E. A. McDowell, Jr. was born on August 20, 1898 in Mitford, South Carolina. He graduated from Furman University in 1919, and earned a Th.M. and a Th.D. at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in 1925. McDowell worked as a newspaper reporter (1919-1922) and private secretary to the governor of South Carolina (1923-1925). He served as fellow in New Testament Greek under A.T. Robertson from 1928 to 1931. McDowell married Doris Price in 1925, and had two children, Edward, III and Elizabeth.

McDowell served as pastor at Vinton Baptist Church, Virginia, and First Baptist Church, Union, South Carolina. In 1935, he became a faculty member of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.

While at Southern, McDowell challenged the denomination on social matters. Despite considerable opposition, he began the “Negro Extension Program” at the school and encouraged his students to mingle freely with blacks. Two of his students had been Clarence Jordan and J. Martin England. McDowell profoundly influenced Jordan who later sought to apply McDowell’s teaching on racial equality in a Georgia community he called “Koinonia Farm.”

In 1952, McDowell began teaching at Southeastern Seminary as a professor of New Testament interpretation. When he retired from Southeastern in 1964, McDowell had published Son of Man and Suffering Servant, A Source Book of Inter-Biblical History (with W. H. Davis), and The Meaning and Message of Revelation. In an age when many emphasized historical criticism, he favored more the “primary-source” approach that sought to discern the biblical author’s original intent in composition. After his time at Southeastern, McDowell worked as a minister of teaching at the First Baptist Church of Atlanta and later joined Mercer University’s faculty as a distinguished professor of Christianity. McDowell died on August 24, 1975 in Atlanta.

An active member of the community, McDowell was a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, a charter member of the Board of Directors and Life Fellow of the Southern Regional Council, chairman of the executive committee of the North Carolina Council on Human Relations, member of a special Southern Baptist Convention Committee on Race Relations, and member of the board of trustees of the American Baptist Theological Seminary.