Joseph Henry Thayer

Background

Thayer, Joseph Henry was born on November 7, 1828 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Joseph Helyer and Martha Stevens (Greenough) Thayer.

Education

He studied at the Boston Latin School, and graduated from Harvard in 1850. Subsequently he studied theology at the Harvard Divinity School, and graduated from Andover Theological Seminary in 1857.

Career

He served as a minister in Quincy, in 1859-1864 in Salem, Massachusetts, and in 1862-1863 was chaplain of the 40th Massachusetts Volunteers during the American Civil War. He was professor of sacred literature at Andover Seminary in 1864-1882, and in 1884 succeeded Ezra Abbot as Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Harvard Divinity School. He died soon after his resignation from the Bussey professorship.

Thayer"s chief works were his translation of Grimm"s Wilke"s Clavis Novi Testamenti (1886.

Revised 1889) as A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, and his New Testament Bibliography (1890). Thayer spent 25 years working on his Lexicon, and made thousands of revisions from Grimm"s Wilke"s Clavis.

These books and similar ones that followed helped confirm and sometimes correct inadequate definitions of many words in the Greek New Testament. With this new and valuable information for studying the Greek of the New Testament, Thayer"s Lexicon became a victim of history, being published less than a decade before this papyri revolution.

Thayer was president of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis for 1894 and 1895.

In his 1895 presidential address, he called for the creation of an "American School for Oriental Study and Research" in Palestine. Over the next five years, the Society was involved in the establishment of the American School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. A plaque commemorating Thayer"s role in its foundation was placed at the American School in 1933.

Achievements

• Joseph Henry Thayer has been listed as a noteworthy minister, Biblical scholar, educator by Marquis Who's Who.

Membership

Beginning in 1870, Thayer was a member of the American Bible Revision Committee and recording secretary of the New Testament company (working on the Revised Version).

Connections

Married Martha Caldwell Davis, November 31, 1859.

Father:

Joseph Helyer Thayer

Mother:

Martha Stevens (Greenough) Thayer

Spouse:

Martha Caldwell Davis