R. Laird Harris

Robert Laird Harris (March 10, 1911 – April 25, 2008) was a Presbyterian minister, church leader, and Old Testament scholar.

Biography Harris was born near Upper Makefield Township, Pennsylvania. He was son of Rev. Walter B.Harris, a Presbyterian minister with a Princeton degree who married Pearl Graves. Known as R. Laird or just Laird, he had an older sister Dr. Bethel Fleming, who became a pioneer physician in Nepal. Her story is told in The Fabulous Flemings of Kathmandu, by Grace Nies Fletcher (E. P. Dutton, N.Y.1964). He earned a B.S. from the University of Delaware (1931), a Th.B. (1935) and a Th.M. (1937) from Westminster Theological Seminary, an A.M. from University of Pennsylvania (1941), and a Ph.D. from Dropsie College (1947).

He was licensed as a minister in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in 1935, joined the newly formed Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936, then teamed up with those forming the Bible Presbyterian Church in 1937. In 1956, he became moderator of a new offshoot denomination, the Bible Presbyterian Synod (BPS), later to become the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. He was involved on the committee that brought about the merger of the EPC with another denomination to become the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod (RPCES) in 1965, and then the RPCES, along with its education institutions Covenant College and Covenant Theological Seminary, became part of the Presbyterian Church in America in 1982, at which time Harris was elected moderator of the 10th General Assembly of that body.

He was part-time instructor in Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania (1946–1947) and then taught for twenty years at Faith Theological Seminary (1937–1956). He resigned from that institution because of his belief in the propriety of denomination-controlled institutions, and he then helped found the Covenant Theological Seminary, which was a denominational institution and where he was chairman of the Old Testament department until he retired in 1981. Harris served as Professor of Old Testament (and later adjunct professor) at Knox Theological Seminary at its founding in 1989. He was actively involved with the development of the Old Testament department there, teaching Hebrew, Hebrew Exegesis, the Pentateuch, and Survey through 1993.

Harris's first wife, Elizabeth K. Nelson, was born on April 30, 1910, and died in 1980. He then married Anne P. Krauss and lived in Quarryville, Pennsylvania.

Publications Harris published several books including Introductory Hebrew Grammar, Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible, Your Bible, and Man—God's Eternal Creation

He also served as editor of The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament and was a contributing editor to the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. He was contributed articles to the Wycliffe Bible Commentary and the Expositor's Bible, and he served as chairman of the Committee on Bible Translation for the New International Version.

Works

Books - in 5 volumes

- in 2 volumes

Chapters

Articles