The prophets of Israel and their place in history : to the close of the eighth century B.C. / by W. Robertson Smith ; with introduction and additional notes by T. K. Cheyne

William Robertson Smith achieved fame and notoriety as a scholar of Semitic religions. A minister of the Free Church of Scotland and a professor at the Church's college in Aberdeen, Smith was dismissed from both after a much publicized heresy trial. He eventually found an academic home at Cambridge University, where he became editor-in-chief of show more the Encyclopedia Britannica. Smith's troubles began when he published views that were inspired by the biblical criticism then current on the European continent. Today his reputation depends on his creative Lectures on the Religion of the Semites Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. Smith distinguished true religion, which is social and oriented toward action rather than belief, from magic and taboo, which for him are individualistic. He also adopted an evolutionary perspective, which claims that what is essential appears in the most primitive form. For Semitic religion, the most primitive is found in the religion of nomadic bedouins. In elucidating this religion, Smith made heavy use of ethnographic reports and theories, most notably the theory of totemism advanced by his fellow Scot, J. F. M'Lennan. In this view, the social grouping is symbolically represented by an animal or totem that is periodically sacrificed and then eaten in a communal meal. For Smith, these observances were the ultimate source of Christian practice. Smith's views on religion influenced the important French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (see Vol. 3), British anthropologist James George Frazer, and the Cambridge Ritualists, led by Jane E. Harrison. (Bowker Author Biography) show less