ABBOT, EZRA. - American Reformed theologian, born at Jackson, Maine, 28 April 1819; died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, 21 March 1884.
From 1856 he worked in the library of Harvard University at Cambridge, Mass., where, besides an excellent alphabetical and systematic catalogue (perhaps the first of its kind), he compiled The Literature of the Doctrine of a Future Life (a list of 5,300 works, with notes), New York 1864. From 1871 he taught New Testament criticism there and published learned articles in journals, but especially (more than 400) in the enlarged edition of W. Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible (New York 1868–70). With Hort, he was a reviser of the New Testament for the Revised Version (1871–81); from 1878 Gregory (v.) in preparing the Prolegomena to the 8th edition of Tischendorf’s New Testament.
His best work is the sound defence of the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel (The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evidences, 2nd ed. edited by his follower J. H. Thayer, Boston 1889), in which he examines the testimonies of the ancient ecclesiastical writers, especially that of St. Justin, emphasizing their probative value.