Background
Nathaniel was born on May 22, 1862 at Hudiksvall, Sweden, the second son and third of five children of Lars Peter Anderson and Fredrika Wilhelmina Schmidt. His father was a fur trader, a religious liberal, and a prodigious reader.
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Nathaniel was born on May 22, 1862 at Hudiksvall, Sweden, the second son and third of five children of Lars Peter Anderson and Fredrika Wilhelmina Schmidt. His father was a fur trader, a religious liberal, and a prodigious reader.
After studying for two years (1882 - 84) at Stockholm University, young Schmidt came to America and spent three years at Colgate (then called Madison) University, Hamilton, New York, from which he received the degree of Master of arts in 1887. He studied at the University of Berlin in 1890.
The Jewish Institute of Religion in 1931 awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.
Schmidt was offer of the ministry of the Swedish Baptist Church in New York in the fall of 1887. When in 1888 he was offered a professorship at Colgate he decided to remain permanently in America. For eight years, except for a period of study at the University of Berlin, he taught at Colgate as professor of Semitic languages and literatures.
In 1896 he began thirty-six years of service as professor of Semitic languages and oriental history at Cornell University. During the summers of 1925-35 he also gave graduate courses at Columbia University. Schmidt spent the year 1904-05 in Palestine as director of the recently founded American school of archeology at Jerusalem (later incorporated as the American School of Oriental Research).
While in Palestine he completed his major books, The Prophet of Nazareth (1905), a very thorough study of the life and teachings of Jesus with a full discussion of the sources, Schmidt's Ibn Khaldun: Historian, Sociologist, Philosopher (1930), a study of a fourteenth-century Arab historian who attempted to establish a philosophy of history.
Besides his books Schmidt contributed extensively to encyclopedias, notably to the second edition of the New International Encyclopedia. His article on Jeremiah in the Encyclopedia Biblica was widely known. A visionary side of his nature found expression in The Coming Religion (1930).
He served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis in 1914 and of the American Oriental Society in 1931.
In spite of his rather advanced views on questions of biblical criticism, Schmidt was in great demand as a lecturer. He retired from active teaching at Cornell in 1932 and died of cancer at his home in Ithaca seven years later, after protracted illness.
Nathaniel Schmidt's exploration of the Negeb and the region of Kadesh Barnea was a pioneer enterprise at a time when Palestinian archeology was in its infancy. He proposed the identification of the site of Kadesh Barnea with Tell el Qudeirat, which later became generally accepted. His main works: The Prophet of Nazareth (1905), Ibn Khaldun: Historian, Sociologist, Philosopher (1930) were pioneering examples of the modern approach to Semitic studies. Besides, he wrote more than 1, 500 articles in New International Encyclopedia.
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Nathaniel Schmidt was a progressive Democrat, noted for his anti-imperialist and pacifist public positions. At this death, he was most remembered for his position on the need to democratize the League of Nations and the need to forgive war debts accumulated by European powers during the First World War.
Schmidt attempted to prove that Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah and that he did not use the term "Son of Man" with reference to himself.
Nathaniel Schmidt had a remarkable ability to combine solid and intelligent scholarship with clear and interesting public exposition. Erect and dignified, but cordial, with a manner of controlled enthusiasm and with flashing eyes which those who knew him did not forget, he was an impressive speaker and a kindly teacher.
Returning to Sweden, on September 26 of that year Nathaniel married Ellen Alfvén of Stockholm, sister of the composer Hugo Alfvén. They had two children, Dagmar Alfvén and Thord Alfvén.
