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| Noah Webster (by Samuel Morse) |
Noah Webster's father was a deacon of the Congregational church, and his mother was a descendant of the famous Separatist leader
William Bradford. You
might therefore surmise that Webster came by his religious leanings honestly.
Although during his youth Webster
was more pedantic (what with his
spellers and all) than he was religious, he
became more and more devout as time went on. Wikipedia reports that by the time Webster
was 50, he had become "a convert to Calvinistic orthodoxy, and thereafter…
preached the need to Christianize the
nation."
Since Webster lived to the then-ripe
old age of 84, this left him with
plenty of time to practice what he preached. He began busily combining his vast
literary talents with his newfound evangelical
fervor.
This resulted in an 1828 American Dictionary that "contained the greatest number of Biblical definitions
given in any reference volume."
It also resulted in a rewrite of
the Bible itself. Believing the King James Version to be basically sound, but
somewhat outdated in its grammar,
vocabulary, and phraseology – Webster set
about to soften some of those perceived rough
edges. The result was his 1833 edition
of the Bible called the Common Version.
Some (with axes to grind, no
doubt) criticized Webster for not also tweaking the basic theology of the King
James Version (KJV). However, since Webster's own staunch views were a good match with the
KJV theology, he saw no reason to "fix
what wasn't broken."
Resources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster
http://www.bible-researcher.com/webster.html
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