Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 39:154 (Apr 1882)
Article: Prof. W. Robertson Smith From A Conservative Stand-Point.
Author: John Phelps Taylor

BSac 39:154 (April 1881) p. 291

Prof. W. Robertson Smith From A Conservative
Stand-Point.1

Rev. John Phelps Taylor

Who is Robertson Smith? A Scotchman, with the national acuteness and fervor; the son of a minister, inheriting high mental and spiritual gifts; a student of Semitic languages and letters in the schools of Göttingen, Berlin, and Bonn, under teachers like Paul de Lagarde, the brilliant successor of Ewald. At the age of six able to read Hebrew, he was made at twenty-four Professor of Old Testament Exegesis in the Free Church College, Aberdeen. His scholarly eminence raised him naturally to the membership of the Biblical Revision Committee, and to the staff of contributors to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the last capacity he wrote the famous Article “Bible.” Its views were thought dangerously allied to those of Kuenen, Wellhausen, and DeWette, and resulted in a reprimand and a suspension. Meantime a second Article from his pen, on “The Hebrew Language and Literature,” appeared. The vein was the same; the punishment was greater. Professor Smith was deposed from his chair. That gave him the opportunity to deliver in Edinburgh and Glasgow the twelve lectures composing “The Old Testament in the Jewish Church,” which we are now to review.

We need to note the nature of this book with some precision. It is not an elaborate .introduction to the Old Testament. It is not a polemical arraignment of his opponents in the special commission of the General Assembly. Those he had demolished by an extemporaneous address, which for cogency of logic, mastery of subject, and loftiness of appeal, was worthy of the ringing cheers it drew from a

BSac 39:154 (April 1881) p. 292

house two thirds hostile. Not to the prejudices of clerical antagonists, but to the inquiries of laymen friends, is his book addressed. It aims to unfold the alphabet of biblical criticism. That biblical criticism is the legitimate interpretation of historical facts, and not the invention of modern scholars, is his postulate. That it has yielded certain definite results in opposition to the traditional theory of the Old Testament history, is his proposition. All that the scope of the work requires, all that the limitations of a quarterly permit the present writer, is a review confined to certain salient points, and addressed to the average educated reader of the Bible. To survey the volume from this specific and untechnical stand-point is the task on which he now enters.

Our opening word must be one of praise. It is hard to avoid even what may seem extravagant commendation. Pew books combine so many excellences. It has research without pedantry, and freshness without sensationalism. Over an abstruse theme the ...