Robinson's Letter - Journal (1826- 1829)

Written from Europe by Edward Robinson to His Sister, Elisabeth

Edward Robinson (1794-1863) was a highly regarded philologist, lexicographer, orientalist, and biblical geographer, whose redrawing of the maps of ancient Israel laid the foundation for the field of modern biblical archaeology. Robinson graduated from Hamilton College in 1816, married Eliza Kirkland, and after her untimely death in 1819, went to Andover Theological Seminary to study Hebrew with Moses Stuart. While working with Stuart, Robinson decided to pursue a theological education, not at Andover, but at a German university. He sailed for Europe in 1826, studied at the university in Halle, and four years later returned to Andover as a member of the seminarys faculty. Throughout his European sojourn, Robinson wrote to his sister Elisabeth, providing a wealth of information about European culture and customs. These letters offer a valuable resource for nineteenth-century studies, for they contain detailed descriptions of the churches, art museums, and libraries he visited, the mountains he climbed, and the famous persons he met, such as Schleiermacher, Goethe, Schiller, General Lafayette, A. von Humboldt, and the Grimm brothers. From 1837 until his death, Robinson held the position of professor of biblical studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he resided with his second wife, Therese von Jakob Robinson, and his two children