Thomas Yeates (1768–1869) was an oriental linguist.

Life

He was the son of John Yeates, a turner, of

Snow Hill, London Snow Hill is a location in the City of London. Historically it was the site of one of the City of London Aqueduct (water supply), water conduits, which on days of great celebration was made to run with red and white wine, the last occasion being ...

, where he was born on 9 October 1768. He was at first apprenticed to his father, but, showing no taste for the trade, was allowed to pursue studies in Latin and Hebrew. At the age of fourteen he appears to have been employed as secretary to the Society for Promoting Constitutional Information, a radical association which numbered

Sir William Jones Sir William Jones (28 September 1746 – 27 April 1794) was a British philologist, a puisne judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal, and a scholar of ancient India. He is particularly known for his proposition of th ...

(1746–1794) among its members, but he can have held this post only a short time. Following a plan which he had formed of rendering the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christ ...

into

biblical Hebrew Biblical Hebrew (, or , ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite branch of Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Israel, roughly west of ...

, he got into communication with Joseph White, who, shortly after his appointment to the professorship of Hebrew at Oxford, got Yeates a bible clerkship at

All Souls' College, Oxford All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...

; he matriculated there on 22 May 1802, but never graduated. Though he worked for many years at this translation, and received encouragement from the continent as well as in England, the only portion of it ever published was a specimen which appeared in the third annual report of the

London Jews' Society The Church's Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ) (formerly the London Jews' Society and the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews) is an Anglican missionary society founded in 1809. History The society began in the early 19th ...

. From about 1808 to 1815 Yeates was employed by Claudius Buchanan to catalogue and describe his oriental manuscripts brought from India; and for much of this period he lived in Cambridge, where the University Press published (1812) his 'Collation of an India Copy of the Pentateuch;' the copies of this work were presented by the press to Yeates. He also, through Buchanan, obtained employment from the

Bible Society A Bible society is a non-profit organization, usually nondenominational in makeup, devoted to translating, publishing, and distributing the Bible at affordable prices. In recent years they also are increasingly involved in advocating its credibi ...

, and superintended their editions of the Æthiopic Psalter and the

Syriac New Testament Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic. Portions of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic and there are Aramaic phrases in the New Testament. Syriac translations of the New Testament were among the first and date from the 2nd century. The whole Bible w ...

. After Buchanan's death he was helped by Thomas Burgess, bishop of St. David's, who procured for him the secretaryship of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...

, and in 1823 the post of assistant in the printed book department of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, which he retained until his death. He died on 7 October 1839.

Works

In 1818 he published a work called 'Indian Church History,' compiled chiefly from

Assemani Assemani is a surname. "Assemani" is an Arabic patronymic which means son of Simeon. Notable people with the surname include: * Giuseppe Simone Assemani (1687–1768), Lebanese Maronite Orientalist * Stefano Evodio Assemani (1709–1782), nephe ...

and the reports of Buchanan and Kerr, and containing an account of the Christian churches in the East, with an ultra-conservative history of their origin. The same year he produced a 'Variation Chart of all the Navigable Oceans and Seas between latitude 60 degrees N. and S. from Documents, and delineated on a new plan;' and in 1819 a Syriac grammar, the first that ever appeared in English. He was also employed by the publishers of

Caleb Ashworth Caleb Ashworth, D.D. (1722–1775) was an English dissenting tutor. Life Ashworth was born at Cloughfold, Rossendale, Lancashire, in 1722. His father, Richard Ashworth, who died in 1751, aged eighty-four, was a lay preacher among the Particular ...

's 'Hebrew Grammar' to revise the third and subsequent editions. In 1830 he published 'Remarks on the Bible Chronology, being an Essay towards reconciling the same with the Histories of the Eastern Nations;' in 1833 'A Dissertation on the Antiquity of the Pyramids;' and in 1835 'Remarks on the History of Ancient Egypt.' His astronomical publications involved him in financial difficulties, which the Literary Fund helped him to meet.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yeates, Thomas 1768 births 1839 deaths English orientalists English translators Writers from London