History of Religion Part 5

2. New Social Bond.--The nature of the social force exerted by religion is altogether changed. In tribal religion the tie of the worshippers both to their G.o.d and to each other is that of blood; the G.o.d is their common lineal ancestor, whose blood is in the veins of all the tribesmen. The social bond supplied by such a religion is limited to the members of the tribe; a man's fellow-tribesmen are his brothers, but all other men are his enemies; with them he is at war as his G.o.d is. Social duty is a matter of blood relationship, and extends only to the kindred. When a national religion is arrived at, a social obligation of a new kind will evidently make its appearance.

The national G.o.d is related by blood to only one of the tribes composing the nation; the bond between him and the other tribes must be of another nature. He has conquered their G.o.ds or they have voluntarily accepted him as their chief G.o.d; in any case it is not the tie of blood that binds them to him, but some more ideal tie, like that between a king and his subjects, or between a patron and his clients. And they now have a religious connection also with men who are not their kindred. The national worship is inconsistent with the gross materialism of the system of kinship, and places instead of it the belief in a G.o.d further above the world, and therefore more spiritual, and obligations to men which, as they are not derived from a common blood, are somewhat more purely moral.

3. A Better G.o.d.--The new G.o.d of the nation as he is higher above the world is a being of higher and better character. He belongs to all the tribes, and is not the mere partisan of any; like the king, he is above tribal jealousies, and is interested in checking the violence of all, and securing justice to all. He may be appealed to by those who have suffered violence and who have no earthly helper; and thus he tends to become an ideal of justice and fatherly kindness, and to reflect in the world above the sentiments springing up in the world below, in favour of the repression of violence and the administration of even-handed justice.

In these directions the religion of the nation tends to rise above that of the tribe. The tribal worships may continue almost as they were, the tribal G.o.ds may still be worshipped, the tribal jealousies and conflicts still be carried on in spite of the new union, and all the superst.i.tions of early religion may long survive; yet a new religious force has appeared which will in time produce a complete new system. The true principle of cla.s.sification, therefore, must be drawn from the difference between tribal and national religion, as this is the most vital difference, and that from which all the others which we mentioned may be derived.

The transition thus sketched took place at widely different periods in different parts of the world; it began early and has taken place even in modern times, while very many tribes in various parts of the globe have not yet arrived at it. It is a transition of which it is manifestly impossible to exhibit the detail; in most cases the detail is not known, and it were a profitless task to trace how primitive religions met, united or remained apart, and how their crossings in one case led to a national religion, and in many others led to no such result. Much, no doubt, is to be found on such points in special works, and much still remains to be discovered. Various instances of the formation of national religions will meet us in our subsequent chapters.

The Inca Religion.--We give, however, at this point an example of the transition we have described, drawn from a quarter remote from the great movements of history, and in which the facts are plain and uncontested. Of the two great civilised communities of the New World, discovered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, Mexico presents a worship compounded of many elements, which, along with high and lofty morality and great magnificence of ritual, yet retains an extraordinary amount of cruelty and savage horror. In Peru, however, we find a state religion which superseded savage cults still remembered in the country, and from the _Royal Commentaries of the Incas_, written by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega in the beginning of the seventeenth century,[1] we are able to describe the religion of Peru both before and after the Inca reformation.

[Footnote 1: Printed by the Hakluyt Society.]

"Before the Incas," this writer tells us, "each province, each nation, and each house had its own G.o.ds, different from one another, for they thought that a stranger's G.o.d could not attend to them but only their own." They worshipped all manner of deities; of these are mentioned herbs, plants, flowers, all kinds of trees, high hills, great rocks, and the c.h.i.n.ks in them; caves, pebbles, emeralds. They also worshipped animals; the tiger, the lion, and the bear for their fierceness, and the monkey for his cunning; these they did not kill, but went down on the ground to worship them and would even suffer themselves to be devoured by them, since they regarded these animals as their own ancestors. All kinds of animals they treated in this way; there was not an animal, how filthy and vile soever, so the quaint words tell us, they did not look on as a G.o.d. Other Indians, again, worshipped things from which they derived benefit, such as great fountains and rivers; some worshipped the earth, and called it mother, because it yielded their fruits; some the sea, calling it Mamacocha; and a great number of other objects of adoration are mentioned. They sacrificed animals and maize, but also men and women, and these not only captives taken in war but also their own children, smearing the idol with the blood. (In other quarters of the globe this is a symbolic act showing that the idol and the worshippers all partake in the same life.) Some tribes were fiercer than others, and practised cannibalism more extensively. They were also well provided with sorcerers and witches.

