SMITH, W. ROBERTSON. William Robertson Smith (1846–1894) was a celebrated Scottish biblical critic and a theorist of both religion and myth. Smith's accomplishments were multiple. He brought higher biblical criticism from Germany to the English-speaking world and then developed it far beyond its continental origins. Although his German mentors reconstructed the history of Israelite religion from the Bible itself, Smith ventured beyond the Bible to Semitic religion and thereby pioneered the comparative study of religion. Whereas others viewed ancient religion from the standpoint of the individual, Smith approached it from the standpoint of the group and thereby helped pioneer the sociology of religion.

As an original theorist of religion, Smith asserted that ancient religion was centrally a matter of ritual, not creed. Practice, not belief, counted most. Religion was initially communion between god and humans, not a prescientific explanation of the world. As an equally...