(From the Obituary by Father Charles Fiore)

Father Malachi Brendan Martin, Roman Catholic  priest, widely renowned theologian and best-selling author, died in New York City on Tuesday, July 27, 1999, following a stroke.

Father Martin was born in Kerry, Ireland on July 23. 1921. He was educated at Belvedere College, and entered the Society of Jesus in 1939. He studied at the National University where he took a bachelor's degree in Semitic languages and Oriental history with parallel studies in Assyriology at Trinity College. He held degrees in Philosophy, Theology, Semitic Languages, Archeology and Oriental History from the University of Louvain, Belgium. He was ordained to the priesthood on the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1954.

Father Martin did parallel studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and at Oxford University, specializing in intertestamentary studies and knowledge of Jesus as transmitted in Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts. Additional subjects of intense study for him during his formal education included rational psychology, experimental psychology, physics and anthropology.

He did early and seminal work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, and published some two dozen articles on Semitic paleography in learned journals. The first of his 16 books was the two-volume work, The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
From 1958 until 1964 Malachi Martin served in Rome, where he was a close associate of, and carried out many sensitive missions for the renowned Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea, and for Pope John XXIII.

While in Rome he was also Professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute of the Vatican, where he taught Hebrew, Aramaic, Paleography and Scripture.

After twenty-five years as a Jesuit, Father Martin was released, at his own request by Paul VI from his vows of poverty and obedience in 1964. Following a brief stay in Paris, he moved to New York, where until his final illness and death, he continued his apostolic service as a priest.

--From the Obituary by Fr. Charles Fiore