Lecture I. Introductory. 237
and belief; it is not sufficient to know the literal meaning of its
technical terms, or the mere order and arrangement of its rites
and ceremonies; we have to discover what were the religious
conceptions that were connected with the terms, and the dogmas
that underlay the performance of a particular rite. A mere barren
list of divine names and titles, or even the assurance that theology
had identified certain gods with one another, will not carry us
very far; at most they are but the dry bones of a theological
system, which must be made to live before they can tell us what
that system actually was.
The study of ancient Babylonian religion is thus beset with
many difficulties. Our materials are imperfect, and yet at the [258]
same time are perpetually growing; the religious system to which
they relate is a combination of two widely different forms of
faith, characteristic of two entirely different races; and before
we can understand it properly, we must separate the elements
of which it consists, and assign to each their chronological
position. The very fact, however, that religious texts are usually
of immemorial antiquity, and that changes inevitably pass over
them as they are handed down in successive editions, makes such
a task peculiarly difficult. Nevertheless it is a task which must
be undertaken before we have the right to draw a conclusion
from the texts with which we deal. We must first know whether
they are originally Sumerian or Semitic, or whether they belong
to the age when Sumerian and Semitic were fused in one;
whether, again, they are composite or the products of a single
author and epoch; whether, lastly, they have been glossed and
interpolated, and their primitive meaning transformed. We must
have a chronology for our documents as well as an ethnology,
and beware of transforming Sumerian into Semitic, or Semitic
into Sumerian, or of interpreting the creations of one age as
if they were the creations of another. The critical examination
of the texts must precede every attempt to write an account of
Babylonian religion, if the account is to be of permanent value.