William Robertson Smith

William Robertson Smith
Born 8 November 1846
Keig, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK
Died 31 March 1894(1894-03-31) (aged 47)
Cambridge, England, UK
Occupation Minister of religion, theologian, Semitic scholar
Alma mater New College, Edinburgh
Notable works Religion of the Semites

William Robertson Smith FRSE (8 November 1846 – 31 March 1894) was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He was an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica. He is also known for his book Religion of the Semites, which is considered a foundational text in the comparative study of religion.

Life and career

Smith was born in Aberdeenshire and demonstrated a quick intellect at an early age. He entered Aberdeen University at fifteen, before transferring to New College, Edinburgh, to train for the ministry, in 1866. After graduation he took up a chair in Hebrew at the Aberdeen Free Church College in 1870. In 1875 he wrote a number of important articles on religious topics in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He became popularly known because of his trial for heresy in the 1870s, following the publication of an article in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Smith's articles approached religious topics without endorsing the Bible as literally true. The result was a furore in the Free Church of Scotland, of which he was a member. As a result of the heresy trial, he lost his position at the Aberdeen Free Church College in 1881 and took up a position as a reader in Arabic at the University of Cambridge, where he eventually rose to the position of University Librarian, Professor of Arabic and a fellow of Christ's College.[1] It was during this time that he wrote The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (1881) and The Prophets of Israel (1882), which were intended to be theological treatises for the lay audience.

In 1887 Smith became the editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica after the death of his employer Thomas Spencer Baynes left the position vacant. In 1889 he wrote his most important work, Religion of the Semites, an account of ancient Jewish religious life which pioneered the use of sociology in the analysis of religious phenomena. He was Professor of Arabic there with the full title 'Sir Thomas Adams Professor of Arabic' (1889–1894). He died in 1894 of tuberculosis.

Approach

His views on the historical method of criticism can be illustrated in the following quote:

Ancient books coming down to us from a period many centuries before the invention of printing have necessarily undergone many vicissitudes. Some of them are preserved only in imperfect copies made by an ignorant scribe of the dark ages. Others have been disfigured by editors, who mixed up foreign matter with the original text. Very often an important book fell altogether out of sight for a long time, and when it came to light again all knowledge of its origin was gone; for old books did not generally have title-pages and prefaces. And, when such a nameless roll was again brought into notice, some half-informed reader or transcriber was not unlikely to give it a new title of his own devising, which was handed down thereafter as if it had been original. Or again, the true meaning and purpose of a book often became obscure in the lapse of centuries, and led to false interpretations. Once more, antiquity has handed down to us many writings which are sheer forgeries, like some of the Apocryphal books, or the Sibylline oracles, or those famous Epistles of Phalaris which formed the subject of Bentley's great critical essay. In all such cases the historical critic must destroy the received view, in order to establish the truth. He must review doubtful titles, purge out interpolations, expose forgeries; but he does so only to manifest the truth, and exhibit the genuine remains of antiquity in their real character. A book that is really old and really valuable has nothing to fear from the critic, whose labours can only put its worth in a clearer light, and establish its authority on a surer basis.[2]

Published works

Among his writings are the following.

Books: annotated

The Old Testament in the Jewish Church

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Prophets of Israel

Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia

The Religion of the Semites (1st)

The Religion of the Semites (2nd, 3rd)

