The religions of ancient Egypt and BabyloniaSayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Religion
The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Assyro-Babylonian religion; Egypt -- Religion
I can but repeat again of him what I said years ago in my Hibbert
Lectures: “Assur consequently differs from the Babylonian gods, not only
in the less narrowly local character that belongs to him, but also in his
solitary nature. He is ‘king of all the gods’ in a sense in which none of
the deities of Babylonia were. He is like the king of Assyria himself,
brooking no rival, allowing neither wife nor son to share in the honours
which he claims for himself alone. He is essentially a jealous god, and as
such sends forth his Assyrian adorers to destroy his unbelieving foes.
Wifeless, childless, he is mightier than the Babylonian Baalim; less
kindly, perhaps, less near to his worshippers than they were, but more
awe-inspiring and more powerful. We can, in fact, trace in him all the
lineaments upon which, under other conditions, there might have been built
up as pure a faith as that of the God of Israel.” That none such was ever
built, may be accepted as a sign and token that between the Semites of
Assyria and those of Israel there lay a difference which no theories of
evolution are able to explain.
Lecture VI. Cosmologies.
Man was made in the likeness of the gods, and, conversely, the gods are in
the likeness of man. This belief lies at the root of the theology of
Semitic Babylonia, and characterises its conception of divinity. It
follows from it that the world which we see has come into existence like
the successive generations of mankind or the products of human art. It has
either been begotten by the creator, or it has been formed out of
pre-existing materials. It did not come into being of itself; it is no
fortuitous concurrence of atoms; no self-evolved product out of nothing,
or the result of continuous development and evolution. The doctrines of
spontaneous generation and of development are alike foreign to Babylonian
religious thought. That demanded a creator who was human in his attributes
and mode of work, who could even make mistakes and experiments, and so
call into existence imperfect or monstrous forms which further experience
was needed to rectify. There was an earlier as well as a later creation,
the unshapely brood of chaos as well as the more perfect creations of the
gods of light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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