Hall, Isaac H.

Full Name: Hall, Isaac H.

Other Names:

• Isaac Hollister Hall
• Isaac H. Hall

Gender: male

Date Born: 12 December 1837

Date Died: 02 July 1896

Place Born: Abbeville, Hauts-de-France, France [Norwalk, Connecticut, United States]

Place Died: New York, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Ancient Greek (culture or style), Antique, the, Christianity, sculpture (visual works), and Syriac Orthodox

Career(s): art historians and curators

Institution(s): Metropolitan Museum of Art

Overview

Authority on Oriental (Greek, Phoenician, Himyaritic) inscriptions; curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Isaac Hollister Hall, born in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1837, was named after his grandfather, Isaac Hollister. Hall’s father, Rev. Edwin Hall Sr, was pastor of the First Congregational Church for twenty-two years and later a professor of Christian theology. His mother was Fanny Hollister (Hall). He received his elementary education at a seminary in Norwalk where his father worked. Both his early education and his family influenced his future research on biblical manuscripts. He graduated from Hamilton College in 1859 and was a tutor there until 1863. He went on to the Columbia Law School and started a ten-year-long law career in New York City after graduating in 1865.

In 1875, Hall taught at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. While teaching, Hall discovered a valuable Syriac manuscript of the Philoxenian version of a part of the New Testament. In 1876, he assisted in the excavation of Luigi Palma di Cesnola in Cyprus and established a close working relationship and friendship with Cesnola. (Ianna Recco) In the same year, he received a Ph.D degree from Hamilton College. Upon his return to the States in 1877, Hall aligned himself with The Sunday School Times in Philadelphia. According to another source, he possibly worked as an editor for the publication. In the same year, he started the column of Biblical Research in the New York Independent. In 1883, his book American Greek Testaments: A Critical Bibliography of the Greek New Testament as Published in America was released. In 1884, he published his work on the Syrian manuscript of the Gospels, Acts, and most of the Epistles that he discovered and deciphered in Syria.

Meanwhile, he was a lecturer on New Testament Greek at Johns Hopkins University. Hall joined Cesnola in working at the Met in 1885 and served as the first curator of sculptures, antiquities, and objects. He was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Literature from Columbia College (modern Columbia University) and University College Dublin, respectively, in 1888 and 1889. Hall continued working at the Met until he died in 1896. He died from oral cancer, in New York.

Isaac Hall was an eminent authority on Oriental [i.e., Middle Eastern] inscriptions as well as a member of various archaeological and Biblical societies. He was the first man to read the entire inscription in Cypriote, making him critical in identifying and deciphering Cypriot objects. Most of his publications centered on Cesnola’s collection and other Middle Eastern objects in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hall was also dedicated to preserving the physical history of Cyprus. Some of the objects Hall acquired in Cyprus are now housed at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College. Additionally, he was an excellent linguist who published an important series of articles on the Cypriote language and inscriptions.

Selected Bibliography

• “Cypriote inscriptions of the Di Cesnola collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 10 (1875): 201-218;
• American Greek Testaments: A Critical Bibliography of the Greek New Testament as Published in America. Philadelphia: Pickwick and Co., 1883
• “On a Manuscript Syriac Lectionary.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 11 (1885): 287–325. https://doi.org/10.2307/592195.
• The Stone Sculpture of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in Halls 5 and 3. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1895;
• and Dobbins, Frank S., and Williams, S. Wells. Story of the World’s Worship. Chicago: Dominion Co., 1901;

Sources

• “OBITUARY RECORD.” New York Times (1857-1922), 1896 Jul 03.
• Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography. – Rev. Ed. – New York: Appleton, 1888-1889. – 6 vols
• Tomkins, Calvin. Merchants and Masterpieces: The Story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2nd. ed. New York: Henry Holt, 1989, p. 79.
• Brown, John Howard. The Cyclopædia of American Biographies. Comprising the Men and Women of the United States Who Have Been Identified with the Growth of the Nation. 1903.
• “1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hall, Isaac Hollister – Wikisource, the Free Online Library.” Accessed June 11, 2024. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Hall,_Isaac_Hollister.
• “Rev Edwin Hall Sr. (1802-1877) – Find a Grave…” n.d. Accessed June 11, 2024. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/51865134/edwin-hall.
• “Hall, Edwin, D.D” n.d. Accessed June 12, 2024. McClintock and Strong Biblical Cyclopedia Online. https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/H/hall-edwin-dd.html.
• Recco, Ianna. Unpacking the Past:  General Luigi Palma di Cesnola”, “Unpacking the Past: Colleagues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – Wellin Museum.” and “Unpacking the Past:  Letters from Cyprus.”  Welliin Museum. n.d. Accessed June 12, 2024. https://my.hamilton.edu/wellin/wellinformed/unpacking-the-past-general-luigi-palma-di-cesnola

Archives

“Hall, Isaac H. (Isaac Hollister) | ArchivesSpace Public Interface.” n.d. https://archives.hamilton.edu/agents/people/34.

Contributors: Yuhuan Zhang