Other Writings

Heresy Trial documents

Commentary on Smith

References

  1. John Sutherland Black & George Chrystal, The Life of William Robertson Smith (London: Adam & Charles Black 1912) chs. xi & xii
  2. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (1892), p. 17. Also cited in the Preface to Encyclopedia Biblica.
  3. Johnstone, "Introduction" 15-22, at 19, 20, in his edited William Robertson Smith. Essays in reassessment (Sheffield Academic 1995).
  4. John W. Rogerson, "W. R. Smith's The Old Testament in the Jewish Church: Its antecedents, its influence, and its abiding value" in Johnstone, editor, William Robertson Smith. Essays in reassessment (Sheffield Academic 1995), 132-147, at 132. Here [132-136] Rogerson reviews briefly the reception of continental (German and Dutch) higher criticism, mentioning de Witte, Ewald, and Kuenen.
  5. Cf. John Rogerson, Old Testament Criticism in the Nineteenth Century. England and Germany (Philadelphia: Fortress Press 1984), at Chapter 19, "Germany from 1860: the Path to Wellhausen" [257-272]; and, at Chapter 20, "England from 1880: the Triumph of Wellhausen" [273-289].
  6. Rogerson, "W. R. Smith's The Old Testament in the Jewish Church" in Johnstone, William Robertson Smith (1995), 132-147, at 136. Smith's "great contemporaries Kuenen and Wellhausen were historians and not theologians." But "for Smith, the God whose history of grace was disclosed by the historical criticism of the Old Testament was the God whose grace was still offered to the human race." Rogerson (1995) at 144, 145.
  7. Bediako, Primal Religion and the Bible (1997) at 273, 276, 278.
  8. McLennan is quoted that six social conditions form a mutually necessary totality: exogamy, totemism, blood feud, religious obligation of vengeance, female infanticide, and female kindship. McLennan, Studies in Ancient History (second series, 1896) at 28, as quoted by Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology (Oxford Univ. 1948), chap.2, at 34-35, reprint by The Free Press, Glencoe, 1962.
  9. Peter Revière, "William Robertson Smith and John Ferguson McLennan: The Aberdeen roots of British social anthropology", 293-302, at 300, in Johnstone, editor, William Robertson Smith (1995).
  10. Evans-Pritchard, A History of Anthropological Thought (1981) at 72 (hayy); at 72-74 (matriarchy), 73 (quotes re feminine names as grammar or lineage practice); at 74-76 (totems), 76 (quote "no case"); at 76-77 (quote re McLennan).
  11. Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs. From the bronze age to the coming of Islam (London: Routledge 2001) at 129. Hoyland (at 64-65) discusses the Safaitic texts (20,000 graffiti) of '330 BC - 240 AD' but without focusing on male political power.
  12. Cf., R. J. Thompson, Penitence and Sacrifice in Early Israel outside Levitical Law: An examination of the Fellowship Theory of early Israelite sacrifice (Leiden: Brill 1963), cited by Bediako (1997) at 306,n.4.
  13. Evans-Pritchard writes, "The evidence for this theory... is negligiable." While not impossible, he infers other interpretations, concluding, "In this manner Robertson Smith misled both Durkeim and Freud." E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford University 1965) at 51-52. Here Evans-Pritchard claims that between the first edition and second posthumous edition, certain passages were deleted "which might be thought to discredit the New Testament." Evans-Pritchard (1965) at 52, citing J. G. Frazer, The Gorgon's Head (1927) at 289.
  14. Not mentioned by Smith are prior publications concerning the nascent anthropology, for example: J. J. Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht (1861); Fustel de Coulanges, Le Cité antique (1864); and, Edward Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865).
  15. Frazer soon would publish his The Golden Bough (1890).
  16. Also on account of method Smith was criticized by other contemporaries: Archibald Sayce, and Marie-Joseph Lagrange. Bediako, Primal Religion and the Bible (1997) at 305,n.3.
  17. Rudolf Smend, "William Robertson Smith and Julius Wellhausen" in Johnston, William Robertson Smith (1995) at 226-242, 238-240.
  18. Harriet Lutzky, "Deity and the Social Bond: Robertson Smith and the Psychoanalytic Theory of Religion" in Johnstone, editor, William Robertson Smith (1995) at 320-330, 322-323.
  19. Gillian M. Bediako, Primal Religion and the Bible (1997) at 306-307.
  20. William Johnstone, "Introduction" in his edited William Robertson Smith. Essays in reassessment (1995) at 15,n3.
  21. Bediako, Primal Religion and the Bible (1997) at 307-308.
  22. See discussion by Hushang Philosoph, "A Reconsideration of Frazer's relationship with Robertson Smith: The myth and the facts" in Johnstone, editor, William Robertson Smith (1995), 331-342, i.e., at 332.
  23. Lutzky, "Deity and the Social Bond: Robertson Smith and the psychoanalytic theory of religion" in Johnstone, editor, William Robertson Smith (1995) at 320-330, 324-326.
  24. Bediako, Primal Religion and the Bible (1997) at 307.
  25. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Theories of Primitive Religion (Oxford University 1965) at 51-53 & 56, quote at 52. "The evidence for these suppositions is exiguous." Evans-Pritchard (1965) at 51.
  26. Smith, The Religion of the Semites (1889, 2d ed. 1894) at 26-27.
  27. Edward W. Said, in his well-known book Orientalism (New York 1978), at 234-237, criticizes William Robertson Smith. Said twice quotes at length from Smith's 1881 Arabian study of his travels (at 491-492 [mistakenly by Said as 492-493], and at 498-499).
    "Smith the antiquarian scholar would not have had half the authority without his additional and direct experience of 'the Arabian facts'. It was the combination in Smith of the 'grasp' of primitive categories with the ability to see general truths behind the empirical vagarities of contemporary Oriental behavior that gave weight to his writing." Said (1979) at 235.
    Said calls Smith "a crucial link in the intellectual chain connecting the White-Man-as-expert to the modern Orient." Such link later enabled "Lawrence, Bell, and Philby" to construct reputations for expertise. Said (1979) at 235, 277. Of course, Said mocks such "Orientalist expertise, which is based on an irrefutable collective verity entirely within the Orientalist's philosophical and rhetorical grasp." Said (1979) at 236.
  28. Cf., Jonathan Skinner, "Orientalists and Orientalisms. Robertson Smith and Edward W. Said" at 376-382, in Johnstone, editor, William Robertson Smith. Essays in reassessment (1995).
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