James Hope Moulton facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
James Hope Moulton
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| Born | October 11, 1863 |
| Died | April 9, 1917 (aged 53) At sea
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| Occupation | Philologist |
| Known for | Studies on Zoroastrianism |
James Hope Moulton (born October 11, 1863 – died April 9, 1917) was a smart British scholar and minister. He was known for studying old languages and a very old religion called Zoroastrianism. He was also a philologist, which means he studied languages and their history.
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About James Hope Moulton
James Hope Moulton came from a family with strong ties to the Methodist church. His father was the first headmaster of The Leys School in Cambridge. James was actually one of the very first students there!
After studying at King's College, Cambridge, James decided to become a Wesleyan minister. He was very good at academics. The University of Manchester asked him to teach Classical Greek and other languages. He also taught at Didsbury College, which was a Methodist school near Manchester. He was good friends with James Frazer, a Scottish social anthropologist.
James became very interested in Zoroastrianism. This is one of the world's oldest known monotheistic religions, meaning it believes in one God. Throughout his life, he wrote many books and papers. Most of his work focused on Zoroastrianism and the Greek texts that the Bible comes from. For a while around 1910, he also worked as a Prison Chaplain in Preston.
Travels and Research
In 1916, during World War I, James decided to travel to India. He wanted to be a Methodist missionary there. He also planned to research and give talks about Zoroastrianism, which is still practiced by some groups in India. This was a tough time for him because his wife had recently passed away. While he was in India, his son, William Ralph Osborn Moulton, died in the French trenches on August 5, 1916.
He spent 16 months in India, working with the YMCA. He did research, preached, and gave lectures. He was especially interested in the religion of the Parsis. These are Zoroastrians who live in the Indian subcontinent. He studied how their beliefs related to Judeo-Christian religions. In Karachi, he became friends with Maneckji Nusserwanji Dhalla, a Zoroastrian scholar and high priest, and used his library for research.
Final Journey
After his time in India, James left Karachi on a ship called the S.S. City of Paris. He was heading to Egypt to meet his friend and colleague, Dr. J. Rendel Harris. They then sailed from Port Said. Sadly, as their ship passed the Gulf of Lion, a German submarine attacked and sank it.
Moulton, Harris, and several others managed to escape in a lifeboat. However, James Moulton died on the third day of their four-day journey to Corsica. He was 53 years old. He was buried at sea on April 9, 1917.
Interestingly, almost three years before this, he had been on the RMS Lusitania during its last peaceful trip just as World War I was starting. That ship was sunk less than a year later, with everyone on board losing their lives.
Academic Roles
James Hope Moulton held several important academic positions:
- Tutor at Didsbury College
- Fellow of King's College, Cambridge
- Greenwood Professor of Hellenistic Greek and Indo-European Philology at Manchester University, from 1908 to 1917
- He received a Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.) degree from the University of London on December 19, 1901.
His Published Works
James Hope Moulton wrote many books and papers during his career. Here are some of them:
- Grammar of New Testament Greek Vol. I - Prolegomena, 1906
- WILLIAM F. MOULTON a memoir (written with his brother, who had the same name as their father, William Fiddian Moulton)
- The Papers of Oscar Browning (written with his father, William Fiddian Moulton)
- Early Religious Poetry of Persia
- Early Religious Poetry of Persia, 1911
- From Egyptian Rubbish Heaps, 1916 (second edition 1917)
- Early Zoroastrianism
- Fire Temples and Towers of Silence
- Parsi Piety
- The Crown of Zoroastrianism
- The Parsis
- The Parsis and Christian Propaganda
- The Teaching of Zarathushtra
- Treasure of the Magi: a study of modern Zoroastrianism
- Zarathustra and the Outside World
- Zoroastrianism
- An Introduction to the Study of New Testament Greek (1895)
- Two Lectures on the Science of Language (1903)
- The Christian Religion in the Study and the Street (1919)
- A Neglected Sacrament and Other Sermons and Addresses (1919)
See also
- William Fiddian Moulton, father
- John Fletcher Moulton, uncle
- Richard Green Moulton, uncle
- James Egan Moulton, uncle
- George Milligan, co-author of Vocabulary of the Greek Testament.
