Joseph Addison Alexander

Who was Joseph Addison Alexander?

Joseph Addison Alexander was an American biblical scholar.

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the third son of Archibald Alexander and brother to James Waddel Alexander and William Cowper Alexander.

He graduated at the College of New Jersey in 1826, having devoted himself especially to the study of Hebrew and other languages, and from 1830 to 1833 was adjunct professor of ancient languages and literature there. In 1834 he became an assistant to Dr Charles Hodge, professor of oriental and biblical literature in the Princeton Theological Seminary, and in 1838 became associate professor of oriental and biblical literature there, succeeding Dr Hodge in that chair in 1840 and being transferred in 1851 to the chair of biblical and ecclesiastical history, and in 1859 to that of Hellenistic and New Testament literature, which he occupied until his death at Princeton in 1860.

Alexander was a remarkable linguist and exegete. He had been ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1839, and was well known for his pulpit eloquence. He was the author of The Earlier Prophecies of Isaiah, The Later Prophecies of Isaiah, and an abbreviation of these two volumes, Isaiah Illustrated and Explained, The Psalms Translated and Explained, commentaries on Acts, Mark and Matthew, and two volumes of Sermons.