BRIGGS, CHARLES AUGUSTUS. - Orientalist and theologian, b. in New York on 15 Jan. 1841, d. there in Jan. 1913. Until 1893 he belonged to the Presbyterian Church, then to the Episcopal. After further studies in Berlin, he held at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he had studied, the chair of Hebrew and Semitic languages (1874), of Biblical theology (1890), and of general and dogmatic theology (1907). Tireless in literary activity, especially in the biblical field, he introduced into the Churches of America the critical-historical study of the Bible.
As editor of the Presbyterian Review, he published there some articles on the inspiration and authority of the Bible, upheld there the documentary theory on the Hexateuch, and denied there the authenticity of Deutero-Isaiah. For this he was therefore condemned and excommunicated by the Unionist Church (1893). He was also co-editor of the International Critical Commentary and a contributor to the Hebrew and English Lexicon (1891).
Among his biblical publications we note: Biblical Study (New York 1883); Messianic Prophecy (ibid. 1886); The Bible, the Church and the Reason (ibid. 1892); The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch (ibid. 1893); The Messiah of the Gospels (ibid. 1894); The Messiah of the Apostles (ibid. 1895); General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture (ibid. 1899); A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Psalms (International Critical Commentary, Edinburgh 1906); The Papal Commission and the Pentateuch (London 1906; his correspondence with his Catholic friend F. von Hügel).
Bibliography
Adalberto Metzinger