JOSEPH HENRY THAYER. 6QS 



He was not only singularly precise in details, he had a marked capacity 

 for organization. He conceived large plans, and worked them out with 

 patience and success. As early as 1864 he announced his purpose to 

 translate Grimm — he completed the translation in Cambridge in 1885. 

 It is mainly to him that we owe the establishment of the American 

 School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem. Year after year he set forth 

 the desirableness and the feasibility of such a school, and by unwearied 

 exertions secured the indorsement of the Society of Biblical Literature 

 and of the American Oriental Society, and the cooperation and financial 

 support of a number of colleges, and of the Archaeological Institute of 

 America. The school went into operation in the year 1900, and seems 

 certain to give an impulse to Oriental study in this country, and to 

 increase our knowledge of Oriental (especially Semitic) life, ancient 

 and modern. 



Dr. Thayer was an enthusiastic teacher, ever ready to give sympathy 

 and time to his students. He was exacting in his demands, had small 

 patience with negligence, and refused to lower his standards on any per- 

 sonal grounds, such as lack of previous preparation, or sickness; but he 

 knew how to encourage and assist backward students, and to stimulate 

 all by his own sense of the requirements of scholarship. He held firmly 

 to the traditional New England standard of a minister's outfit, insisting 

 on the necessity of Hebrew and Greek for the preacher. This point was 

 the subject of debate in the Harvard Divinity Faculty for years, and the 

 final decision made it possible for a student to take the degree of Bach- 

 elor of Divinity without a knowledge of Hebrew or Greek, the Faculty 

 reserving the right, however, to pass on every individual case. In point 

 of fact, it is true, in the past thirty years at least, only one man without 

 Greek had received the degree, and he was a Japanese, from whom crit- 

 ical study of the Chinese classics was accepted in lieu of Greek. But 

 Dr. Thayer, seeing that the Hebrew requirement was practically given 

 up, believed there was danger that the Greek requirement would go 

 the same way. Against this disposition to dispense with the original 

 languages of the Bible he set his face steadfastly ; he lost no opportunity 

 to protest against what he regarded as a lamentable lowering of the 

 standard of ministerial learning. When the question was finally decided, 

 he, of course, accepted in good faith the action of the Faculty. Accept 

 it cordially he could not : he was not an easy-going man, willing to fall 

 in gracefully with the opinions of the majority ; on the contrary, he took 

 things very seriously, and, in matters that interested him, expressed him- 

 self pointedly. To the last he never spoke of the attitude of the Faculty 



