Moses Stuart

Protestant clergyman and educator, born in Wilton, Connecticut, USA. A farmer's son, studious as a child, he graduated from Yale (1799) at the head of his class. He was pastor of a New Haven Congregational church (1806–10), and became professor of sacred literature at Andover Theological Seminary (1810–48), where he learned Hebrew and published the first Hebrew grammar in America. He also publicized German advances in biblical scholarship. He taught more than 1500 ministers over his long career.

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

He was reared on a farm;

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.

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.

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.