All this the Incas altered. They were a princely family, regarding whose origin and accession to power various legends are told; the G.o.d they worshipped was the sun, and they considered and called themselves the children of the sun. Their father the sun, they said, had sent their forefathers to teach the tribes various things they very much needed to learn; to cultivate the fields, to breed flocks, to live in peace, to respect the wives and daughters of others, and to have no more than one wife. The Incas knew better, it was said, than the rest how to choose a G.o.d, and they declared that men should worship the sun, who gave light and heat and made things grow; they should be grateful for his benefits, and he would reward them if they were obedient. The Indians accordingly took the sun for their G.o.d "without father or brothers"; they considered the moon to be his sister and wife, but did not worship her. Besides this, we hear the Incas sought a supreme G.o.d, and called him "Pachacamac," that is "soul of the world." This being gave life to the world and supported it, but they did not build temples to him or offer him any sacrifice; they worshipped him in their hearts as an unknown G.o.d.

The practice of the Inca religion as described to us by several Spanish writers falls a good deal short of this doctrine. Many beings were worshipped besides the sun; a number of prayers were addressed to the Creator and the sun and thunder. Many sacred objects also were adored, such as embalmed bodies of ancestors and various idols. They practised all kinds of magic, and, worst of all, many boys and girls were offered in sacrifice, even before the Incas and on great public occasions. The reformation of the Incas is evidently not complete; if it had not been arrested by the arrival of the Spaniards it may be that the purifying agency of the new religion would have found much still to do. Enough, however, is seen to afford strong confirmation of the principle that religion gains infinitely in elevation when a national worship appears. The Incas were no doubt the heads of a tribe which had conquered others, and imposed its religion on them.

The lesser conquered worships do not die out at once, but continue along with the central one. But the latter expresses the national spirit and aspirations; and, as settled life fosters the growth of intelligence and of public spirit, the central worship must more and more supersede the others, while itself casting off its superst.i.tious and backward elements and becoming reasonable and elevating.

It will be convenient to indicate at this stage the further line of study to be followed in this volume. As it is our aim to trace, however inadequately, the growth of the religion of the world as a whole, it is necessary that we should confine ourselves to those parts of religious history which lie in the line of that growth, or which serve in a conspicuous manner to ill.u.s.trate the principles according to which it has taken place. It is by no means our purpose to give an account of all the religions of the world, nor do we seek to form a complete magazine of the curious phenomena with which this vast field of study is in every part so well supplied. If we have interposed the foregoing brief account of the religion of the Incas, it is not because of its own intrinsic importance, but because it supplies within so brief a compa.s.s such an apt example of that process which occurs so often in the growth of religion, by which the unorganised rites of a mult.i.tude of clans and families give way when the nation comes into being, to the higher and better religion of the state. In the same way the great religions of which we must next speak have, no doubt, only a loose connection with the central line of the world's religious progress. No work professing to deal ever so cursorily with our subject could omit to deal with the religion of China nor with that of Egypt; yet neither of these faiths perhaps has permanently enriched the religious consciousness of mankind. The religion of Babylonia, with which each of these is connected, was also of isolated and independent growth, and is far away from us both in time and in historical connection. Like great and solitary mountains of ancient formation, each on a continent distant from ours, these faiths attract us not because we depend on them, but because they are interesting in themselves. It was out of the same jungle of primitive beliefs and rites, out of which our own religion has at length grown, that each of these lifted its head to such heights as it attained.

