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.

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. He was an editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica and contributor to the Encyclopaedia Biblica. He is also known for his book Religion of the Semites which is considered a foundational text in the comparative study of religion.