John William Donaldson
John William
Donaldson (7 June 1811 – 10 February 1861) was an English philologist and
biblical critic.
He was born in London, and was educated at University
College, London,
and Trinity College,
Cambridge, of
which he subsequently became a fellow. In 1841 he was elected headmaster of
King Edward's School, Bury St Edmunds, but, "spectacularly
unsuccessful", in 1855 he resigned his post and returned to Cambridge, where his time
was divided between literary work and private tuition.
He is remembered
as a pioneer of philology in the UK, though much of his work is now
obsolete. The New Cratylus (1839), the book on which his fame mainly rests, was
an attempt to apply to the Greek language the principles of comparative
philology. It was founded mainly on the comparative grammar of Franz Bopp, but
a large part of it was original, Bopp's grammar not being completed till ten
years after the first edition of the Cratylus. In the Varronianus (1844) the
same method was applied to Latin, Umbrian and Oscan. His Jashar (1854), written
in Latin as an appeal to the learned world, and especially to German
theologians, was an attempt to reconstitute the lost biblical book of Jashar
from the remains of old songs and historical records, which, according to the
author, are incorporated in the existing text of the Old Testament.
His bold views on
the nature of inspiration, and his free handling of the sacred text, aroused
the anger of the theologians. Of his numerous other works the most important
are The Theatre of the Greeks; The History of the Literature of ancient Greece
(a translation and completion of Otfried Müller's unfinished work); editions of
the Odes of Pindar and the Antigone of Sophocles; a Hebrew, a Greek and a Latin
grammar.