After disposing of these great systems we come to the developments, much later in point of time, which have led to the highest religion yet attained. And here two great races or groups of peoples have to be considered, each in its own way singularly gifted and each contributing in a distinctive manner to the growth of religion. These are the Semitic and the Indo-European families. Under each of these heads we find several well-marked religions; and the nature of the case itself points out our further procedure. Taking up first the Semitic group,--including Islam,--since this part of the subject lies at a greater distance from ourselves, we shall inquire whether there is any common element in the various religions it comprises, or, in other words, if there is a Semitic religion which may be regarded as the origin from which the Semitic religions alike sprang, and which gave them a common character; and we shall then proceed to discuss the Semitic religions each by itself. We shall then discuss the common belief of the Aryans, and go on to the religions of the more important Aryan nations. Our last chapters will deal with Christianity and will point out the nature of development which our study as a whole may have taught us to recognise in the religion of mankind.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

On the cla.s.sification of Religions see Tiele's article on "Religion"

in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Ninth Edition.

Alb. Reville, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as ill.u.s.trated by the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru. _Hibbert Lectures_, 1884.

De la Saussaye, Third Edition, pp. 5-16, gives a good conspectus of the various cla.s.sifications which have been proposed.

PART II ISOLATED NATIONAL RELIGIONS

CHAPTER VII BABYLON AND a.s.sYRIA

The religion of Babylonia, of which that of a.s.syria is a late form, as the a.s.syrians appropriated all they could of the religion and the literature of this southern empire which they conquered, cannot be cla.s.sed along with any other without some inconvenience. In point of remoteness in time it takes precedence even of the religions of China and of Egypt; like these great faiths it also is, in its earlier stage, a growth by itself in a land and people of its own, where apparently it grew up independently from rude beginnings. It is undoubtedly one of the Semitic religions; but it had a character of its own which other Semitic religions did not share, and of the simple and early Semitic religious att.i.tude which will be set forth in another chapter it retained but little. It had an immense influence. Its ideas entered the religion of the Old Testament by several roads. Abram came to Canaan through Haran from Ur of the Chaldees; and in Canaan the religious ideas, myths, and legends of Babylon must have been well known. The discovery of this code of Hammurabi has shown that many of the laws of Moses were laws of Babylonia long before Moses. In a later period the tread of Babylonian soldiery was heard in Palestine many a time before the great captivity, in which Israel sat down and wept remembering Zion by the waters of Babylon. In Greece also we find that ideas which came from Babylon had become known, by way of Phenicia, at a very early period. Recent discoveries, however, seems to make it impossible to a.s.sign to the religion of Mesopotamia any other place than the first among the great faiths of the world. The ancient connection between Mesopotamia and Egypt, surmised till now rather than known, is coming to light, and it appears, at least, possible that the first of these countries may have to be regarded as the source of all the civilisations of antiquity. The pantheon of Egypt has striking similarities to that of Babylonia, and some of the Egyptian temples show traces of derivation from the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates. The similarities in the case of China are not so marked, but they are substantial. In Babylonia, therefore, we may be dealing not with one of three isolated religions, but with the mother of the other two. If, as Mr. Lockyer holds,[1] Egypt borrowed astronomy from Babylon in connection with temple-building, more than 5000 years B.C., the religion of Babylon must indeed be carried far into the past.

[Footnote 1: _Dawn of Astronomy_, 1894.]

People and Literature.--Certain parts of Babylonian religion are much ruder and more superst.i.tious than the exalted star-worship which is its central feature, and these have been ascribed to peoples who dwelt in Babylonia before the supposed Semitic conquest, viz. the Accadians in the north and the Sumerians to the south, peoples not related to the Semites in blood or in language, but generally called Turanian, and thought to be perhaps akin to the Chinese. The cuneiform writing which remained in use for millenniums after the Semitic immigration as the sacred literary form, was supposed to have been the invention of these peoples, who had also made some progress in plastic art.

