ment of one powerful ruler. Such partial consolidations had taken place at various times, as, for example, in B.C. 3800, when Sargon I., of Agade or Akkad, became ruler of the land, or later, about B.C. 2500, when the kings of Ur, Urbahu and Dungi, had founded a united empire in South Babylonia. But the grand and final consolidation took place about B.C. 2200, when a powerful prince, Kammurabi, proclaimed himself king of Sumir and Akkad, namely North and South Babylonia, and assumed the epithet of "builder of the land," namely, founder of the empire, and made Babylon his capital. Babylon had before this been but a second-rate city. It is true that dynasties from Dintir-Ki, or Babylon, had from time to time held sway; but it was not until this period that Babylon became the religious and secular capital of the empire. Its central position, its accessibility from all parts, made it an excellent site for the national capital; and, once established as such, it remained so for more than two thousand years. With the establishment of Babylon as the national capital came the elevation of the local god of Babylon into the position of the national god. A similar change followed the conversion of the old Canaanite fortress of Jebus into the Hebrew capital of Jerusalem. By the removal of the Ark, the Hebrew palladium, to the new capital, it formed a species of compact between Yaveh and the royal house; and Yaveh of Jerusalem became the national god. This change was only gradual, taking, as M. Renan remarks, nearly four centuries to reach its full development. In this centralization of religious as well as secular authority in one common centre lies the great secret of Babylonian national prosperity; and as long as the alliance was maintained the power of the empire was unbreakable. The local god of Babylon was Marduk, or Merodach; but on his elevation to the position of national god he assumed many of the attributes of his father Ea, and also of Bel, "the lord of the world," and became known as Bel-Merodach, the Belus of the Greek writers. Khammurabi restored and beautified his great temple called by the name of E-Sagilla, “the house of the lofty head;" and every monarch from this period until the days of Cyrus added his quota to its adornment and wealth. It became the metropolitan cathedral of Babylonia, the centre of all religious life throughout the vast empire. The dynasty of Khammurabi lasted over two centuries, and thus the work begun by the founder was cemented and made firm; and although there were numerous temples of far greater antiquity and of more impressive religious associations, yet for all time this edifice became the national temple of Babylonia, and one of the wonders of the world. It was, however, during the important period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, founded by Nabupalassar, in B.C. 625, and his successors, that this great national religion was at the zenith of its glory. This is the period upon which we are now getting a flood of light by the recent discoveries in Babylonia; is one of the most important in the history of religious development in Western Asia; and one which throws an extremely important light upon the post-captivity aspect of Judaism. For it is during this period, from B.C. 586 to B.C. 538, that the Jewish people were in the closest contact and relationship with their captors-a contact almost amounting to an absorption by their captors. Merodach now occupied almost the same position in regard to the affairs of Babylonia that Yaveh occupies in the writings of the later Jewish prophets. He is the national god. Babylonia is "spoken of as his chosen field or land"— Babylon as his chosen city which he loves, while Bit Saggil is the abode which he loves. The enemies of the nation are his enemies. This is notably shown in the case of the overthrow of the Medes. Prior to B.C. 549, the Medes, growing in power, had been a serious danger threatening the empire as enemies of the empire they are also enemies of the national god. Thus, in the inscription: "Merodach, the great lord, caused Cyrus, his little servant, to go up against Astyages, the king of the Barbarians; he overthrew him, his city Ecbatana he captured, and his spoil he carried away;" Cyrus is here spoken of as the little servant of the national god, because he is doing his work. Nabonidus himself is the greater servant. Here, then, Merodach occupies exactly the same position that is assigned to Cyrus by Yaveh in Isaiah xliv. 28, xlv. 1, where he is spoken of as "Cyrus, my prince." Kings and princes do his work in destroying these foes, and he applies to these enemies the same epithet as the Hebrew god, "the unrighteous (la magari), who shall be utterly swept off the face of the earth." He is a jealous god, and, as such, brooks no interference with his sovereignty. This is shown in the progress of events which led to the fall of the Babylonian Empire. Nabonidus, the last of the native Babylonian kings, who ascended the throne in