One word may be said in conclusion as to the relations of these rival religions between themselves. Whoever studies the documents here described cannot fail to be struck by the fact that certain ideas, phrases, and even words, seem common to them all. At the time that these documents were written this similarity excited no remark from the orthodox, as it was at once disposed of by the theory that these religions were one and all the invention of the Devil, and therefore naturally bore traces of their common origin. This explanation, however convenient, does not satisfy the demands of modern criticism, and it is therefore necessary to look further. One way of accounting for the phenomenon is to suppose that many if not all of the analogies noticed are due to the mistakes of scribes and translators, who, when dealing with expressions unfamiliar to them, were naturally inclined to repeat the same phrases over and over again. This, as all know who have had to do with ancient manuscripts, is accountable for much, and it is extremely likely that a monk of the Vth or VIth century transcribing an account of the opinions of, for instance, the Ophites who flourished in Phrygia before the birth of Christ at the same time with those of the Manichaeans found in Rome three centuries later, would not hesitate to express views essentially different by the same phrases and even the same words. Add to this the jumble that persons untrained in philology naturally make between names in a foreign language and those of similar sound in their own tongue, coupled with the fixed idea of finding in the traditions of the heathen a confirmation of the historical truth of the Hebrew Scriptures, and you have some explanation of the cause which makes many proper names recur unexpectedly in otherwise unrelated documents. Thus the Armenian bishop, Moses of Chorene, in narrating the story which he says he obtained from Berossus, the Chaldaean historian who wrote at the beginning of our era, says that “Before the building of the Tower of Babel and the multiplication of tongues among the human race, after the navigation of Xisuthros [_i.e._ Hasis-adra, the Babylonian Noah] in Armenia, Zervan, Titan, and Japhet were princes of the land. These persons,” he adds, “seem to be Shem, Ham, and Japhet[22].” Zervan is the name given by a late sect of Zoroastrians to the “Boundless Time” whom they placed at the origin of all things, while Titan belongs to the Hellenic mythology, and Japhet may either be Saturn’s brother Iapetus, or the patriarch of the Book of Genesis. It is to be conjectured that Berossus did not use these three names in the apposition quoted or probably at all, and we can only guess vainly at the real names which are concealed under those which Moses of Chorene here gives.