Person

Mark Smith

American biblical scholar of the Hebrew Bible and its Ugaritic / Canaanite religious context. Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University (1989-2017), now Helena Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary (2017-). Smith is the most-cited modern academic voice on the developmental history of Israelite religion, the view that Israel's monotheism emerged out of a West Semitic / Canaanite polytheistic matrix through stages (polytheism → henotheism / monolatry → exclusive monotheism). His primary-source mastery is Ugaritic mythology (the Ras Shamra corpus), where the deity-names and divine-council patterns paralleling the Hebrew Bible are concentrated.

Smith sits in the mainstream Hebrew-Bible academy; he is not a polemicist for or against religious belief, but his developmental thesis is extensively deployed by atheist apologists as evidence that biblical monotheism is a late editorial construct rather than an original revelation. Conservative-evangelical responses (Michael Heiser, John Currid, Richard Davidson) typically accept the philological-comparative case while contesting the developmental conclusions, reading the Ugaritic-Israelite overlap as polemical engagement or as evidence for an original-but-suppressed divine-council monotheism (Heiser's reading) rather than a polytheistic origin point.

Life

B. 1955 in Concord, Massachusetts. Educated Harvard College (BA, 1977), Catholic University of America (MA), and Yale University (PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 1985), under Marvin Pope.
Taught Yale Divinity School (1985-1989), Saint Joseph's University (1989-1993), Saint Joseph's College, then New York University (1989-2017), Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies.
Since 2017, Helena Professor of Old Testament Literature and Exegesis at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Roman Catholic by tradition; member of the Society of Biblical Literature; past editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature; co-founder of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly monograph series and contributor to multiple major reference works (Anchor Bible Dictionary, Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Studies).

Major works

The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Harper & Row, 1990; 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 2002), the foundational statement of the developmental thesis; argues YHWH was originally one deity among several in a West Semitic pantheon (paired with Asherah, distinguished from El and Baal) before being elevated to exclusive supremacy.
The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford University Press, 2001), the technical academic companion; reconstructs the stages from Late Bronze Age polytheism through monolatry (worship-one-only) to ontological-exclusive monotheism (denial-of-others).
The Memoirs of God: History, Memory, and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel (Fortress, 2004), applies cultural-memory theory to Israel's religious development.
God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World (Mohr Siebeck, 2008; Eerdmans, 2010), how ancient cultures identified their gods with foreign deities (interpretatio); how biblical texts both participate in and resist this practice.
Where the Gods Are: Spatial Dimensions of Anthropomorphism in the Biblical World (Yale University Press, 2016), the spatial-locative dimension of ANE deity-discourse.
Poetic Heroes: Literary Commemorations of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World (Eerdmans, 2014).
The Ugaritic Baal Cycle (Brill, vol. I 1994; vol. II 2009, with Wayne Pitard), the definitive critical edition / translation / commentary on the Baal Cycle, the single most-important Ugaritic narrative text for biblical comparison.

Key positions

Developmental thesis on Israelite religion. Israel's monotheism is the end-state of a centuries-long religious development out of a West Semitic / Canaanite polytheistic environment, not the original form of Israelite religion. The exclusive-monotheism formulation crystallizes in the exilic and post-exilic period (Second Isaiah, Deuteronomistic redaction). Earlier strata of the Hebrew Bible preserve fossilized evidence of the prior polytheistic and monolatrous stages.
YHWH and Asherah pairing. Smith reads the Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom inscriptions ("YHWH and his Asherah") as evidence that popular Israelite religion through the monarchic period included Asherah as YHWH's consort, the prophetic and Deuteronomistic critique of Asherah-worship (Deut 7:5; 1 Kgs 18:19; Jer 7:18) reflects later orthodox suppression of this practice.
YHWH-El identification, not original-identity. Smith argues YHWH was originally distinct from El (the head of the West Semitic pantheon) and was gradually identified-with and absorbed-into El's roles in the monarchic period. Genesis preserves traces of this, Gen 14:18-20 (Melchizedek's "El Most High"); Gen 33:20 (Jacob's altar "El the God of Israel"); Exod 6:2-3 (the explicit theological statement that the patriarchs knew God as El Shaddai, not YHWH).
The divine council in Israelite religion. Smith reads Pss 82:1, Deut 32:8-9 (with the Qumran reading "sons of God" / bene elohim, against the Masoretic "sons of Israel"), and Job 1-2 as preserving the older divine-council structure where YHWH sits among other elohim. Later editorial layers re-interpret these elohim as angels or demote them to nothingness (Isa 40-55).
Monolatry vs ontological monotheism. Smith distinguishes (a) monolatry, Israel worships only YHWH but acknowledges other gods exist, from (b) ontological monotheism, Israel denies other gods exist at all. The biblical corpus reflects a transition from (a) to (b), with the strongest ontological-monotheism statements appearing in Second Isaiah (Isa 43:10; 44:6; 45:5-6) in the exilic period.
Methodological neutrality. Smith is not a confessional polemicist. His developmental thesis is offered as historical reconstruction from primary sources (Ugaritic, epigraphic, biblical), not as theological critique of monotheism. He has stated that the religious question, whether the end-state monotheism is theologically true, is independent of the historical question of how it developed.

Christian-apologetic relevance

Smith is load-bearing in the codex at one major engagement:

OT Polytheism Objection, Smith's developmental thesis is the leading scholarly anchor cited by atheist apologists arguing that biblical monotheism is a late editorial construct evolved out of Canaanite polytheism, undermining the claim of original-and-unique revelation. The objection is one of the highest-frequency mainstream-academic challenges to OT historicity / theological coherence.

The conservative-evangelical response runs along several lines:

Philology accepted, conclusions contested. The Ugaritic-Israelite linguistic and divine-name overlap is real and uncontested by Michael Heiser, John Currid, and the evangelical-academic ANE-comparative school. What is contested is the developmental interpretation of that overlap.
Polemical engagement, not derivation (John Currid's primary contribution). The biblical use of West Semitic divine-vocabulary (El, El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Olam) and divine-council imagery is polemical, the texts borrow recognizable ANE vocabulary to invert the surrounding theology, attributing functions of the entire pantheon to a single supreme YHWH. Same vocabulary, opposite theological move.
Divine-council monotheism is not polytheism (Michael Heiser's contribution in The Unseen Realm, 2015). The elohim in Ps 82, Deut 32:8-9, and the divine-council passages are real spiritual beings under YHWH's sovereignty, not co-equal deities. The biblical corpus is monotheistic-with-a-supernatural-host, not polytheistic-becoming-monotheistic.
Dating disputes. The exilic-dating of full monotheism depends on the Wellhausen-derived JEDP source-critical chronology, which is itself contested by maximalist OT scholars (Kenneth Kitchen, James Hoffmeier, K. Lawson Younger). On earlier-dating models the monotheistic spine of the Pentateuch is monarchic or pre-monarchic.
YHWH-El identification reading vs YHWH-El distinction reading. Smith reads Exod 6:2-3 as historical-development evidence; the alternative reading takes the same passage as a theological statement about progressive revelation, the patriarchs knew God truly under one name; Moses receives the personal-covenant name YHWH.

The codex accepts Smith as a competent primary-source scholar whose philology is sound; it contests the developmental-historical reconstruction as one interpretation among several, and treats the polemical-engagement + divine-council readings as the stronger evangelical-academic responses. Smith is the foil for the OT-Polytheism-Objection-Defeater architecture, not a wholesale opponent.