John Punnett Peters

Background

He was born on December 16, 1852 in New York City, New York, United States, the second son of the Rev. Thomas McClure Peters and Alice Clarissa (Richmond) Peters, and a lineal descendant of Andrew Peters, who came to America from Devonshire, England, appearing in Boston records as early as 1659, and became the first treasurer of the town of Andover, Massachussets.

Education

John attended church schools in New York until he was thirteen years old, and though compelled to abandon school for the next three years, occupied his time so well in private reading, with some aid from tutors, that he entered Yale University at the age of sixteen. He was a member of the first Yale football team, and a leader in intercollegiate football contests.

After his graduation in 1873 he was a student in the Yale Divinity School, 1873-75, and in the Yale Graduate School, 1874-76, receiving the degree of Ph. D. in the latter year.

From 1879 to 1883 he was in Germany, studying Semitic languages at the University of Berlin, later studying at the University of Leipzig, 1882-83.

Career

From 1876 to 1879 he was a tutor in Yale College. In July 1876 he was ordained a deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and in 1877, a priest.

From 1879 to 1883 he was in Germany; acting as minister-in-charge and then as rector of St. John's (American) Church, Dresden, 1881-82. While in Dresden he translated Wilhelm Müller's Politische Geschichte der neuesten Zeit, 1816-1875 (1875), and to his translation, published in 1882 under the title, A Political History of Recent Times, he added an appendix which continued the history to the date of publication.

On his return to New York he took charge, for ten months, during his father's absence, of St. Michael's Church, of which his father was rector. In 1884 he became professor of the Old Testament language and literature in the Episcopal Divinity School in Philadelphia, and in 1886, professor of Hebrew in the University of Pennsylvania, holding the positions concurrently.

In 1883 he had obtained from Catharine Lorillard Wolfe a gift of $5, 000 to finance an expedition of archeological reconnaissance of Babylonia. Its success, under the leadership of William Hayes Ward, encouraged Peters to interest certain Philadelphians in raising a fund for archeological excavation in Babylonia under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania. For two seasons, 1888-90, the mound of Nuffar, the site of the ancient Nippur, was explored under his personal leadership, and although after 1890 the field work was carried on by John Henry Haynes, Peters remained scientific director until 1895. The fruit of his personal labors in this field was published in his Nippur (2 vols. , 1897).

He was made assistant rector of St. Michael's Church, New York in 1891, and resigned his post at the Philadelphia Divinity School, although he retained his professorship in the University of Pennsylvania until 1893. In that year, upon his father's death, he became rector of St. Michael's Church. When he resigned the position in 1919, he, his father, and his maternal grandfather, the Rev. William Richmond, had held the position in unbroken succession for ninety-nine years.

On the centenary of St. Michael's Church in 1907 he published a history of the parish entitled, The Annals of St. Michael's. Through all his religious and social activities, Peters pursued his Biblical and Oriental studies, the results of which were embodied in the following books: The Old Testament and the New Scholarship (1901); Early Hebrew Story (1904); Religion of the Hebrews (1914). In collaboration with a German scholar, Hermann Thiersch, he published Painted Tombs in the Necropolis of Marissa (1905), a description of discoveries the two had made while traveling in Palestine in 1902.

After retiring from the rectorship of St. Michael's, he traveled for a year, then became professor of New Testament exegesis in the University of the South at Sewanee, but in the autumn of 1921 his heart failed and he died.

Achievements

• During his long service as rector of St. Michael's, John Punnett Peters exerted a strong influence in behalf of missionary enterprise and a broader outlook in the Episcopal Church, and was a force in promoting social service and laboring for clean politics in the city and state of New York. As vice-president of the Riverside and Morningside Heights Association, he began a long struggle against commercialized vice. He was an outstanding leader in the effort to bring about a better understanding between capital and labor, his most famous work on this theme, Labor and Capital.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Religion of the Hebrews

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Labor and Capital; a Discussion of the Relations of Employer and Employed

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Early Hebrew Story; Its Historical Background

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

Personality

He was quiet in manner, but displayed originality and determination in the way in which he surmounted obstacles, both in his civic work and in his enterprises as an explorer. In his books he always had a fresh point of view to present; his writing was never an echo of the work of other men.

Connections

On August 13, 1881, he had married Gabriella Brooke Forman, daughter of Thomas Marsh Forman of Savannah and Helen (Brooke) Forman of Virginia. Six of his seven children survived him.

Father:

Thomas McClure Peters

Mother:

Alice Clarissa (Richmond) Peters

Spouse:

Gabriella Brooke Forman

maternal grandfather:

William Richmond

coworker:

Hermann Thiersch

ancestor:

Andrew Peters