Reverend John Brown

Reverend John Brown
Reverend John Brown
1992/336

1800-1850 / Engraving / Ministers, Preachers & Associates / Paper / Print
Engraving on paper
c. 1800

The Rev. John Brown John Brown of Haddington (1722 -87) was a highly-educated Scottish minister and author.

Self-educated and entirely self-made, Brown started out as a shepherd. Soon, he discovered he had a gift for languages and came to know and speak at least ten, including Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Brown's career choices were very varied. Following his experience as a shepherd, Brown became a travelling merchant, a soldier in Edinburgh, a school master and then a churchman.

From 1750 until his death, Brown was a minister of the Secession Church in Haddington. In the 1780s, he obtained a professorship in Divinity in this denomination and started training other churchman. He also wrote a number of books, some of the best-known being a Self-Interpreting Bible and a Dictionary of the Bible.