Marvin Richardson Vincent papers, 1912

Marvin Richardson Vincent was born in Poughkeepsie, New York on September 11th, 1834 to Leonard and Nancy Vincent. Both his father and grandfather were clergy in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He graduated from Columbia College in 1854, and assumed a teaching post immediately thereafter at Columbia Grammar School in New York City, teaching Classics there until 1858. After leaving this post, Vincent took up a professorship at Troy Methodist University from 1858-1862, teaching Latin and Classics.

Outside his formal training in classics, Vincent studied theology privately, and entered the ministry of the Methodist Church in 1860. In 1862 he took up his first pastoral position as acting pastor at Pacific St. Methodist Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, NY. After a year in this position, Vincent was officially ordained and became pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Troy, NY in 1863, remaining there for a decade, until in 1873 he became pastor at the Church of the Covenant in Murray Hill, New York City, replacing UTS Professor George Lewis Prentiss, and holding this position until 1887. In 1887, Vincent's dual vocations of theology and higher education joined in his becoming Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature at Union Theological Seminary, a position he held from 1887-1916, serving then as professor emeritus from 1916-22. Vincent passed away in Forest Hills, NY, on August 18th, 1922.

Vincent's achievements as a scholar were prolific. With his colleague Charlton Lewis, he translated Johann Albrecht Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament into English, opening that influential Biblical commentary to an English audience for the first time. Additionally, he produced a host of sermons and guidebooks for ministers and practical theologians, including Amusement: A Force in Christian Training and The Minister's Handbook. Later in his academic career, Vincent turned his attention to textual criticism, writing The Monster the Higher Critic, a defense of textual criticism as an approach to understand scripture, and A History of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, a large-scale survey of the field.