In the history of nineteenth-century religious thought, William Robertson Smith occupies an ambiguous position. More than any other writer, he stimulated the theories of religion later advanced by Frazer, Durkheim, and Freud. Smith himself was not an original scholar, but was rather ""clever at presenting other men's theories"" within new and sometimes hostile contexts. Smith was an important contributor to two of the most serious challenges to Christian orthodoxy of the last century, the ""Higher Criticism"" of the Bible and the comparative study of religion, and was also the victim of the last successful heresy trial in Great Britain. Yet he was an utterly devout Protestant, whose views on Biblical criticism (for which he was damned) are now considered as true as his views on totemism and sacrifice (for which he was praised) are now considered false. Despite Smith's enormous significance for the history of religious ideas, he has been written about relatively little, and most of what we know about his life and work comes from a source almost a century old. Originally published in 1882, The Prophets of Israel is a collection of eight lectures, including ""Israel and Jehovah;"" ""Jehovah and the Gods of the Nations,"" ""Amos and the House of Jehu,"" ""Hosea and the Fall of Ephraim,"" ""The Kingdom of Judah and the Beginnings of Isaiah's Work,"" ""The Earlier Prophesies of Isaiah,"" ""Isaiah and Micah in the Reign of Hezekiah,"" and ""The Deliverance from Assyria.""A new introduction by Robert Alun Jones discusses Smith's early life, the heresy trial, Smith's early view of prophecy, and the classic text itself. The book will be of interest to students and teachers of religious studies, and general readers interested in Robertson Smith.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.

Excerpt from The Prophets of Israel and Their Place in History: To the Close of the Eighth Century B. C IT is not too much to say that the present work, though it only now appears in a second edition, has achieved one of the greatest known literary successes in the department of theology. It was, on its first appearance, eagerly bought and as eagerly read, and, though it has long been out of print, the demand for it has never ceased. The beloved and admired author resisted the temptation of simply reprinting it, and hoped - but hoped in vain - for leisure and strength to revise it. It would, no doubt, have cost him more labour than the companion-volume of Lectures, which he issued in a conscientiously revised edition in 1893, for reasons which the reader who is unfamiliar with the subject will see when he has finished this Intro duction. And precisely for this reason I lament, as much as any young student, that it was not vouchsafed to the highly gifted author to revise his own work. And now that the publishers have determined on. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.