of a larger early university effort to focus studies on the Near East. In March 1868, Cornell's President-elect Andrew Dickson White sailed to Europe to inspect leading institutions of agricultural and industrial education, recruit faculty, purchase laboratory apparatus, equipment, and books. Cornell Faculty appointees provided White with booklists and the Cornell Board of Trustees allocated $11,000 in February 1868 to make what became "large purchases of books at Paris, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Berlin and London". While visiting the University of Berlin, White obtained the first of several private book collections which formed the beginning of the Cornell Library. The 2,500 volume personal library of University of Berlin philologist Franz Bopp was offered for sale by the scholar's estate. The collection was rich in Near Eastern studies sources. After White returned to Ithaca, the Cornell Board of Trustees authorized the purchase Charles Anton's 7,000 volume library. The Anton library added materials on classical languages, literatures and ancient history.
Nathaniel Schmidt took up the teaching of Hebrew at Cornell in 1896, thirty years after the University committed to the teaching of subjects related to the Near East. The first Hebrew instruction offered in Cornell's "College of Languages" was in AY 1868–69. The Reverend William D. Wilson instructed. Wilson was "in charge of Philosophy, the Registrar's office, and any miscellaneous subject that happened to be demanded. Most people agreed that he was a dear old white-bearded saint; but he represented the clerical amateurism of earlier times, when godliness redeemed every lack of intellectual rigor."Morris Bishop, A History of Cornell (1963). During AY 1870–1871, Hebrew course taught by Wilson was augmented by a Persian-language course taught by Willard Fiske. The course mustered six students. It met in the evening in Fiske's study.
With AY 1874–75, Cornell sought to expand its Near Eastern (then called "Oriental") studies. Instruction was to be given in Persian, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and the other Semitic languages as there may be classes of students requiring them. The Department of Hebrew and Oriental Literature and History used the lecture system of teaching. It taught the ancient Hebrew literature and history. The notion of "Near Eastern studies" was explicitly centered around "Hebrew". Other peoples were included only in so far as the "national idea of this people cannot be studied to advantage, in its growth and development, without some knowledge of the relations it bears to those eastern nations by which Palestine is surrounded."Cornell University, Middle East & Islamic Studies Collection, History and Development of the Cornell University Library Collections on the Middle East ( 2010).
The goal of teaching Hebrew and its associated subjects as area studies was realized temporarily in March 1874 when a group headed by the New York financier Joseph Seligman provided a three-year endowment for a Chair of Hebrew and Oriental Literature and History. Seligman insisted that he chose the incumbent. He chose Dr. Felix Adler (Society for Ethical Culture). Adler took his bachelor's degree at Columbia College and his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg. He was "... young, handsome, and popular with the students. His lectures attracted large audiences and many visitors, especially among the ladies of Ithaca." His views on contemporary religious, philosophical and ethical matters made him a continual target of those who wished to attack the University. Although these attackers found it difficult to define exactly the heretical nature of Adler's lectures, in Acting President Russel's words "people talk about 'the tendency, the tendency!'"Cornell University, Middle East & Islamic Studies Collection, History and Development of the Cornell University Library Collections on the Middle East ((2010)). The Acting President found himself trying to defend Adler's right to express his views, rather than his teaching of Hebrew. After two years it was determined that systematic instruction in Semitics was not being realized. In 1876 the University dropped Adler. This insulted Seligman and relieved Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Henry W. Sage. It also induced Cornell alumnus John Frankenheimer, grandfather of Hollywood producer of the same name, to run for an open seat on the Cornell Board of Trustees, alleging anti-Semitism. Adler later founded the Society of Ethical Culture, of which Nathaniel Schmidt was a fellow and lecturer. Adler's termination left Cornell's Oriental studies program in the portfolio of Professor Wilson, who added instruction in Chaldee and Ancient Syriac.
Both the Reverend Wilson and Adler taught Hebrew from a particular social and religious perspective. Wilson was an evangelical Protestant and Adler was a Zionist. Working with them at Cornell during the same period was another professor whose approach was not dictated primarily by either perspective: Frederick Louis Otto Roehrig. Of the German states by birth, Professor Roehrig took both his degrees at the University of Halle. He then served in diplomatic, medical and language-teaching capacities within the Turkish Empire, Greece, France, and the frontier American Northwest. The Sultan of the Turkish Empire decorated him for authoring his treatise on Turkish grammar. He also aided the Smithsonian Institution with contributions on several Native American languages. Arriving at Cornell in 1869 as an assistant professor of French, he expanded the University's offerings to as vast array of Oriental languages by AY 1879-80: the living Asiatic Languages, Sanskrit, Old Persian, and Arabic; elementary Chinese, Japanese grammar (including practical exercises in the Hiragana character, etc.); Mantchoos, Turkish, the Tartar languages, and Turanian Philology, among others. By the happenstance of Roehrig's passion for Near Eastern linguistics, Cornell University developed a niche speciality within the American education market.