Herbert Marsh (10 December 1757 – 1 May 1839) was a bishop in theChurch of England.

The Right Reverend Herbert Marsh
Bishop of Peterborough
Diocese	Peterborough
In office	1819–1839
Predecessor	John Parsons
Successor	George Davys
Other post(s)	Bishop of Llandaff (1816–1819)
Personal details
Born	(1757-12-10)10 December 1757 Faversham, Kent, England
Died	1 May 1839(1839-05-01) (aged 81) Peterborough, Northamptonshire, England
Buried	Peterborough Cathedral
Nationality	British
Denomination	Anglican
Spouse	Marianne Emilie Charlotte Lecarriere
Children	Herbert Charles Marsh George Henry Marsh
Education	Faversham Grammar School The King's School, Canterbury
Alma mater	St John's College, Cambridge

The son of Richard Marsh (1709–1779), Vicar ofFaversham in Kent, Marsh was born there and educated atFaversham Grammar School,the King's School, Canterbury, andSt John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA assecond wrangler and was elected a fellow of St John's in 1779, the year of the death of his father. He won prizes in 1780 and 1781, proceeded to MA in 1782 and toBachelor of Divinity in 1792.^[1]

While retaining his fellowship at St John's, Marsh studied withJ. D. Michaelis atHalle inPrussia and learned thehigher criticism. When he returned to England, he translated Michaelis'sIntroduction to the New Testament and added to it his own hypothesis on the problem of theSynoptic Gospels. Arguing from textual analysis, he advanced aproto-gospel hypothesis, a variant and modification of the contemporary claim byJohann Gottfried Eichhorn. HisDissertation (1801) deduced that there had been an original Aramaean gospel-narrative which had been translated into Greek, and had been circulated in copies into which additional information was afterwards added or interpolated. St Mark (he claimed) had had access to two such copies containing variant additions (some of which had been interpolated into those texts), and drew upon both copies when compiling his own Gospel. These same two copies each then independently received further additions (from aGnomology or Hebrew document of sayings and precepts of Christ), before one of them was employed by St Matthew, and the other by St Luke, when compiling their Gospels. He drew in the claim that St Matthew's Gospel had originally been written in Hebrew, and that when it was afterwards translated into Greek the translator was able to make use of passages for which he found existing Greek versions in St Mark and St Luke. His hypothesis, now itself superseded, in its time offered a challenge to the conventional or received explanations. It brought him under attack from the conservatives of his church, and into a published debate^[2] withJohn Randolph, then Bishop of Oxford and Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford.^[3]

He was Junior Bursar of St John's for the year 1801–1802.^[1] In 1805 he began to preach againstCalvinism in a series of sermons "in which he denounced the doctrines ofjustification by faith without works, and of the impossibility of falling fromgrace, as giving a license to immoral living",^[4] which brought him into conflict with theEvangelicals, such asCharles Simeon andIsaac Milner.^[4] In 1807 he resigned his fellowship at St John's on being elected as theLady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and began presenting lectures there on Higher Criticism. He was the first person in the theological school there to give his lectures in English rather than the traditional Latin.^[5] In 1808 he was awarded the Oxford degree ofDoctor of Divinity, before in 1816 he was appointed thebishop of Llandaff inGlamorgan, where he succeeded BishopRichard Watson. Watson was more tolerant than Marsh toward seceding Methodist clergy. Marsh was anti-methodist and "made life difficult for any of his clergy with methodist tendencies."^[6] In 1819 he was translated toPeterborough.^[1]

As a bishop, Marsh was controversial for preaching against the Evangelicals and for refusing to license clergy with Calvinist beliefs (for which he incurred the ire ofSydney Smith). He was a rigorous proponent of strict ecclesiastical conformity.

Marsh's library, consisting of 1346 lots, was sold at auction by Edmund Hodgson on 3 July 1839 (and three following days). A copy of the catalogue is in Cambridge University Library (Munby.c.115[11]).

• Herbert Marsh,A Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of the Three First Canonical Gospels (F & C Rivington, London; C. Deighton, Cambridge, 1801).
• Herbert Marsh,Letters to the Anonymous Author of Remarks on Michaelis and his Commentator, relating specifically to the Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our Three First Canonical Gospels (F & C Rivington, London 1802).
• Herbert Marsh,An Illustration of the Hypothesis proposed in the Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our Three First Canonical Gospels, with a Preface and an Appendix, the whole being a Rejoinder to the anonymous author of the Remarks on Michaelis and his Commentator (F & C Rivington, London; J. Deighton, Cambridge, 1803).

• Venables, Edmund (1893)."Marsh, Herbert" . InLee, Sidney (ed.).Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 36. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 211–215.
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911)."Marsh, Herbert" .Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 768.
• Bibliographic directory fromProject Canterbury