There is then but little doubt that we have in these names an indication of an attempt at what may be regarded as concentration—a desire and tendency towards monotheism. When this began, and what the real opinions of the more thoughtful upon the subject of the unity or the plurality of the deity may have been, we have at present no means of finding out. There can be no doubt, however, that it sprang from more than one cause—the desire not to offend either heavenly or earthly powers by seeming to favour one divinity more than another, the difficulty of dividing and apportioning the domain in nature of every divinity, the wish to identify the divine patrons of the various nationalities with a view to understanding what they really were, and describing their nature for either religious or political purposes—all these things, and probably others, would tend to counteract not only polytheistic bigotry, but also the exclusive appropriation by one tribe or people of any particular divinity, who was their own special helper against their enemies, and to whose particular protection they defiantly laid claim. When in conflict or in dispute with another, there is no doubt that the man bearing the name of Šamaš-nûri, for instance, would be met with the fierce taunt, “The Sun-god is not more thy light than he is mine,” and, as an answer to Yâ-abî-ni, “Jah is our father too, and more so than he is yours,” would at once spring to the lips of any Jew with whom the bearer of the name may have had a dispute. For the thoughtful, God was one, and all the various gods of the heathen were but His manifestations, misconceived and misunderstood by the ignorant and thoughtless, but, rightly regarded, full of deep significance. The Jews in later times had, in all probability, no tendency to polytheism, yet it is certain that they had but little objection to bearing heathen names, and of all the examples that might be adduced, there is probably not one that is more noteworthy than Mordecai, or Mardecai, the worshipper of Merodach as typical of the God beside whom there was none other, of whom, as we have seen,—and that from a Babylonian tablet,—all the other deities of the Babylonian Pantheon were but manifestations. The God Aa, Ae, Or Ea. As the primitive deity of the Babylonian Pantheon, and as apparently closely identified with the well-known deity Jah, who was worshipped by a large section of the Semitic nations, and whose name is one of the words for “god” in the Assyro-Babylonian language, the god Ea, Ae, or Aa, deserves notice here not only on account of his being the creator of all the gods, but also on account of his fatherhood to Merodach, who, in Babylonian mythology, was conceived as supplanting him—not by any unfair means, but by the right of being the fittest to exercise power and dominion over the world, the universe, and even over “the gods his fathers.”