Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/418

 publication (1906) of the first volume containing the Prolegomena; but the greater part of the second volume had been written and the work is in course of publication under the editorship of Mr. W. F. Howard. The Prolegomena was immediately recognized as of the first importance. In his Bibelstudien Deissmann had published a mass of evidence to show that the vocabulary of the New Testament did not belong to a class by itself, but was to be put in the same category as the ordinary spoken Greek of the time, as preserved in the non-literary papyri. Moulton accepted his demonstration and applied it to the grammar. Harnack spoke of him as ‘the foremost expert in New Testament Greek’. He hoped to prepare for English readers an edition of Deissmann's projected lexicon; and he lived long enough to see the publication (1914–1915) of two fasciculi of the Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, which he prepared in collaboration with Professor George Milligan. The most serious loss occasioned by his premature death was his failure to write the volume on the syntax in his Grammar of New Testament Greek.

His study of comparative philology led him to Sanskrit and Iranian; and from the language of the Avesta he naturally passed to the religion. In this field he owed much to the teaching of Edward Byles Cowell [q.v.]. Apart from articles, he published four books on the religion. Early Religious Poetry of Persia (1911) was an admirable introduction to the subject, and with it may be coupled The Teaching of Zarathushtra (1917), lectures delivered to the Parsees. His most important contribution was made in his Hibbert lectures, Early Zoroastrianism (1913). He was inclined to push back the date of Zarathushtra several generations behind the traditional date, 660–583 B.C.; and he sought to disengage the true Zoroastrian elements in the Avesta from accretions which he attributed to the Magi. The subject is discussed again in the first part of The Treasure of the Magi, the latter part of which is devoted to modern Parsism. Moulton was an enthusiast for Zarathushtra, and for his teaching, which he regarded as the purest form of non-biblical religion.

Though a scholar of the highest quality and exceptional range he was deeply interested in practical questions. Foreign missions, social amelioration at home, the commendation to doubters of the simple Christian faith in which he rested, were always very near his heart. He was eminent for the strength, the loftiness, and beauty of his character, and for the intensity of his religion.

 MOULTON, JOHN FLETCHER, (1844–1921), lord of appeal in ordinary, was born 18 November 1844 at Madeley, Shropshire, the third son of the Rev. James Egan Moulton, a Wesleyan minister, as his father and grandfather had been before him, and for a time head master of New Kingswood School, Bath, by his wife, Catherine, daughter of William Fiddian, brass-founder, of Birmingham. Moulton was named after a former vicar of Madeley, John William Fletcher [q.v.], the intimate friend of John Wesley. He was a younger brother of William Fiddian Moulton [q.v.], and uncle of James Hope Moulton [q.v.]. He received his early education from his father. At the age of eleven he was sent to Kingswood School and was at once placed in the head master's class. When thirteen and a half he was head of the school; at the age of sixteen he took the highest marks in England at the first of the Oxford and Cambridge local examinations. On leaving Kingswood School he acted for a short time as an assistant-master at schools at Biggleswade and Northampton. In 1861 he matriculated at London University, winning a studentship of £30. He took his B.A. degree in mathematics (1865), being alone in the first class both at the intermediate and the final examination. Meanwhile he had been elected to a scholarship at St. John's College, Cambridge. His fame as a mathematician soon spread, and when, during his first year at Cambridge, he entered for the London University scholarship no other candidate appeared. Coached by the famous Dr. Edward John Routh [q.v.], Moulton was first Smith's prizeman and senior wrangler in 1868, with the highest total of marks ever gained; (Sir) George Howard Darwin [q.v.] was second wrangler. The same year he won the gold medal for mathematics at London University, and was elected a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, few of the St. John's fellowships being at that time open to laymen. Moulton worked both as college tutor and private tutor, and was a regular attendant at the debates of the Union Society, of which he was president in 1868, and thereafter treasurer till he 392