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Marcus Dods

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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MARCUS (1834-1909), Scottish divine and biblical scholar, was born at Belford, Northumberland, the youngest son of Rev. Marcus Dods, minister of the Scottish church of that town. He was trained at Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University, graduating in 1854. Having studied theology for five years he was licensed in 1858, and in 1864 became minister of Renfield Free Church, Glasgow, where he worked for twenty-five years. In 1889 he was appointed professor of New Testament Exegesis in the New College, Edinburgh, of which he became principal on the death of Dr Rainy in 1907. He died in Edinburgh on the 26th of April 1909. Throughout his life, both ministerial and professorial, he devoted much time to the publication of theological books. Several of his writings, especially a sermon on Inspiration delivered in 1878, incurred the charge of unorthodoxy, and shortly before his election to the Edinburgh professorship he was summoned before the General Assembly, but the charge was dropped by a large majority, and in 1891 he received the honorary degree of D.D. from Edinburgh University. He edited Lange's Life of Christ in English (Edinburgh, 1864, 6 vols.), Augustine's works (1872-1876), and, with Dr Alexander Whyte, Clark's "Handbooks for Bible Classes" series. In the Expositor's Bible series he edited Genesis and 1 Corinthians, and he was also a ,contributor to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. Among other important works are: The Epistle to the Seven Churches (1865); Israel's Iron Age (1874); Mohammed, Buddha and Christ (1877); Handbook vn Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi (1879); The Gospel according to St John (1897), in the Expositor's Greek Testament; The Bible, its Origin and Nature (1904), the Bross Lectures, in which he gave an able sketch of the use of Old Testament criticism, and finally set forth his Theory of Inspiration. Apart from his great services to Biblical scholarship he takes high rank among those who have sought to bring the results of technical criticism within the reach of the ordinary reader.