B.C. 555, was a vacillating ruler, caring rather for pleasure, and especially apparently for antiquarian researches, than for the duties of State. In the valuable chronicle tablet we read the often-repeated phrase: "Bel came not forth;" denoting that the annual processions of the gods were not celebrated. In addition to this neglect of the worship of Merodach, the king, actuated perhaps by his antiquarian zeal, gathered together in the temple of Bel the statues of all the gods from the various great temples of the land. This, naturally, had a most serious effect on the priest caste. The priests of Bel-Merodach were offended, and ergo the god himself also, at being brought in contact with these local divinities; and the priests of the various local temples, many of them older than Babylon itself, were naturally incensed against the king, who deprived them of their local palladia. The action of the king naturally produced a religious revolution in the land, and a powerful opposition to the king. The sole controlling element in the land was found in Belshazzar, the king's son, who seems to have been most punctilious in his religious duties, as well as an active and able soldier. But the gods, as represented by the priests, were against him, and his fate was certain. The Babylonians, like the Jews, were at this time looking to the same source for deliverance. Cyrus, the Persian, was hailed alike by Jew and Babylonian as the one who would restore the capital-and restore the national temple, and restore the national religion-and bring peace to each alike. There was a very rich and powerful Jewish element in the population, and it is very probable that they took the popular side in this national crisis. The great banking firm, who lent money to kings and princes, and farmed the Babylonian revenues of both temples and State are now admitted, by almost all Assyriologists, to be of Jewish origin. Their name, Egibi, or Ikibi, is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew Yakob, or Jacob. One strong argument that these people sided with the Babylonians in welcoming Cyrus as the deliverer, is shown in the fact that their commercial transactions, of which we possess thousands of documents, are only interrupted for a few days by the events of the fall of Babylon. It is not, therefore, to be wondered, with these elements in his favour, that Cyrus entered city after city, and lastly Babylon itself, without fighting. It was on the evening of the 15th of the month Tammuz, the great festival of the marriage of Ishtar and Tammuz Adonis, in the year B.C. 538, that Babylon fell, Belshazzar was slain, and the empire fell. "That night they slew him on his father's throne, A robe of purple round a form of clay." The Cyrus was hailed as a deliverer, a messiah. He freed the Babylonians from the eccentricity of an unpopular man, and afforded to the Jews the prospect of a deliverance. He is hailed by the national god as his servant, his viceroy; and the inscriptions from the temple of Merodach clearly reveal this. Thus is the Persian ruler spoken of: "Merodach, the great lord, restorer of his people, beheld with joy the deeds of his vice-regent, who was righteous in hand and heart. To his city of Babylon he summoned his march; like a friend and a comrade he went by his side; without fighting or battle he caused him to enter his city of Babylon. lord god, who in his mercy raises the dead to life, and who benefits all men in difficulty and prayer, has in favour drawn to him and made mighty his name. Merodach, the great lord, freed the heart of his servant, whom the people of Babylon obey." These passages are sufficient to show Cyrus was welcomed by the Babylonians, and the short time in which he assumed and established here in his new empire proves the willingness of the people to submit to him. The policy of Cyrus in thus recognising the religion of Babylon, and becoming a prayerful servant of Nebo and Merodach, would seem to directly contradict the statements of the Hebrew prophet Isaiah (ch. xlv. 1), where he is attributed with the most iconoclastic tenets, but it is only in perfect accordance with the subsequent action of Cambyses and Darius in Egypt, where the former conformed to the worship of Neit, and the latter to the adoration of Ammon, to whom he built a temple in the oasis of El Kargeh. It was remarked by the late Emanuel Deutsch how remarkable was the change wrought in the Hebrew people during the period of the captivity. They entered the land a people ever falling into idolatry, and falling fron the service of the national god. In no way were they centralized, either in national or religious life, with no great national ambition, with only a law applicable to desert life, and no code suitable to civic life. Yet in the short period of about sixty years they return from their captivity a new people. We can see, perhaps, some of the forces which produced this in the perfectly systematized social and religious codes of Babylonia with which