[2] Because of his longevity, MacRae engaged in both the battles of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy and with the rise of Neo-evangelicalism in mid-20th century America, playing important roles in the establishment of three conservative American seminaries.
[3] MacRae was born in Calumet, Michigan, the son of a Canadian-born physician who valued academic pursuits and who attended a social and intellectual club where talks were given and papers read.
Awarded a fellowship at the University of Berlin, MacRae studied Arabic, Syriac, Babylonian cuneiform, and Egyptian hieroglyphics, also becoming fluent in German as he engaged in his hobby of mountain hiking.
During his second year at the University of Berlin, he spent four months in Palestine, meeting archaeologist Flinders Petrie and studying in the American Schools of Oriental Research under William F. Albright.
Although MacRae intended to complete his doctoral work in Berlin, he became so involved in seminary teaching that he instead finished his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in 1936 with a dissertation on personal names discovered in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nuzi.