There is, however, no direct evidence of the alleged early Semitic invasion, and the Sumerian hypothesis of which it is a feature is now regarded by some with less confidence. It is based on linguistic phenomena. Hammurabi, 2250 B.C., reigned over a realm whose subjects were of different tongues, and entrusted his records to two methods of writing. The old Sumerian language, which cannot, in the opinion of the best scholars, be shown to have affinity with any language of the ancient world, came to be confined to matters of religion and magic, and was superseded by the a.s.syro-Babylonian, which was Semitic. But the feeble ray of the Sumerian hypothesis can be dispensed with in the light which is shining on ancient Babylonia from other quarters. For its information about that ancient land the world was formerly dependent on the scanty notices of Greek and Latin writers, but within the last half-century astonishing new sources of information have been opened up. Explorations carried on by scholars of many lands have made us acquainted with Babylonian and a.s.syrian temples and palaces, and with many a great royal inscription. Great libraries, made of brick tablets, have been discovered buried under the ruins of the cities, and the gradual decipherment and arrangement of this old literature is proceeding as fast as able and devoted workers can overtake it. Those who know the subject best declare that no complete history of Babylonian religion can yet be written. The texts now in our possession embody many doc.u.ments of much more remote age, yet the information is as yet too fragmentary and often of too doubtful interpretation, while the proportion it bears to the whole of Babylonian life is too little known to supply a solid foundation for history. With this caution we proceed to state the results which are considered likely to prove well founded. As we saw, several features remain in the religion in later times which appear to throw light back upon its early condition, and it may be best to begin with these before describing the n.o.ble structure presented on the whole by this religion.

1. Worship of Spirits.--The Babylonians, like the Chinese, believed the world to be thickly peopled with spirits of all kinds; and saw in each movement in nature the action of a "zi" or spirit. These spirits could be to some extent controlled; though their character was not known, yet certain charms and incantations were believed to have power over them, and communication with the unseen world took, therefore, the form of magic. The earliest portions of the sacred literature consist of spells or charms believed to possess this virtue, and these were never displaced from the collection; on the contrary, new spells were written even after higher spiritual beings were known and more ethical forms of addressing them had been devised. Especially were all pains and diseases ascribed to the agency of spirits or of sorcerers and witches, their human allies, and the sick person naturally sent for an exorcist to expel the spirit which was tormenting him. Some spirits were more powerful than others, and the stronger spirit was invoked to rebuke and drive out the weaker. The spirit of heaven and the spirit of earth were adjured to conjure the plague-demon, the demon who was afflicting the eye, the heart, the head, or any other part of the body. a.s.sertions are not wanting in the cuneiform literature that beliefs and practices of this kind formed no part of the true religion of Babylonia, and some scholars regard it as a late degeneration. The a.n.a.logy of similar cases points, however, to the conclusion that magic is everywhere an early form of religion which is only overshadowed, not killed, when a great religion arises, and which tends to reappear. It may be said that there is no evidence of any break in Babylonian religion; if the Sumerians yielded to the Semites, this led to no religious revolution; the religion is Semitic from first to last.

2. Animals.--A step above this trafficking with spirits is the worship of animals, which Mr. Sayce considers to have been an early form of Babylonian religion, and to afford an explanation of various features in it. Like the G.o.ds of Egypt and those of Greece, many of the G.o.ds of Babylon have animal emblems; this appears both in the representations of them and in their legends. The winged bulls and eagle-headed men of Babylonian art represent the same rise of the G.o.ds which we know to have taken place in Egypt, from the animal to the semi-human, and then to the fully human form. An intermediate stage in Babylonia is that the G.o.d stands on the back of the animal with which presumably he was formerly identified. We have an a.s.syrian Dagon whose head and shoulders are covered with a fish's skin; we have G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses who are human figures with the exception of their wings; we have winged dragons; we have the great bulls with human head and wings which stood as guardian deities to ward off evil spirits at the portal of a palace. The following animals were also connected with G.o.ds: the antelope, the serpent, which came to be the embodiment of cunning and wickedness, the goat, the pig, the vulture.

We thus see that the rise from zoomorphism to anthropomorphism which the Greeks afterwards carried to the highest point attainable by the resources of art, began in Babylonia.

Like all early religions, that of Babylonia is broken up into a multiplicity of local worships. There is no common system, but each place has its own G.o.d or G.o.ds and its own sacred rites. In Egypt we shall find reason to believe that this state of matters had its origin in an early totemistic arrangement of society; whether the same was the case in Babylonia or not, it is vain to speculate.

Babylonian religion as we see it has risen far above the direct worship of animals. Each G.o.d comes before us in a certain local connection and with a special character, but they tend to grow like each other, and their worship is organised on the same plan. The G.o.ds of Babylonia undoubtedly belonged to different towns, and though attempts were made in later times to bring them all together in an imperial Babylonian religion, and to settle their relations to each other, these attempts led to no system which was finally accepted.

