The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/King, Jonas

KING, Jonas, American missionary and writer: b. Hawley, Mass, 29 July 1792; d. Athens, 22 May 1869. After graduation at Williams College and Andover Seminary, he turned to home missionary work; but, after a while he determined to prepare himself for the foreign mission field. To this end he went to Paris to study Arabic under Dr. De Sacy, one of the great Arabic scholars of his day. On his return he entered Amherst College as professor of Oriental Languages (1822-28). Resigning his position at Amherst he went as a missionary to Greece, where he was soon in trouble with the Greek Church which ordered his arrest on the charge of profaning things sacred. He seems to have been very aggressive and to have had very little tact in the prosecution of his work, which promised well in the beginning but which virtually went to pieces toward the end. He was a man of scholarly attainments and wrote in both English and Greek. His miscellaneous works in the latter language were published in Athens. His best-known work in English, ‘The Oriental Church and the Latin’ was published in 1865. An account of his life and work was published in New York in 1879, the writer signing himself F. E. H. H.