A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
Stevenson, again, is evidently proceeding upon observation
when he makes his trader in The Beach of Falesà say: "We
laugh at the natives and their superstitions; but see how many
traders take them up, splendidly educated white men that have
been bookkeepers (some of them) and clerks in the old country"
(Island Nights' Entertainments, 1893, pp. 104-105). In Abyssinia,
"Galla sorceresses are frequently called in by the Christians of
Shoa to transfer sickness or to rid the house of evil spirits"
(Major W. Cornwallis Harris, The Highlands of Aethiopia, 1844,
iii, 50). On the other hand, some Sudanese tribes "believe in the
virtue both of Christian and Moslem amulets, but have hitherto lent
a deaf ear to the preachers of both these religions" (A. H. Keane,
Man, Past and Present, 1900, p. 50).
This tendency did not exclude, but would in certain cases
conflict with, the strong primitive tendency to associate every
God permanently with his supposed original locality. Tiele writes
(Hist. of the Egypt. Relig., Eng. trans. introd. p. xvii) that in
no case was a place given to the Gods of one nation in another's
pantheon "if they did not wholly alter their form, character,
appearance, and not seldom their very name." This seems an
over-statement, and is inconsistent with Tiele's own statement
(Hist. comparée des anc. relig. égyptiennes et sémitiques,
French trans., 1882, pp. 174-80) as to the adoption of Sumerian
and Akkadian Gods and creeds by the Semites. What is clear is
that local cults resisted the removal of their Gods' images;
and the attempt to deport such images to Babylon, thus affecting
the monopoly of the God of Babylon himself, was a main cause of
the fall of Nabonidos, who was driven out by Cyrus. (E. Meyer,
Geschichte des Alterthums, i (1884), 599.) But the Assyrians
invoked Bel Merodach of Babylon, after they had conquered Babylon,
in terms of his own ritual; even as Israelites often invoked
the Gods of Canaan (cp. Sayce, Hibbert Lectures, Relig. of the
Anc. Babylonians, p. 123). And King Mardouk-nadinakhe of Babylon,
in the twelfth century B.C., carried off statues of the Assyrian
Gods from the town of Hekali to Babylon, where they were kept
captive for 418 years (Maspero, Hist. anc. des peuples de l'orient,
4e éd. p. 300). A God could migrate with his worshippers from city
to city (Meyer, iii, 169; Sayce, p. 124); and the Assyrian scribe
class maintained the worship of their special God Nebo wherever
they went, though he was a local God to start with (Sayce, pp. 117,
119, 121). And as to the recognition of the Gods of different
Egyptian cities by politic kings, see Tiele's own statement,
p. 36. Cp. his Outlines, pp. 73, 84, 207.
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