The number of the recognised great G.o.ds varied, and there was always a large number of minor G.o.ds. Each G.o.d has his own early history; here as everywhere it is the case that the individual G.o.ds are earlier than the system which seeks to connect them together.

The Great G.o.ds.--The great G.o.ds of Babylonia belong to the elements and to the heavenly bodies. When we first see them, they are not, like the G.o.ds of the western Semites, lords and masters, characters taken from human families; they are not husbands and fathers but creators and universal powers. Another mark about them is that they have originally no wives. When they come to have wives, these are simply doubles of themselves with no special character. A consort is given to the G.o.d by adding a feminine termination to his name, thus Bel receives Belit, Anu has Anat. Finally Babylonian religion is more and more directed to the heavenly bodies. It is Astral religion carried to its furthest point. This fixed the arrangement of its temples, the occupations of its priests.

We rapidly pa.s.s in review the princ.i.p.al G.o.ds. One of the oldest is Ea of Eridu, a town which stood in old times at the head of the Persian Gulf. He is a G.o.d of the deep, whether it was that he was considered to have come over the water from another land, or whether he is connected with the belief which was held in Babylonia as elsewhere, that all things originally arose out of the abyss. In later forms of the legend his name appears as Oannes, and he is an amphibious being, half-fish, half-man, who rises from the deep and instructs men in arts and sciences. Works were preserved bearing his name, for he was an author. He continues, even when little direct worship is addressed to him, one of the greatest of the G.o.ds. Ana the sky, is the G.o.d of Erech on the lower Euphrates. Like the Chinese, the men of Erech regarded the sky itself as the highest G.o.d, and the maker and ruler of all things. In Babylonia, however, the notion became spiritualised more than in China; at first we hear that his dwelling became the refuge of the G.o.ds during the Deluge, but in later times he is regarded as a being quite above heaven and all created beings, and even all the G.o.ds. A third great G.o.d is Bel of Nippur, not the later Bel of Babylon, but an older one, identical with the Accadian Mullilla, the lord of the under-world. The earliest G.o.ds of this religion are those of the sea, the earth, and the sky. As they belong to different districts of the country, they can scarcely be called a trinity. A better approach to a trinity is formed by Ea of Eridu, Davkina his wife who is the earth, and the sun-G.o.d Dumuzi, their offspring. The son of Ea, also named Miri-Dugga or Merodach (Marduk), is identified with the Egyptian Osiris; they have the same symbol, each is a sun-G.o.d, and each has a sister who is also his wife, Merodach has Istar, and Osiris, Isis. In Sergul the princ.i.p.al deity was the fire-G.o.d, sometimes called Savul; in Cutha they worshipped Nergal the G.o.d of death, the "strong one" who had his throne beneath.

Cutha was a favourite place of sepulture with the Babylonians. Rimmon was a G.o.d of wind, Matu of storms. There is a dragon Tiamat, with whom the great G.o.ds have to contend.

The sun and the moon were worshipped everywhere; each city had its own sun-G.o.d and its own moon-G.o.d. The preference generally shown by nomads for the moon, since their journeys are made by night, is kept up in early Babylonia, where the moon-G.o.d is regarded as the father of the sun-G.o.d, and as the greater being. In Ur of the Chaldees the moon was the princ.i.p.al deity. There were also towns such as Larsa and Sippara, where the sun was the chief G.o.d; and many of the great G.o.ds of later times were originally sun-G.o.ds. The Chaldeans, moreover, were proverbially star-watchers, and a "zigurrath" or observatory, a building of seven spheres corresponding to those of the planets as they pa.s.s through the signs of the zodiac, and like them rising up to the seat of G.o.d at the North Star, was a regular part of the later Babylonian temple. To Babylonia is due the practice of the orientation of temples; that is to say, the arrangement of the building in such a way that its princ.i.p.al axis shall point exactly in a desired direction. Some of the Babylonian temples were oriented so that the sun should shine to the western end of them on the day of the spring equinox when the inundation of the rivers began on which the prosperity of the country so much depended. The temple was thus an astronomical instrument of a high degree of accuracy, and the priests who directed its building and served in it when built were men of science and learning. A religion which is connected with the heavenly bodies, though it does not fully supply the needs of the lower orders and has too little energy to cope with superst.i.tion, tends to produce a priesthood who form centres of enlightenment and civilisation throughout the country. This was in the highest degree the case in Babylonia. To these old astronomers the world owes the signs of the zodiac, which were fixed not later than in the fifth millennium B.C., and in which we see how early man beheld in the nightly heavens the creatures which on earth he regarded as divine, so that he worshipped them in both regions. The inst.i.tution of the Sabbath is also Babylonian; whether it was connected with the changes of the moon, or with a week of days named after the seven planets, is not certain. Seven is a sacred number in Babylonia, as we find in many a connection.