they came so intimately associated. The national temple was the centre of all religious life, as the second temple became to the Jews. The great temple was fed by the local temples, which existed in all towns and villages, and which corresponded to that important post-captivity institution, the Synagogue. The Babylonian festivals corresponded to the Hebrew great festivals almost day for day. In Nisan the feast of the spring or opening, which varied from the first to the eighth or fifteenth of Nisan according to the period of the equinox, corresponded to the Passover. In Tisri there came the harvest feast, the feast of tabernacles; while the strange festival of darkness and weeping on the fifteenth of Adar, which preceded "the great day when the destinies of all men were forecast," bears a strange resemblance to the Jewish feast of Purim. The temple of the Babylonians was essentially the same in name and construction and arrangement as that of the Jews. The Hekal, the "holy place," literally the "palace," was separated as in the Jewish temple from the holy of holies, by a veil. This latter was called by the name of parakku, the "shut-off portion," a word cognate with the Hebrew paroketh, "the veil." Within it were the most precious records of the people or city, similar to the Jewish ark, placed in stone cists, as in the temples at Ballawat and Sippara. Immediately above them was the throne of the god, covered by a species of baldachino, corresponding to the mercy-seat, and supported by Kerubim, or composite figures. Most of their institutions which distinguished them from the Gentle (goim) nations are to be found in Babylonia. The Sabbath, called by the Babylonians the white day, "or the day of the rest of the heart," was kept on the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days with a strictness as great as that of the most Pharisaic Jews. No food was to be cooked, no fire to be lit, the clothes of the body might not be changed, it was even unlawful to wash. The king might not ride in his chariot or exercise any act of judgment or royalty. Sacrifice must not be offered until after sunset, when the Sabbath was over. One remarkable restriction was, that no medicine should be taken. "Medicine for the sickness of his body he shall not apply," which, no doubt, gave rise to the Pharisaic question to Jesus, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?" In addition to this, even that distinctive ceremony which the Jews regarded as characteristic of their people, the rite of circumcision, we now know was a Chaldean custom long before Abram left his Chaldean home. With these remarkable resemblances it is not astonishing that in so short a time the Samaritan colonists from Babylonia became assimilated to Judaism. The laws which had been sufficient for the Hebrew people in the early nomadic stages of their life, in the first settlement in Palestine under the patriarchs and their wanderings in the desert, was totally inadequate for the new life of the city and town dweller. We now find the captivity producing that wonderful compendium of laws, entering into the minutest details of civic, domestic, and social life, the Talmud; and when we examine these laws, it is perfectly apparent that the whole is based upon the precedents of Babylonian laws. The captivity was truly the renaissance of the Jewish people. Broken into divers factions, disintegrated in all their national affinities: with no common bond, no common aim, with a half-developed religion confined almost exclusively to the school of Jerusalem prophets. We find them returning from a short captivity of less than seventy years, a changed and new people. Zealous of the worship of the national god-impregnated with a national love and spirit, so deeply ingrained into their nature that the severest persecutions to which any body of people has been subjected have failed to eradicate it from the hearts of even the poorest and the weakest. Entering Babylon with an incomplete law, they emerge with a religious and secular code perfect in all its branches. With these facts before us we cannot too highly estimate the influence of Babylonia as a centre of religious development and influence. In my lecture this afternoon, I have been able to deal with only one section in the vast mass of Babylonian literature-but certainly, I believe the most important section. The material is ample, the work has been the result of the labour of a few patient students; but the time will come --is rapidly drawing near, when no student of the science of religion will feel his work complete without a careful study of these ancient tomes, which for centuries have lain hidden in the treasure-houses of antiquity. From them we learn that not only was Babylon the motherland of culture and civilization, of arts, science, and letters, but also that in her temple schools were taught the first principles of many of the great doctrines of religion which we hear at the present day set forth from our pulpits. |