BRIGGS, CHARLES AUGUSTUS. - Orientalist and theologian, b. in Nuova York on 15 Jan. 1841, d. there in Jan. 1913. Until 1893 he belonged to the Presbyterian Church, thereafter to the Episcopal Church. After further studies in Berlin, he held at the Union Theological Seminary of Nuova York, where he had studied, the chair of Hebrew and Semitic languages (1874), Biblical Theology (1890), and general and dogmatic theology (1907). Of indefatigable literary activity, especially in the biblical field, he introduced the critical-historical study of the Bible into the Churches of America.
As editor of the Presbyterian Review, he published there several articles on the inspiration and authority of the Bible; there he upheld the documentary theory concerning the Hexateuch and denied
the authenticity of Deutero-Isaiah. 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 may be noted: Biblical Study (Nuova York 1883); Messianic Prophecy (ivi 1886); The Bible, the Church and the Reason (ivi 1892); The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch (ivi 1893); The Messiah of the Gospels (ivi 1894); The Messiah of the Apostles (ivi 1895); General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture (ivi 1899); A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Psalms (International Critical Commentary, Edimburgo 1906); The Papal Commission and the Pentateuch (Londra 1906; his correspondence with his Catholic friend F. von Hügel).