Reverend William Menzies Alexander M.D. (Shettleston, then in Lanarkshire, May 12 1858 – Edinburgh August 30, 1929) was a Scottish medical and theological writer.[1]
After graduating B.Sc. from the University of Glasgow in 1885 Alexander trained as a medical missionary and taught biology and chemistry at Wilson College in Bombay, before returning to Scotland to complete M.B. (1888), B.D. (1889) and M.D. (1891). He then returned to Bombay where he was examiner to the Technical College and the University of Bombay until he contracted an illness that permanently damaged his hearing. He returned to Scotland and was appointed Professor of the new Free Church College in 1904, teaching most subjects in the curriculum including Hebrew. Later he was moderator of the General Assembly, 1911. He obtained the degree of D.Sc. in 1919.
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Alexander is best remembered for his work Demonic possession in the New Testament (1902) which attempted to explain accounts of demonic possession in the synoptic Gospels in medical and scientific terms. This caused a controversy in regard to his position as Professor of Divinity at Free Church College, Edinburgh, with accusations of non-belief in the inspiration of Scripture being made against Alexander and the College.[2] In fact Alexander did retain belief in the miraculous, and considered that the affirmations of the possessed of the Messiah were the miraculous element, but that descriptions of the illness were simply largely the language of the day.
Alexander was the son of John, a farmer, and Margaret (née Menzies). He married Agnes Campbell Blair September 18, 1889 in Glasgow, Scotland.