Abbot, Ezra

S.T.D. ( 13 Harvard, 1872), LL.D. (Yale, 1869, Bowdoin, 1878), Unitarian layman; b. at Jackson, Waldo County, Me., April 28, 1819; d. at Cambridge, Ma ., March 21, 1884, and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, near Boston. He was fitted for college at Phillips Academy, at Exeter (N.H.), and graduated at Bowdoin College, Brunswick (Me.), 1840. He then taught school in Maine until 1847, when he removed to Cambridge (Ma .). He taught the high school at Cambridge port, and also rendered service in the Harvard University and Boston Athenaeum libraries. In 1856 he was appointed a istant librarian of Harvard University. His studies had long been given to the Greek New Testament, and in 1872 he became Bu ey profe or of New-Testament criticism and interpretation in the Harvard Divinity School, and so remained until his death. He was the recipient of many testimonials to his scholarship. In 1852 he was elected a member of the American Oriental Society, and since 1853 was its recording secretary; and in 1861 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was University lecturer on the textual criticism of the New Testament, in 1871. He was one of the original members of the American New-Testament Revision Company. In 1880 he aided in organizing the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis. He belonged also to the Harvard Biblical Club. He was tendered the degree of D.D. by the University of Edinburgh at its tercentenary (1884), but died shortly before the date of its celebration. Dr. Abbot, who bore his name Ezra not in vain, was a scholar of rare talents and attainments, who would have done honor to any nation and any university. He was the first textual critic of the Greek Testament in America, and for microscopic accuracy of biblical scholarship he had no superior in the world. His accuracy was proverbial among his friends. He would have accomplished more if he had been le painstaking in minute details. Hence he has hardly done himself justice in his publications; but the results of his labors have gone into other books, to which he was willing to contribute without regard to reward, being satisfied if only the work was done, no matter by whom. He was the very embodiment of the unselfishne of scholarship. His Literature of the Doctrine of the Future Life, first published as an Appendix to Alger's History of the Doctrine of the Future Life (1864), and afterwards separately, is a model of bibliographical accuracy and completene , and embraces over fifty three hundred titles; while Gra e's Bibliotheca Psychologic a (1845) contains only ten hundred and twenty-five. He enriched Smith's Bible Dictionary (Am. ed., 1867-70, 4 vols.) with careful bibliographical lists on the most important topics. His most valuable and independent labors, however, were devoted to textual criticism, and are incorporated in Dr. Gregory's Prolegomena to the Ed. viii. critic a major of Tischendorf's Greek Testament. He followed the preparation of this work with the deepest interest till his last sickne , but died a few months before the first volume appeared (Leipzig, 1884). The chapter De Versibus (pp. 167-182) is by him, and he read the MS. and proof of all the rest. Dr. Gregory lost in him, as he says, " a constant and proven guide, counsellor, and support." Oscar von Gebhardt, the editor of Tischendorf's latest text, declares Abbot's lo to biblical science irreparable. " We all feel it who labor in the same field." His 'services to the American Bible-Revision Committee were invaluable. He attended the monthly meetings from 1871 to 1881 most punctually, and was always thoroughly prepared. The critical papers which he prepared on disputed pa ages, at the request of the N. T. Company, and which were forwarded from time to time to the British Company, were uncommonly thorough, and had no small influence in determining the text finally accepted. As a Unitarian, he differed on some points from his fellow-revisers; but he had the most delicate regard for their convictions, never obtruded his own, sought only the truth, and as his friend and succe or, Dr. Thayer, says in his memorial paper adopted by the Committee, "his Christ like temper rendered him a brother beloved, and lends a heavenly lustre to his memory." His defence of the Johannean Authorship of the Fourth Gospel (1880, pp. 104) is an invaluable contribution to the solution of that great question: it is the best within the limits of external evidence, and makes one regret that he did not complete it by the internal evidence, which he thought would require two volumes. Godet (in the third ed. of his Com. on the Gospel of St. John, I. 38) says of Abbot's book: " Ce travail me para it epuiser la matiere. Con nai ance complete des discu ions modernes, etude appro fon die des temoignages du 11° siecle, mesure et nettete dans le jugement, rien n'y manque." Personally, Dr. Abbot was a kind-hearted, modest, courteous, disinterested, amiable, devout, and conscientious Christian gentleman. From the many testimonials to his worth as a scholar and a man, which are published in a memorial School (Cambridge, 1884), we shall select a few. Ex-President Dr. Woolsey, who was a ociated with him for ten years in the Bible-Revision Committee: " My acquaintance with him during our revision-work gave me profound respect for him as a man as well as a scholar. He was indeed a most admirable man, and one whom it was a great privilege to know. His kindne to everybody who wanted his help was unsurpa ed by that of anybody I ever met with. He has had my full confidence, admiration, and respect beyond most men I ever knew." Dr. Sanday of Oxford: " For clearne , accuracy, and precision of detail, I do not think he can have had a rival on either side of the Atlantic; but it was evident that they were qualities which were moral as well as intellectual. My sense of his lo is compounded of gratitude and admiration, and of the deepest regret that such a career should be closed." Dr. Westcott, Canon of Westminster: "It is the simple truth to say that (as far as I know) no scholar in America was superior to him in exactne of knowledge, breadth of reading, perfection of candor, and devotion to truthfulne of judgment. No eye was keener than his, and no one could be more ready to place all his powers at the service of others with spontaneous generosity." Dr. Abbot's name will ever occupy an honorable place among the few patient and self-denying scholars who have devoted the strength of their lives to the restoration of the pure text of the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour. Of his writings, besides those already spoken of, may be mentioned, A Glimpse of Glory (art. in Christian Register, July 27, 1861); edition of Onne's Memoir of the Controversy respecting the Three Heavenly Witne es, New York, 1866; work upon G-. R. Noyes's (posthumous) Translation of the N. T. from the Greek text of Tischendorf, New York, 1869; work upon C. F. Hudson's Greek and English Concordance of the N. T. (furnished appendix and supplementary collation of Tischendorf's ed. VIII., and perfected subsequent editions till 1882); The Late Profe or Tischendorf (art. in Unitarian Review, March, 1875); On the reading " an only begotten God," or " God only begotten," John i. 18 (art. in the Unitarian Revieiu, June, 1875, first privately printed for the Americ 14 an Bible-Revision Committee); On the reading " Church of God," Acts xx. 28 (art. in Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1876, first privately printed for the American Bible- Revision Committee); The New-Testament Text (art. in Sunday-school World, October, 1878, repub. in Anglo-American Bible Revision, New York, 1879); The Gospels in the New Revision (art. in Sunday school Times, May 28, June 4, June 11, 1881); Bible Text (art. by Tischendorf and von Gebhardt in Herzog, condensed Eng. translation revised and supplemented for the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia, New York, 1882); Recent Disci c ions of Romans ix. 5 (an exhaustive art. on the punctuation of this pa age in Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, June and December, 1883). See Ezra Abbot [edited by Rev. S. J. Barrows], Cambridge, 1884. PHILIP SCHAFF.