David Gordon Lyon (24 May 1852 – 4 December 1935) was an American

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

. He was born in Benton, Alabama, the son of a doctor. In 1875 he received his AB from

Howard College Howard College is a community college in the U.S. state of Texas with its main campus in Big Spring and branch campuses in San Angelo and Lamesa. History Howard County Junior College was established in Big Spring in 1945. 148 students be ...

in Marion Alabama. (Howard is now Samford University and located in

Birmingham, Alabama Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of the U.S. state of Alabama. Birmingham is the seat of Jefferson County, Alabama's most populous county. As of the 2021 census estimates, Birmingham had a population of 197,575, down 1% fr ...

).. He studied at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary under

Crawford Howell Toy Crawford Howell Toy (23 March 183612 May 1919), American Hebrew scholar, was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He graduated at the University of Virginia in 1856, and studied at the University of Berlin from 1866 to 1868. From 1869 to 1879 he was profess ...

, and went to Germany, where he married Tosca Woehler (d. 1904) and received his PhD from the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

in 1882, in the study of

Syriac Syriac may refer to: *Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic *Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region * Syriac alphabet ** Syriac (Unicode block) ** Syriac Supplement * Neo-Aramaic languages a ...

. He occupied the Hollis Chair at

Harvard Divinity School Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, gov ...

from 1882 to 1910, when he assumed the Hancock professorship of Hebrew and other Oriental languages. Six years after Tosca Woehler's death (1904) he married Mabel E. Harris (d. 1931). He was the founding curator of the

Semitic Museum The Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE, previously the Harvard Semitic Museum) is a museum founded in 1889. It moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1903. Description From the beginning, ...

. He retired from Harvard in 1921. David Gordon Lyon kept a diary for over 30 years of his life. All of the diaries are now digitized and soon will be transcribed into a human and machine-readable form. A goldmine of information about his times, the history of Harvard University and the field of Assyriology.

References

1852 births 1922 deaths People from Benton, Alabama Harvard Divinity School faculty Samford University alumni Southern Baptist Theological Seminary alumni Leipzig University alumni {{US-theologian-stub