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Smith THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 484 6nethen two series of lectures which were published as The Old Testament in. the Jewish Church (Edinburgh, 1881) and The Prophets of Israel (1882). In 1881 he was invited to become editor in chief of the Ency dopmedia Britannica, to which he had continued to contribute, and for which, besides his editorial duties, he now prepared a series of additional ar ticles. He did not, however, permit his Semitic studies to languish, but spent the winter of 1879,80 in Egypt (also visiting Syria and Palestine) and the following year in Egypt and Arabia. In 1883 he was appointed to the Lord Almoner's professorship of Arabic at Cambridge, where he was elected a fellow of Christ's College in 1885, and in 1886,89 he was chief librarian of the university. In the latter year he was chosen Adams professor of Arabic, a dignity which he held until his death: In 1888-91 he had been Burnett Lecturer in Aberdeen, the three courses being the religious institutions of the Semites, their religious beliefs, and the historic significance and in fluence of their religion. Failing health, however, forbade him to publish more than the first series, Lectures on the Religion. of the Semites: Fundamental Institutions (Edinburgh, 1889). Smith maintained that Semitic religious concepts were common to all primitive peoples, and that these concepts were to be deduced from the data of known popular religions, the outworking of this theory be ing best seen in his Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (Cambridge, 1885) and in his Religion of the Semites. It was, indeed, in these two books that his scientific work reached its acme. His study of primitive Arab life, both as recorded in literature and as observed at the present day, led him to identify it, in all essentials, with that of the Theory early Semites as a whole. As the basis of Semitic of the most primitive Arab social organ Religion. ization he assumed matriarchy, with exogamous polyandry and a totemistic clan system, and for this he sought parallels among the Hebrews and Arameans. His underlying ethnological theories, however, need much investi gation and revision, and his comparative method, operating with analogies, often gives his hypotheses only the support of phenomena first recorded at a late period. Nevertheless, the Kinship and Marriage represents an amalgamation of scattered data into a system of culture-history never be fore attained in Semitic science. In the Religion of the Semites Smith sought to ascertain the original significance of the earliest religious institutions, maintaining that the history of ancient religions must be based essentially on ritual, sacrifice, and religious law, and thus seeking to prove that religion was the common possession of the prehistoric Semitic race. Here again, however, the precautions already noted must be observed. He held that the conserver of religion was the tribe united by the consanguinity of all its members, personality being merged in com munism. At this period there is an animism which makes little distinction between beings and things. The tribal god is considered the physical source of the tribe, and thus a member of it. To the earlier matri archy corresponds a mother goddess, beside whom arises a father god with the development of patri wchy. As the tribe expands in power, the tribal god gains prestige and is regarded as king. With the rise of kingship comes an exaltation of law, the king often being the source of law and being in duty bound to safeguard it. The concept of the tribal god thus receives an ethical content, that of justice. This ancient trital religion was crystallized in fixed in stitutions, particularly in sacrifice, and its cardinal concept was " sanctuary," which Smith compared with the Polynesian taboo and regarded as especially affecting sacred places. Side by side with this re ligion of the nomadic Semites Smith posited the Baal-cult of the agricultural Semitic peoples, Baal being, according to him, essentially a fertility deity. This double system was reflected by the Semitic sacrifices, those to Baal being a tribute of the prod ucts of the field, and those to the tribal god being an animal victim which was eaten (its blood being devoted to the deity), thus renewing and strength ening, by eating the same sacrificial victim, the blood kinship within the tribe as well as between the tribe and the tribal deity. This kinship, however, could be secured only if the sacrificial victim was itself akin to the tribe, so that the victim was the totem of the tribe, which might be killed only for the sacri ficial mead. From such a meal Smith deduced his theory of sacrifice. Gradually the communal meal and the offering became blended, and the sacrifice even became (notably in India) a means of actually controlling the deity. On the other hand, his theory of the basis of human sacrifice is untenable, nor can all the phenomena of Semitic religion be derived, as he fancied, from a single source; while it is also problematical whether all the concepts of a primitive religion can be coordinated in a fixed system. ..~
Bxsraoan"a:: DNB, liii. 160-162. in the British Museum Catalogue, ax., are entries of pamphlets concerning the trial and the views of Smith, but they are controversial and add little to knowledge of his life. Consult on the trial H. W. Moncrieff, Hist. of the Case of Professor W. Robertson Bmith, Edinburgh, 1881; H. F. Henderson, The Religious Comroroeraies of Scotland, chap. xi., Edinburgh, 1905.
SMYRNA. See ASIA MINOR, IV. SMYTH smaith (SMITH), JOHN: English Sepa-ratist, generally considered the founder of the General Baptists; d. in Amsterdam Aug., 1612 (buried Sept. 1). He studied at Christ's College (he is identified by the principal authorities with a John Smith
who was graduated B.A., 1576; M.A., 1579). He was cited before the university authorities for preaching on Ash Wednesday, 1586, in favor of a strict observance of the Sabbath; was preacher or lecturer at Lincoln, 1603-05; after nine months of consideration and perplexity he left the Church of
England, and became pastor of a Separatist congregation in Gainsborough,1606. For further notice of his work see BAmsTS, I., 1.
Smyth's publications were A True Description out of the Word of God of the Visible Church (1589; several
times reprinted); The Bright Morning Star, or the Resolution and Exposition of the twenty-second Psalm, Preached publicly ire Four Sermons at Lincoln (Cambridge, 1603; the only known copy is in the library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge); A Pattern of True Prayer, a Learned and Comfmrtahle Exposition