[1] Smith’s election to this post in 1886 followed the death of the previous incumbent, Henry Bradshaw, and as Black and Chrystal (Robertson Smith’s biographers) note (1912: 485f.) this was testimony to the personal and academic esteem in which he was already held at Cambridge University.

[2] Thomas Spencer Baynes, the original editor of the ninth edition (1875-1889), died in May, 1887; for some considerable time before this, however, Smith had effectively been in charge of editorial work on the encyclopaedia.

[3] First published in  November, 1889, by A. & C. Black, Edinburgh and London.

[4] Contemporary Review (1887) 51: 561-569.

[5] “The Old Testament: ancient monuments and modern critics”: Contemporary Review (1887) 51: 376-393.

[6] See Walter Besant: Thirty Years’ Work in the Holy Land: a Record and a Summary:  London, A. P. Watts & Son, 1895, pp.20-25, for the subsequent quotations from the prospectus. Besant (p.209) pays a fine posthumous tribute to WRS: “Lastly, among the scholars who have passed away from the roll of our Council must be mentioned that abyss of learning, the late editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Professor William Robertson Smith, scholar, divine, mathematician, and orientalist. It may be doubted whether the present age has known a more universal scholar than Robertson Smith”.

[7] Tent Work in Palestine, I: 71. Cf. Besant (1895, pp.196ff.) who accepts the identification.

[8] Ibid. I: 163.

[9] Ibid. I: 315.

[10] Ibid. I: 206f.

[11] First published in The Academy (May 17, 1879); reprinted in Lectures and Essays of William Robertson Smith (A. & C. Black 1912: 601-607).

[12] Vol. XIII 1880: 396-432.

[13] Contemporary Review 50: 376 (1887).

[14] Ibid. 51: 561-569.

[15] Ibid. 51: 561.

[16] Ibid. 51:564f.

[17] The Committee (Sayce calls it the “Company”) met regularly at the Jerusalem Chamber in Westminster.  Smith and Sayce were also members of the convivial Savile Club, where both men were accustomed to stay during London visits.

[18] Sayce’s Reminiscences (Macmillan & Co., Ltd, 1923) remain a remarkably amusing personal account of his life – much of which was spent on his own luxuriously equipped dahabia on the Nile.

[19] Reminiscences, p.226; p.272. Sayce actually describes the book as “quasi-theology” (p.226).

[20] Reminiscences, p.213.

[21] Driver’s celebrated Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament (1891) established this beyond doubt, although he retained reservations about some of Wellhausen’s more speculative theories..

[22] Reminiscences, p.214.

[23] He made an exception only in the case of the book of Daniel.

[24] Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments [hereafter FLAM] p. 93f.

[25] Ibid. p.100. Debate continues to the present day on the dating of the inscription.

[26] Ibid. p.98.

[27] Reminiscences, p. 252.

[28] Ibid., p.272f.

[29] Just as had been the case with his earlier edition of Herodotus (Books I-III) in 1883.

[30] DNB. The article by Battiscombe Gunn was published in 1946.

[31] The Academy, no. 917, November 30, 1889, pp.357f.

[32] Ibid., p.357

[33] Ibid.

[34] The Academy, no. 918 (1889) p.375.

[35] Ibid.

[36] THC, 22f.

[37] Cf. From the Stone Age to Christianity (2^nd edn, 1957, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore) p.2.: “. . . I defend the substantial historicity of the patriarchal tradition . . . [and] . . . consider the Mosaic tradition as even more reliable than I did then [in 1940-46]”.

[38] Ibid. p.119.

[39] THC  p.554.

[40] THC  p.556f.

[41] The Academy (1893) 44, p.113.

[42] Ibid., p.443. Smith criticised Sayce for misreading metseg as netseg.

[43] Ibid., p.570. See p. 590 for Smith’s final response.

[44] Publ. by Service and Paton, London, 1899.

[45] Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations, p.5.

[46] Ibid., xiv.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Ibid., p.xxii