Moses Stuart

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Moses Stuart (March 26, 1780 - January 4, 1852), American biblical scholar, was born in Wilton, Connecticut.

He was reared on a farm; graduated with highest honours at Yale in 1799; in 1802 was admitted to the Connecticut bar and was appointed as a tutor at Yale, where he remained for two years; and in 1806 he became the pastor of the Centre (Congregational) Church of New Haven. In 1810 he was appointed professor of sacred literature in the Andover Theological Seminary, organized in 1808.

Here he succeeded Eliphalet Pearson (1752-1826), the first preceptor of the Phillips (Andover) Academy and in 1786-1806 professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages at Harvard. Stuart himself then knew hardly more than the elements of Hebrew and not much more Greek than Hebrew; in 1801-12 he prepared for the use of his students a Hebrew grammar which they copied day by day from his manuscript; in 1813 he printed his Grammar, which appeared in an enlarged form, with a copious syntax and praxis, in 1821, and was republished in England by Dr Pusey in 1831.

He gradually made the acquaintance of German works in hermeneutics, first Schleusner, Seiler and Gesenius, and taught himself German, arousing much suspicion and distrust among his colleagues by his unusual studies. But his recognition soon came, partly as a result of his Letter to Dr Channing on the Subject of Religious Liberty (1830), but more largely through the growing favour shown to German philology and critical methods. In 1848 he resigned his chair at Andover. He died in Andover on January 4th, 1852.

He has been called the father of exegetical studies in America. He contributed largely by his teaching to the renewal of foreign missionary zeal--of his 1500 students more than 100 became foreign missionaries, among them such skilled translators as Adoniram Judson, Elias Riggs and William G Schauffler.

Among his more important publications were:

  • Winer's Greek Grammar of the New Testament (1825), with Edward Robinson
  • Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (1827-1828)
  • Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1832)
  • Commentary on the Apocalypse (1845)
  • Miscellanies (1846)
  • Gesenius's Hebrew Grammar (1846) a version which involved Stuart in a long controversy with T Conant, the earlier, and possibly more scholarly, translator of Gesenius
  • Commentary on Ecclesiastes (1851)
  • Commentary on the Book of Proverbs (1852)

See the memorial sermons by Edwards Amasa Park (Boston, 1852) and William Adams (New York, 1852).

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

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