Education

He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1840.

Career

In 1847, at the request of Professor Andrews Norton, he went to Cambridge, where he was principal of a public school until 1856. He was assistant librarian of Harvard University from 1856 to 1872, and planned and perfected an alphabetical card catalog, combining many of the advantages of the ordinary dictionary catalogs with the grouping of the minor topics under more general heads, which is characteristic of a systematic catalogue.

From 1872 until his death he was Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Harvard Divinity School.

Abbot"s studies were chiefly in Oriental languages and textual criticism of the New Testament, though his work as a bibliographer showed such results as the exhaustive list of writings (5300 in all) on the doctrine of the future life, appended to West. R. Alger"s History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, as it has prevailed in all Nations and Ages (1862), and published separately in 1864. Abbot"s publications, though always of the most thorough and scholarly character, were to a large extent dispersed in the pages of reviews, dictionaries, concordances, texts edited by others, Unitarian controversial treatises, et cetera

However, he took a more conspicuous and personal part in the preparation (with Baptist scholar Horatio Balch Hackett) of the enlarged American edition of Doctor (afterwards Sir) William Smith"s Dictionary of the Bible (1867-1870), to which he contributed more than 400 articles, as well as greatly improving the bibliographical completeness of the work. His principal single work, representing his scholarly method and conservative conclusions, was The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences (1880.

2nd ed by J H Thayer, with other essays, 1889), originally a lecture.

In spite of the compression due to its form, this work was up to that time probably the ablest defense, based on external evidence, of the Johannine authorship, and certainly the most complete treatment of the relation of Justin Martyr to this gospel.

Achievements

• Abbot was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1861. Though a layman, he received the degree of S.T.D. from Harvard in 1872, and that of Doctor of Divinity from Edinburgh in 1884.

Works

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  • The fourth Gospel, evidence external and internal of its Johannean authorship

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences - Scholar's Choice Edition

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • On the Comparative Antiquity of the Sinaitic and Vatican Manuscripts of the Greek Bible ..

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences

    (Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

  • The Fourth Gospel: Evidences External And Internal Of Its Johannean Authorship (1891)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • The Fourth Gospel, Evidences External And Internal Of Its Johannean Authorship: Essays By Ezra Abbot, Andrew P. Peaboy And Bishop Lightfoot...

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

  • The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences... - Primary Source Edition

    ( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)

Membership

American Academy of Arts and Sciences]

He was an efficient member of the American revision committee for the Revised Version (1881-1885) of the King James Bible, and helped prepare Caspar René Gregory"s Prolegomena to the revised Greek New Testament of Constantin von Tischendorf. He was one of the 32 founding members of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1880.