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in the sinfulness of human nature and the purity of the divine. The
purity, it is true, may be ceremonial rather than moral, and in the
early days of Babylonian religion the ceremonial element almost
obscured the moral. But as time went on the moral element
grew ever stronger, and the ritual texts began to be superseded
by prayers of a more spiritual character. The prayers addressed
by Nebuchadrezzar to Merodach rise almost to the height of a
passionate faith in the absolute goodness and mercy of the god.
Speaking generally, then, we may say that the religion of
Babylonia was essentially anthropomorphic, with all the faults
and virtues of an anthropomorphic conception of the divine. But
it was grafted on a primeval stock of Sumerian shamanism from
the influences of which it never wholly shook itself free. It thus
differed from Hebrew anthropomorphism, with which in other
respects it had so much in common. Behind the lineaments of
Hebrew anthropomorphism ghost or goblin are not to be found.
And yet between the religion of Babylonia and that of Israel
there was much that was alike. It was natural, indeed, that it
should be so. The Babylonians of history were Semitic, and
Abraham the Hebrew had sprung from a Babylonian city. In the
last lecture I drew attention to the similarity that existed between
the temples of Babylonia and that of Jerusalem, a similarity that
extended even to details. There was the same similarity between
the Babylonian rituals and the Mosaic Law; the priesthood,
moreover, was established on the same lines, and the prophets
and seers of Israel have their analogues in those of Chaldæa.
The religious law and ritual of the Hebrews looks back like their
calendar to the banks of the Euphrates.
The same lesson is taught by the literary traditions of the [499]
Hebrew people. The cosmology of Genesis has its roots in the
cosmology of Eridu, and the first home of mankind is placed
by the Old Testament in Eden,“the plain”of Babylonia, which
was watered by the Tigris and Euphrates. The Babylonian story
of the Deluge is the parent of that which is recounted in the