John Brown of Haddington

1722–1787. Shepherd boy, scholar, minister, and author of the Self-Interpreting Bible.

A shepherd who learned the languages of the Bible

John Brown was born in 1722 at Carpow, in the parish of Abernethy, Perthshire. His father was a poor weaver, who could pay for only a few terms of school. His father died when John was eleven, and his mother died soon after. He then worked as a herd boy.

While he kept sheep, he taught himself Latin, Greek and Hebrew. For a time he had no Greek grammar, and he worked out the letters by himself. A well-known story tells how he got his first Greek New Testament. He left the sheep with a friend, walked through the night to St Andrews, twenty-four miles away, and asked for the book. A professor heard him. “Boy,” he said, pointing to a passage, “read this, and you shall have the book for nothing.” Brown read it, and walked home with the book.

Some people could not believe that a herd boy had learned so much, and they said that he had his learning from Satan. It took him some years to live that story down.

He then worked as a pedlar. In the rising of 1745 he served with the government soldiers, for a time in the garrison of Edinburgh Castle. After the war he became a schoolmaster, first at Gairney Bridge near Kinross, then at Penicuik near Edinburgh.

Minister at Haddington

Brown belonged to the Secession Church. When it divided in 1747, he joined the Burgher side, and he studied for the ministry under Ebenezer Erskine and James Fisher. He was licensed to preach in 1750. In 1751 the small and poor Associate congregation at Haddington called him as its minister. A church in New York later invited him, but he stayed at Haddington for the rest of his life.

In 1768 the Associate Burgher Synod made him its professor of divinity. The office had no salary. Each year the students came to Haddington for a session of nine weeks.

The Self-Interpreting Bible

The Self-Interpreting Bible was published at Edinburgh in 1778, in two volumes. In the preface, Brown gave its purpose: to present the work of the best commentators “in a manner that might best comport with the ability and leisure of the poorer and labouring part of mankind, and especially to render the oracles of God their own interpreter.”

The book was soon popular, and it stayed in print for more than a century. These lines of Robert Burns show how well Scotland knew Brown’s books:

For now I’m grown sae cursed douce,
I pray an’ ponder butt the house;
My shins, my lane, I there sit roastin’
Perusing Bunyan, Brown, an’ Boston.

Robert Burns, “Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner”

Later editors added to the book. Henry Cooke published an edition at Glasgow in 1855. This site gives the text of a later four-volume edition, the New Self-Interpreting Bible Library.

Read Genesis 1 See the contents

His life in dates

  1. 1722Born at Carpow, in the parish of Abernethy, Perthshire.
  2. c. 1733His father dies when he is eleven. His mother dies soon after. He becomes a herd boy.
  3. 1745Serves with the government soldiers in the rising, for a time in the garrison of Edinburgh Castle.
  4. Works as a pedlar, then as a schoolmaster at Gairney Bridge and at Penicuik.
  5. 1750Licensed to preach by the Associate (Burgher) Synod.
  6. 1751Called to the Associate congregation at Haddington, East Lothian.
  7. 1768Appointed professor of divinity to the Associate Burgher Synod.
  8. 1778The Self-Interpreting Bible is published at Edinburgh, in two volumes.
  9. 1787Dies at Haddington on 19 June, and is buried in the churchyard there.

Main works

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