Greece and Babylon

Indebtedness of primitive Greek religion to Mesopotamian influences--Various kinds of evidence to be considered: Texts and Monuments of Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, Hittite Kingd...

Distinction between nature religions and ethical religions unsound--The degree of personality in the cult-objects a better criterion--The earliest system known in Mesopotamia a...

Mesopotamian religious conception generally anthropomorphic, but the anthropomorphism “unstable”--Theriomorphic {viii} features, especially of daimoniac powers--Mystic imaginati...

Importance of the phenomenon in the history of religions--In Mesopotamia and other Semitic regions the chief deity male, except Astarte at Sidon--Evidence from Hittite kingdoms...

Shamash the sun-god derives his personal character from the nature-phenomenon; but the Babylonian deities develop their personality independently of their nature-origin, which i...

The religious origin of the city--Slight evidence from Mesopotamia, more from early Greece--Early Mesopotamian kingship of divine type--The king inspired and occasionally worshi...

The deity conceived on the whole as beneficent and righteous, but the divine destructive power more emphasised in Babylonia--Every Babylonian deity moralised, not every Hellenic...

Neither in Babylon nor Greece any clear and consistently maintained dogma of divine omnipotence--Yet the divinities collectively the strongest power in the universe--No develope...

The relation of the individual to the deity more intimate in Mesopotamia than in Greece--The religious temper more ecstatic, more prone to self-abasement, sentimentality, raptur...

General resemblances between Mesopotamian and early Hellenic rites of tendance of dead--Mesopotamian theory of the lower world gloomier--The terror of the spectre stronger in th...

In the second millennium all Semitic communities had evolved the temple, and Babylonia the idol--In Greece, temple-building was coming into vogue, but the cults still aniconic--...

The newly-elected holder of a University professorship or lectureship, before embarking on the course of special discussion that he has selected, may be allowed or expected to p...

The subject I have chosen for this course may appear over-ambitious; and the attempt to pass critical judgment upon the facts that arise in this wide comparative survey may be t...

As I said in a previous lecture,[40.1] “we must regard the religious structure to which the cults of Anatolia and Mesopotamia belonged as morphologically the same as the Helleni...

A comparison made according to the test we have just applied is not so important as that which arises in the second stage of the inquiry. Assuming that the peoples on the east a...

The next clue that I propose to follow in our general comparison is the relative prominence of the goddess-cult in the areas that we are surveying. The subject is of importance...

So far as we have gone our main question must be still regarded as an open one. We may now compare the particular conceptions concerning divinity that prevailed at the period to...

The next important section of our survey is the comparison of the social and ethical aspects of the religions in the eastern and western areas. Here again the former warning may...

The comparison must also consider the relation in these various societies between religion and morality, both social and individual. From this point of view, as we are dealing w...

We may next consider the attribute of purity as a divine characteristic, to see whether in this respect the East differed markedly from the West. As regards ritual-law, all the...

We may profitably compare the Eastern and Western peoples according to their respective conceptions of the divine power. Looking carefully at the Babylonian hymns and liturgies,...

A more interesting and fruitful ground of comparison is that which looks at the inward sentiment or psychic emotion of the different religions, at the personal emotional relatio...

Religions are often found to differ fundamentally in their conceptions of the fate of the departed spirit of man, and in the prominence and importance they assign to the posthum...

A comparison of the forms observed in these regions, both in regard to the minute details and to the general underlying ideas, ought to contribute independent evidence to the so...

This comparative exposition of the Sumerian-Babylonian and the most complex and developed pre-Christian religion of Europe cannot claim to be complete or at any point finally de...

[11.1] I am aware that there are exceptions to this principle, which I propose to consider in a future course; no single formula can ever sum up all the phenomena of a complex r...

[41.1] Westermarck maintains the view in his _Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, pp. 663-664, that in many savage religions the gods have no concern with ordinary morality;...

[54.2] In the _Amer. Journ. Archael._, 1887, pp. 59-60, Frothingham cites examples from Assyrian cylinders of birds on pillars or altar with worshippers approaching: one of thes...

[84.3] Jastrow, _op. cit._, vol. i. p. 525; cf. the inscription of the last of the Babylonian kings, Nabuna’id, who prays to Ningal, the mother of the great gods, to plead for h...

[103.1] _Vide_ Winckler, _Himmels und Weltenbild der Babylonier_, pp. 10-11. Jeremias, Roscher, _Lexikon_, iii. p. 58. But Jastrow, _op. cit._, p. 84, seems to believe in the pl...

[124.3] The same figure which I interpret as the priest-king occurs in other religious scenes of Hittite sculpture; the type might often have been used for the priest pure and s...

[144.1] Certain other minor powers or daimones, such as the corn-deity, the Lord of Watercourses (Shuqamunu), may have remained purely “functional,” and have acquired no moral a...

[170.1] Vide _Cults_, iii. pp. 305-306; Sir William Ramsay, in _Amer. Journ. Arch._, 1887, p. 348, expressed his belief in the prevalence of the cult of an Anatolian goddess in...

[189.1] It is interesting to note the cult of the supreme god under the title of Μέγιστος in the remote district and city of Boulis, which excited the attention of Pausanias. Ye...

[193.2] We might perhaps infer their recognition from the occasional use of the word δεισιδαίμων in a partly good sense, _e.g._ Aristot. _Pol._, 5, 11, 25; Xen. _Ages._, 11, 8;...

[205.2] _Vide_ Jeremias, _Hölle und Paradies_, p. 30; cf. King, _Bab. Rel._, p. 46--formula for laying a troubled and dangerous ghost--“let him depart into the west; to Nedu, th...

[225.2] Something near to it would be found in the cult-phrase Ζεὺς Νᾶος of Dodona, which is a form commoner in the inscriptions than Ζεὺς Νάϊος, if, with M. Reinach (_Rev. Arch...