Mythology.--We come lastly, in our attempt to enumerate those parts of Babylonian religion which have entered deeply into human thought, to the myths. The heroic legends and romances are the most interesting and the best-known portions of the newly-recovered literature. We have already noticed some fragments of mythology, such as the story of the fish-G.o.d who comes up daily from the sea, the moon being the father of the sun, and the family history of Ea and Davkina, with the sun their child. The two latter are evidently inconsistent with each other. But the story about the son of Ea and Davkina has an important further development. His name is Duzu or Dumuzu, and he is the Tammuz of whom we hear in the Bible (Ezekiel viii. 14), who is adored by women raising lamentations for him. He is said to be the sun-G.o.d of spring, to whom the heat of summer is fatal, and who dies in June. It is when moisture is failing from the ground that he is bemoaned. His home is in Eden, for Eden belongs to Babylonian legend, which places it near Eridu. There grows the great world-tree which the G.o.ds love; it rises from the centre of the world, and is nourished from springs which Ea himself replenishes. It is a cedar (Yggdrasil, the ash-tree, we shall find, occupies the same position with the Northern Teutons); it is sometimes found in a highly conventional form with the figure of a cherub at each side of it, each of whom holds in his hand a fruit. In this tree scholars recognise both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge with which we are familiar. The knowledge of the priests in Babylonia was not for every one, but was jealously guarded, and kept for the initiated alone.

From Tammuz we naturally pa.s.s to Istar, one of the few G.o.ddesses of old Babylonia, and by far the most famous of them. Istar was originally the G.o.ddess of the earth, and both mother and sister of the sun-G.o.d, for we are led to believe that she is at first the same as Davkina. The great myth of the descent of Istar describes how she goes down to the kingdom of the shades to seek the waters that shall give life again to her bridegroom Tammuz. The poem in which the narrative is preserved gives a description of the "house of darkness, where they behold no light," and then tells how, at the orders of Ninkigal or Allat, queen of Hades, Istar is deprived, successively, in spite of her remonstrances, of all her ornaments, and how the plague-demon Namtar is bidden to strike her with all manner of diseases. The result of Istar's disappearance under the earth is that all love and courtship cease both among men and the lower animals, and Ea himself is appealed to, to bring to an end so unnatural a state of affairs. A messenger is sent to the lower regions to cause the release of Istar and the reascent of Tammuz. This G.o.ddess, however, is known not only from this legend; she has many forms, and pa.s.sed through various fortunes. The Istar of Erech herself lures Tammuz to his destruction. In early times Istar is also the evening star, the bright companion of the moon. Her leading character, however, seems to be that of a G.o.ddess of love. Fertility depends on her; she goes under the earth to find her lover. In this character she attracted in Babylonia a worship noted for impurity, which under the name of Ashtoreth is found also in Phenicia and in Syria. There is also, however, a warlike Istar, a strict G.o.ddess served by Amazons, and capable of identification with the Greek Artemis, as the Istar of love is identified with Aphrodite.

Much more primitive than the legend of Istar are some parts of the Babylonian accounts of the creation. There are several of these accounts, some newly discovered. In one the old G.o.d Ea peoples the original chaos with a variety of strange monsters. In another the birth of the G.o.ds is narrated as well as that of the world; we find also that chaos is itself conceived as a female monster, a dragon of evil, and the G.o.d has to do battle with this power of darkness and evil, and to bring light and the habitable world up from its realm.

It is certainly true that the Babylonian legends of the creation are crude and inconsistent with each other, and that the account in Genesis belongs to a much higher order of thought. The Babylonian account of the deluge and the ark is more closely parallel to the Bible narrative; the two cannot possibly be independent of each other, and there may be no impropriety in holding that the Hebrew writers were acquainted with myths of general diffusion in the world they lived in.

