Josias Leslie Porter

Josias Leslie Porter (4 October 1823 – 16 March 1889) was an Irish Presbyterian minister, missionary and traveller, who became an academic administrator. He was Moderator of the Irish General Assembly in 1875.

Early life Born on 4 October 1823, he was youngest son of William Porter of Carrowan, parish of Burt, County Donegal, a farmer, and Margaret, daughter of Andrew Leslie of Drumgowan in the same parish. After being educated privately, between 1835 and 1838, by Samuel Craig, presbyterian minister of Crossroads, County Londonderry, and then at a school in Derry, he matriculated in the University of Glasgow in 1839, with a view to entering the ministry of the Irish presbyterian church. He graduated B.A. in 1841, and M.A. in 1842. In November 1842, he went to the university of Edinburgh, where he studied theology under Thomas Chalmers, continuing also to the Divinity Hall of the Free Church of Scotland, again to study under Chalmers.

Minister and missionary Porter was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Derry on 20 November 1844. He was ordained on 25 February 1846, and until 1849 was minister of the presbyterian congregation of High Bridge, Newcastle-on-Tyne. He was then sent to Damascus as a missionary to the Jews by the board of missions of the Irish Presbyterian Church. He reached Syria in December 1849, and remained there for ten years.

The Pentateuch and the Gospels, which appeared in 1864 during the Colenso controversy. The Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria's Holy Places, 1865, several times republished. In this work he maintained that the massive buildings, the ruins of which are in Bashan, were the work of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country before its occupation by the Hebrews. The Life and Times of Dr. Cooke (his father-in-law), 1871; four editions. Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Bethany, 1887. Galilee and the Jordan, 1885.

Porter also published a Pew and Study Bible in 1876. He contributed extensively to the edition of John Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature which was begun in 1862; nearly all the geographical articles on places in Palestine were by him. He also wrote for Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Kitto's Pictorial Bible; and contributed to the Bibliotheca Sacra (New York), to Kitto's Journal of Sacred Literature, and to other periodicals. Many of Porter's letters, addressed to the Rev. David Hamilton, honorary secretary of the Irish Presbyterian Jewish Mission, were printed in the pages of the Missionary Herald.

Family In 1849, just before going to Damascus, he married Margaret Rainey Cooke, youngest daughter of Henry Cooke of Belfast. Two sons and two daughters of the marriage survived him.