William Greenfield

Who was William Greenfield?

William Greenfield was an English philologist.

Greenfield was born in London on 1 April 1799. His father, William Greenfield, a native of Haddington, attended Well Street Chapel, London, then under the ministry of Alexander Waugh. He joined a missionary voyage in the ship Duff, and was accidentally drowned when his son was two years old. In the spring of 1802 Greenfield was taken by his mother to Jedburgh. In the summer of 1810 they returned to London, and Greenfield resided for some time with his two maternal uncles, who gave him instruction. They were men of business who studied languages in order to understand learned quotations, and they taught him.

In October 1812 Greenfield was apprenticed to a bookbinder named Rennie. A Jew employed in his master's house, and a reader of the law in the synagogue, taught him Hebrew gratuitously. At sixteen Greenfield began to teach in the Fitzroy Sabbath School, of which his master was a conductor. At seventeen he became a member of Well Street Chapel, and a close friend of the minister, Dr. Waugh.

In 1824 he left business to devote himself to languages and biblical criticism. In 1827 he published The Comprehensive Bible … with … a general introduction … Notes, &c. The book, though fiercely attacked as heterodox by the 'Record' and a Dr. Henderson, became very popular, especially among Unitarians. An abridgment was afterwards published as The Pillar of Divine Truth immoveably fixed on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets. … The whole of the arguments and illustrations drawn from the pages of the Comprehensive Bible, by …[W. Greenfield], 8vo,London, 1831. Greenfield's valuable Defence of the Serampore Mahratta Version of the New Testament, 8vo, London, 1830, commended him to the notice of the British and Foreign Bible Society, by whom he was engaged, about April of that year, as superintendent of the editorial department. He had no previous knowledge of the Mahratta and other languages referred to in the pamphlet, which, it is said, was written within five weeks of his taking up the subject. He followed it up by A Defence of the Surinam Negro-English Version of the New Testament …, 1830.