The State Religion.--The Babylonian and a.s.syrian religion of which we hear in the Bible (_cf._ Isa. xl.-lxvi.) is the splendid worship of mighty empires; it has forgotten its humble beginnings, and under the guidance of large priestly and learned corporations has grown much in depth and purity. Of its outward magnificence the monuments furnish ample proof. The temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon was a wonder of the world. Being the G.o.d of the prevailing city of the empire, Merodach was the greatest of all the G.o.ds, and was reverenced and extolled as befitted the friend and patron of the greatest of monarchs. His son Nebo was a prophet and a G.o.d of wisdom. What Merodach was to Babylon, a.s.sur was to a.s.syria; in fact, he was the only G.o.d peculiar to a.s.syria. The rule that as religion grows in outward splendour it also gains in inward strength and spirituality is strikingly exemplified in the case before us. The G.o.ds have come to be moral powers, who really care for men, not only for the king, their earthly representative, but for their worshippers in general.

Merodach is praised for his mercy; he not only accompanies the king in his wars, of which the inscriptions give us so many a wearisome catalogue, but he heals the sick, he brings relief to him who is mourning for his transgressions, and he brings life out of death and receives the soul committed to his mercy to a blessed dwelling above.

Perhaps we pa.s.s here somewhat beyond the early period of the religion and touch on its ultimate phase. The penitential hymns of the later literature form a strong contrast to the magical incantations, which fill so much s.p.a.ce in the Babylonian sacred literature. The confessions they contain are not very spiritual; the supplicant bewails his sufferings rather than his sins. Indeed, he rather infers from his sufferings that he has sinned, trodden, it may be, where he ought not to have trodden, or eaten what he should not have eaten, than confesses that he deserved to suffer for sins of which he is aware. What is implored is outward redress or ease, not inward peace.

The removal of outward ills is taken as forgiveness. There can be no comparison between these hymns and those of the Bible. But what they do show is the rise in Babylonia of a religion for the individual.

The G.o.ds are sought not only officially by the state or for state ends, but by the individual. They are believed to have regard to individual sufferings; and the friends of a dying person believe that the G.o.ds care for and will receive his soul.

Our knowledge of the religion of these lands is too imperfect to admit of wide conclusions being drawn from it. We know what the higher religion of Babylonia was; and we also see that the higher worship never entirely prevailed in this land; the G.o.d, like Bel or a.s.sur, who bore the character of a human over-lord, never drove out the old set of spirits, nor brought the service of them to an end. As in the case of Egypt, so here the attempts made in the direction of a pure and spiritual worship met with no ultimate success. Babylon and a.s.syria never came so near to Monotheism as did Egypt three millenniums before Christ. Nabonidos, the last king of Babylon, collected all the G.o.ds together in his capital, and endeavoured to organise them in a system under Merodach as their head; but this led to religious discord rather than to peace, since the minor deities vehemently resented the removal of their images from their accustomed shrines, and were understood to refuse their aid to the state on the new conditions. The religion of Babylon was too much broken up into independent local cults to admit of such a unification. The highest that was reached was that one great G.o.d was adored in one city, another in another, with some depth and spirituality. To nations which had attained a higher faith, that of Babylon appeared to be an idolatrous worship of many G.o.ds. That is a harsh judgment. This religion also had life in it and advanced from a lower to a higher stage; from a timid trafficking with spirits to a service of G.o.ds who were ideal heads of human communities, and friends of individual men.

It was not a mere system, as the world has been accustomed to think, of astrology and of divination of other kinds. But when Babylon and a.s.syria ceased to be independent powers, and became provinces of Persia, Bel bowed down and Nebo stooped, not to rise again. The world of that day had no need of them. It had already attained in more than one country to a higher religion than that of these deities.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

The Histories of Antiquity, viz.--

Maspero, _Histoire ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient_.

Duncker, _The History of Antiquity_, from the German, by Evelyn Abbott.

Rawlinson, _The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World: Chaldea, a.s.syria, Babylonia, Media, and Persia_.

Ed. Meyer, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, 1884. The first volume embraces the History of the East to the foundation of the Persian Empire.

Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und das alte Testament_, 1903.