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William Robertson Smith

William Robertson Smith Biography

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“It is only in times of social dissolution, as in the last age of the small Semitic states, when men and their gods were alike powerless before the advance of the Assyrians, that magical superstitions based on mere terror, or rites designed to conciliate alien gods, invade the sphere of tribal or national religion. In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage terror may dictate to the individual.”

MenMayStatesAgeLastsIndividualSocialCommonMereTerrorAliensSpheresSuperstitionsSavagesTribesPowerlessRiteDissolutionAssyrians
Book:Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series. The Fundamental Institutions
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“This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis, but it satisfies the conditions of a legitimate hypothesis, by postulating the operation of no unknown or uncertain cause, but only of that force of precedent which in all times has been so strong to keep alive religious forms of which the original meaning is lost.”

MayHas BeensSaidFormLostStrongForceCausesReligiousAliveConditionsOriginalsAll TimeOperationsUncertainHypothesisPrecedent
Book:Religion of the Semites (Ppr)
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“We are so accustomed to think of religion as a thing between individual men and God that we can hardly enter into the idea of a religion in which a whole nation in its national organisation appears as the religious unit.”

ThinkingMenIdeasWholeReligionIndividualNationsReligiousUnitsAccustomedOrganisation
Book:The Prophets of Israel: and their place in history to the close of the Eighth Century B.C.
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