author
Crawford Howell Toy
1836–1919
A pioneering American scholar of Hebrew and Semitic languages, he helped bring modern historical study of the Bible into U.S. universities. His long teaching career at Harvard made him an important bridge between nineteenth-century theology and emerging academic biblical scholarship.
1 Audiobook
Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV
by Crawford Howell Toy
About the author
Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1836, Crawford Howell Toy studied at the University of Virginia and later in Berlin, where he deepened his work in Hebrew and related languages. He first taught at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, but his growing embrace of historical criticism put him at odds with conservative theology of the period.
After leaving the seminary, he joined Harvard, where he became a well-known professor of Hebrew and other Oriental languages. Over the course of his career, he wrote widely on the Old Testament, Semitic studies, and the history of religion, and he became known for careful, scholarly reading rather than doctrinal argument.
Toy died in 1919, but he remains a notable figure in the history of American religious scholarship. Readers interested in the meeting point of faith, language, and modern academic study may find his life especially compelling.