D. Moody Smith, George Washington Ivey Professor Emeritus of New Testament, died May 10 at age 84. A memorial service is planned for Friday, May 20 at 2:00 p.m. at Trinity United Methodist Church in Durham, N.C. A reception will follow the service.

Smith joined the Duke faculty in 1965, where he taught in the Divinity School as well as the Graduate Program in Religion. From 1974 through 1980 he was director of Graduate Studies in Religion. He was the George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament from 1987 until his retirement in 2001. In 1999, he served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Moody directed the dissertations of two dozen New Testament Ph.D. students, most of whom subsequently taught in theological schools. His research centered on the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John, on which he published extensively. He also taught a wide range of New Testament courses, particularly on the Gospels and Jesus. This broader interest is reflected in his widely used introduction, Anatomy of the New Testament (7th ed., with Robert A. Spivey and C. Clifton Black, 2013), which has been in print continuously since it was first published in 1969.