ABBOT, EZRA:
Unitarian layman; b. at Jackson, Waldo County, Me., Apr. 28, 1819; d. at Cambridge, Mass., Mar. 21, 1884. He was fitted for
college at Phillips Academy, Exeter, N. H., and
was graduated at Bowdoin, 1840. He then taught
in Maine and, after 1847, in Cambridge, Mass.,
also rendering service in the Harvard and Boston
Athenaeum libraries. In 1856 he was appointed
assistant librarian of Harvard University, in 1871
he was university lecturer on the textual criticism
of the New Testament, and in 1872 he became
Bussey professor of New Testament criticism and
interpretation in the Harvard Divinity School.
From 1853 he was secretary of the American Orien-
tal Society. He was one of the original members of
the American New Testament Revision Company
(1871), and in 1880 he aided in organizing the
Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. He
was a scholar of rare talents and attainments.
He stood first and foremost among the textual
critics of the Greek Testament in America; and
for microscopic accuracy of biblical scholarship
he had no superior in the world. On account of
the extreme attention he paid to minute details, the
number of his independent publications was small,
and the results of his labors have gone into books
of other writers, to which he was willing to contribute
without regard to reward or adequate
recognition. His
Literature of the Doctrine of a Future Life,
first published as an appendix to Alger's
History of the Doctrine of a Future Life
(Philadelphia, 1864), and afterward separately (New York,
1871), is a model of bibliographical accuracy and
completeness, embracing more than 5,300 titles.
He enriched Smith's
Bible Dictionary
(Am. ed.,
1867-70) with careful bibliographical lists on the
most important topics, besides silently correcting
innumerable errors in references and in typography.
His most valuable and independent labors, however,
were devoted to textual criticism and are in
part incorporated in Gregory's
Prolegomena
to the
Ed. viii. critica major
of Tischendorf's Greek Testament; the chapter
De versibus
(pp. 167-182) is
by him, and he read the manuscript and proofs
of the entire work. His services to the American
Bible Revision Committee were invaluable. The
critical papers which he prepared on disputed
passages were uncommonly thorough, and had no
small influence in determining the text finally
accepted. His defense of the Johannean authorship of the fourth Gospel
(The Authorship of the
Fourth Gospel; External Evidences,
Boston, 1880;
reprinted by his successor in the Harvard Divinity
School, J. H. Thayer, 1888) is an invaluable contribution
to the solution of that question.
Of his writings, besides those already adduced,
may be mentioned: an edition of
Orme's Memoir
of the Controversy respecting the Three Heavenly
Witnesses
(New York, 1866); work upon G. R.
Noyes's (posthumous)
Translation of the New
Testament from the Greek Text of Tisehendorf
(1869);
work upon C. F. Hudson's
Greek and English Concordance of the New Testament
(1870);
The Late Professor Tischendorf,
in
The Unitarian Review,
Mar. 1875;
On the Reading " an only begotten God,"
or " God only begotten," John i. 18,
ib. June 1875;
On the Reading " Church o f God," Acts. xx. 28,
in
the
Bibliotheca Sacra,
Apr. 1876 (like the preceding,
first privately printed for the American Bible
Revision Committee);
Recent Discussions of Romans ix. 5,
an exhaustive article on the punctuation
of this passage in
Journal of the Society of Biblical
Literature and Exegesis,
June and Dec. 1883.
The four articles mentioned last, together with that
on the fourth Gospel and seventeen others, were
published in 1888, under the editorship of J. H.
Thayer.
(PHILIP SCHAFF +.) D. S. SCHAFF.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Ezra Abbot, a memoir edited by S. J. Barrows,
Cambridge, 1884; Andover Review, i. (1884) 554;
Literary World, xv. (1884) 113.
