The New International Encyclopædia/Jacobus, Melancthon Williams (minister)

JACOBUS, Melancthon Williams (1816-76). An American Presbyterian minister and author, born at Newark, N. J. In 1834 he graduated from Princeton College, and four years later from the Princeton Seminary, where he was instructor in Hebrew for the year preceding his acceptance of the pastorate of a Presbyterian church in Brooklyn, N. Y. (1839). While absent in the Holy Land (1850), he was elected professor of Oriental and biblical literature in the Western Theological Seminary, at Allegheny. Pa., and retained the position until his death. He was pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church. Pittsburg, Pa., from 1858 to 1870, was secretary of the Sustentation Committee of the Presbyterian Church from 1871 to 1874, and he received the degrees of D.D. from Jefferson College, Pennsylvania (1852), and LL.D. from Princeton (1867). He published: Notes on the New Testament (4 vols., 1848-59); an Address to the Churches (1861); Genesis (2 vols., 1864-65); and Exodus (shortly before his death).