Joseph Henry Thayer (November 7, 1828—November 26, 1901), an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

biblical The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of ...

scholar, was born in Boston, Massachusetts.

Life

Joseph Henry Thayer was born in 1828 in Boston. He graduated from Harvard in 1850 and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1857. From 1858 to 1864 he served as a pastor—first in Quincy, Massachusetts, then in Salem—and served as a chaplain of the 40th Massachusetts Volunteers in the

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. After the war, he returned to Massachusetts to become Professor of Sacred Literature at Andover Theological Seminary, where he taught until 1882. In 1884, he began teaching New Testament criticism at Harvard. In 1870, Thayer was a member of the American Bible Revision Committee and recording secretary of the New Testament company (working on the

Revised Version The Revised Version (RV) or English Revised Version (ERV) of the Bible is a late 19th-century British revision of the King James Version. It was the first and remains the only officially authorised and recognised revision of the King James Versio ...

). Thayer's Greek–English Lexicon is a revised and translated edition of C.G. Wilke's ''Clavis Novi Testamenti'' - first published in 1841. After numerous revisions by both Wilke and his successor, C.L. Wilibald Grimm, Thayer took over the project. Thayer devoted nearly thirty years to the translation that first appeared in 1885, and updated edition in 1889. In February 1891 Thayer published a lecture in which he expressed disagreement with the position of

Biblical inerrancy Biblical inerrancy is the belief that the Bible "is without error or fault in all its teaching"; or, at least, that "Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact". Some equate inerrancy with biblical ...

, asserting that his own acceptance of various errors of history and science in the Bible did not materially detract from his belief in the overall soundness of Christianity. Thayer was president of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis for 1894 and 1895. In his 1895 presidential address, he called for the creation of an "American School for Oriental Study and Research" in Palestine. Over the next five years, the Society was involved in the establishment of the

American School of Oriental Research The American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR), founded in 1900 as the American School of Oriental Study and Research in Palestine, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based in Alexandria, Virginia which supports the research and teaching of ...

in Jerusalem. A plaque commemorating Thayer's role in its foundation was placed at the American School in 1933.''Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research'' 51 (1933), 1.

Notes

References

External links

Papers
of Joseph Henry Thayer are in the Harvard Divinity School Library 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 ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Thayer, Joseph 1828 births 1901 deaths American theologians American religion academics Boston Latin School alumni Harvard Divinity School alumni Union Army chaplains Harvard Divinity School faculty American biblical scholars New Testament scholars Scholars of Koine Greek 19th-century philologists American philologists American lexicographers Translators of the Bible into English 19th-century translators 19th-century American clergy 19th-century lexicographers