Briggs was educated at the University of Virginia ; graduated at the Union Theological Seminary in 1863; and, after the American Civil War, studied further at the University of Berlin from 1866 to 1869. In 1870, he was appointed pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Roselle, New Jersey which post he held until 1874, when he accepted the professorship of Hebrew and cognate languages at Union Theological Seminary in which he taught until 1891, and of Biblical theology there from 1891 to 1904, following which he became their professor of theological encyclopaedia and symbolics. From 1880 to 1890 he was an editor of the Presbyterian Review.
Heresy trial
In 1892 Briggs was tried for heresy by the presbytery of New York, including James McCook, and acquitted. The charges were based upon his inaugural address of the preceding year. In brief, they were as follows:
that he had taught that reason and the Church are both a fountain of divine authority, which, apart from Holy Scripture, does savingly enlightens men
that errors may have existed in the original text of the Holy Scripture
that Old Testament predictions have been reversed by history and that the great body of Messianic prediction has not and cannot be fulfilled
that Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch and that Isaiah is not the author of the second half of the book that bears his name
After much posturing, maneuvering and publicity-seeking by Briggs, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, to which the case was appealed, defrocked and excommunicated Briggs from the Presbyterian Church in 1893 in Washington, DC. Some have argued that General Assembly's finding of heresy was influenced, in part, by Briggs' belligerent manner and militant tone of expressions and by what his own colleagues in the Union Theological Seminary called the dogmatic and irritating nature of his inaugural address. After his condemnation by the Presbyterians, he turned towards Episcopalianism and was ordained as a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1899. His scholarship procured for him the honorary degree of D.D. from the University of Edinburgh and from the University of Glasgow, and that of D.Litt., from the University of Oxford. With Francis Brown and S. R. Driver he prepared a revised Hebrew and English Lexicon based on the lexicon of Wilhelm Gesenius, and, with Driver, edited The International Critical Commentary series.
Works
His publications included the following:
Biblical Study: Its Principles, Methods and History
