272 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia[296] the sun-god was the supreme judge of men, punishing in this life
their sins or rewarding their good deeds, was part of the culture
which came from Babylonia to the West. It was no inherent
heritage of Semitic nature, but the product of a civilisation whose
roots went back to a non-Semitic race. The ruling caste in Egypt
were of Semitic extraction, but their religion contains little or
no trace of the ideas which underlay the Babylonian doctrines of
divine retribution and the future life of the soul.
It is to Babylonia, therefore, that we must look for the origin
of those views of the future world and of the punishment of sin in
this life which have left so deep an impression on the pages of the
Old Testament. They belonged primarily to Babylonia, and were
part of the price which the Semites of the West had to pay for the
inestimable gift of culture that came to them from the banks of the
Euphrates. They were views from which the Israelite was long
in emancipating himself. The inner history of the Old Testament
is, in fact, in large measure a history of the gradual widening of
the religious consciousness of Israel in regard to them, and their
supersession by a higher and more spiritual form of faith. The old
belief, that misfortune implies sin and prosperity righteousness,
is never, indeed, entirely eradicated, and Sheol long continues
to be a land of shadow and unsubstantiality, where good and
bad share the same fate, and the things of this life are forgotten;
but little by little newer and purer views make their way into
the religion of the people, and the higher message which Israel
was destined to receive takes the place of the teaching of the old
culture of Babylonia. Babylonia had done its part; new forces
were needed for the education of mankind.
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