In the winter semester 1966/67 he was habilitated in Zurich and a year later was appointed as an Assistant Professor.
In the summer semester 1976 he was Professor of Old Testament scholarship and general history of religion at the University of Zurich.
His book Der sogenannte Jahwist (The So-called Yahwist, 1976) appeared at about the same time as two other important works, John Van Seters' Abraham in History and Tradition (1975),[1] and Rolf Rendtorff's "Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch" (The Problem of the Transmission of the Pentateuch, 1977).
[2] These three studies inaugurated a heated discussion in scholarly circles on the validity of the then-dominant consensus on Pentateuchal origins, the Documentary Hypothesis.
Thus, Schmid significantly contributed to the advancement of the Supplementary hypothesis of Pentateuch composition.