William Robertson Smith FRSE (8 November 1846 – 31 March 1894) was a Scottish orientalist, Old Testament scholar, professor of divinity, and minister of the Free Church of Scotland.

[6] It was during this time that he wrote The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (1881) and The Prophets of Israel (1882), which were intended to be theological treatises for the lay audience.

His views on the historical method of criticism can be illustrated in the following quote: Ancient books coming down to us from a period many centuries before the invention of printing have necessarily undergone many vicissitudes.

Once more, antiquity has handed down to us many writings which are sheer forgeries, like some of the Apocryphal books, or the Sibylline oracles, or those famous Epistles of Phalaris which formed the subject of Bentley's great critical essay.

He must review doubtful titles, purge out interpolations, expose forgeries; but he does so only to manifest the truth, and exhibit the genuine remains of antiquity in their real character.

A book that is really old and really valuable has nothing to fear from the critic, whose labours can only put its worth in a clearer light, and establish its authority on a surer basis.

It was the combination in Smith of the 'grasp' of primitive categories with the ability to see general truths behind the empirical vagarities of contemporary Oriental behavior that gave weight to his writing."