The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

456 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

partly dependent on a belief in a doctrine of vicegerency, which,
in combination with a profound sense of sin, leads in turn to
[497] the doctrine of absolution. And mediation itself is given a
wide meaning. The priest mediates between the layman and his
deity; the lesser gods between mankind and the supreme Baalim.
M. Martin aptly compares the intercession of Abraham for the
doomed cities of the plain, and the doctrine of the intercession of
the Saints in the Christian Church.^402
The consciousness of sin, again, is similarly far-reaching. It
extends to sins of ignorance and omission as well as to sins
of commission. Time after time the penitential psalms ask
forgiveness for sins the very nature of which was unknown to
the penitent.“The sin that I have done I know not,”he is made
to say,“The transgression that I have committed I know not.”
“An offence I have committed unwillingly against my god.
A sin against my goddess unwillingly have I wrought:
O lord, my transgressions are many, manifold are my sins!”

The disease or misfortune that had overtaken him was a proof
of the sin, even though it had been committed involuntarily or in
ignorance that it was wrong.“When I was little I sinned,”says
another psalm,“yea, I transgressed the commandments of my
god.”^403
Repentance has its corollary confession, whether public or
private. And the ritual texts show that both public and
private confession was practised in Babylonia. Indeed, private
confession seems to have been the older and more usual method.
The penitential psalms are in the first person singular, like the
Hebrew psalms; in public confession the Babylonian probably
believed that a man was more likely to think about the sins of
others than about his own.
[498] Penitence implies a need of absolution. It also implies a belief

(^402) Textes religieux assyriens et babyloniens, p. xvi.
(^403) Martin,l.c., p. 14.