AN EXPOSITION OF ARTHUR JEFFERY AS A METHODIST MISSIONARY ORIENTALIST

Abstract

Arthur Jeffery (1892-1959), an Australia based missionary Orientalist is a big name among the Western scholarship on the Qur'ān particularly, the Textual Criticism and Qur'ānic Historiography. He took his Bachelor and Master degrees from Melbourne University, Australia and The University of Edinburgh of Scotland conferred on him Ph.D and D.Lit. He could not join British army in World War-I on health grounds so, he joined non-military war service as a Missionary. He was appointed in Solomon Islands, India and Egypt where he served the Mission. Semitic Languages were his chief interest. As a Linguist, he focused the Qur'ānic Text and left some remarkable works such as, ‘Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur'ān’, ‘The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur'ān’, ‘The Qur'ān as Scripture and The Koran: Selected Suras’. He spent last twenty years of his life at Columbia University New York and Union Theological Seminary. The present study seeks to highlight his contributions to the Mission in Oriental lands as Methodist minister and to expose his academic background as an Orientalist.