lection of Jewish literature, inferior ethically to the codes of Babylon. Moses had nothing to do with the Pentateuch, did not even give the Ten Commandments to Israel, all these were in Babylonian religious literature ages before Moses's time. Even monotheism, Jehovah worship, and the very name Jehovah, can be traced back to Babylonian sources.

What has been said will show at a glance, that our learned professor seems to disregard the supernatural element in the Hebrew Scriptures; if not entirely, he certainly reduces it to a minimum. Now let us particularize. According to him the story of creation, the fall of man, the flood, the Sabbath, the doctrine of demons, devils, angels (good and bad), feasts, and many other things incorporated in the teachings of the Old Testament, are outgrowths of Babylonian mythology. Even the Israelites themselves are more Babylonian than Hebrew. The twelve tribes were not of Hebrew origin, but rather of Canaanitish stock. This last discovery will come as a piece of news to most of our readers, for they cannot forget that the Israelites neglected no opportunity to disclaim their relationship to the Canaanites and to show their hatred for them in every way possible.

To examine the matter more closely, let us see what evidence does Delitzsch produce to show that the doctrine of the fall was borrowed from Babylonian sources. None whatever, except a small tablet now in the museum at Berlin, on which is represented a palm tree, and on either side a man and a woman; behind the woman is what may be regarded as a serpent. This, we believe, is the only thing in Babylonian literature, which can be construed as having any reference whatever to the fall of man. There is not another picture, not a single line anywhere else in the cuneiform inscriptions which even incidentally refers to the fall. And yet Professor Delitzsch grows fairly eloquent in speaking of this little clay tablet, which he calls "a precious treasure," and then exclaims with rapture: "Shall we be astonished, therefore, to learn that entire cycles of biblical stories have been suddenly brought to light from the darkness of treasure heaps in purer and more original forms?" The italics are our own.

His deductions regarding the Ten Commandments are equally baseless and illogical. For it is all but universally agreed that nothing has been found in any literature of the ancients approaching in completeness and ethical quality the Decalogue of the Hebrews. In the very nature of things all nations had laws regarding murder, adultery, theft, etc., but where in all the cuneiform inscriptions do we have anything approaching the fullness, simplicity, and ethical grandeur of the Ten Words as given in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, or in the fifth of Deuteronomy? Indeed, it would be far easier to duplicate the Ten Commandments from the Book of the Dead than from any Babylonian or Assyrian literature so far discovered.

Equally weak are his assertions regarding the worship and the name Jehovah, or more correctly written Yahweh. He asserts that the name was known to the Babylonians centuries before the time of Moses, and that the Israelites derived their system of Yahweh worship, and even the name itself, from the Babylonians. He argues this from proper names found on three tablets of the time of Hammurabi, the Amraphel of Gen. xiv. His contention is that Ja-ah-ve-ilu and Ja-hu-um-ilu should be rendered Yahweh is God. He is about the only Assyriologist who has deciphered the tablets so as to yield that meaning; even his friend and supporter, Bezold, translates the same signs, Ya-pi-ilu. Thus every candid critic will have to say that Professor Delitzsch has failed to make a case as far as the name Yahweh is concerned, and as this is his chief argument to show that the Babylonians worshiped Jehovah centuries before the time of Moses, his deductions are purely fantastical and nebulous.

Professor Delitzsch asserts also that the Israelites were directly indebted to the Babylonians for their doctrine of monotheism. He attempts to prove this again by a very doubtful etymological deduction, namely, that the Hebrew word El, from which Eloah and Elohim, the common words for God, are derived, means goal. Though there is no consensus of opinion regarding the root meaning of El, a term applied in some form to God in all Semitic languages, yet the very best Hebraists see in the word the idea of might or power, Delitzsch, on the other hand, follows Lagarde, who derived the word from a verb meaning "to stretch out to" or "to reach after;" or to use Lagarde's own words, "Das Ziel aller Menschensucht und alles Menschenstrebens." Delitzsch expands these words, thus: "The ancient Semitic word for God is El, and its meaning is the goal toward which are directed the eyes of all men. . . This goal the ancient Semitic nomads called El, or God." Then follows this wonderful deduction: "And inasmuch as there can be in the nature of things only one goal, we find among the old Canaanitish races which settled in Babylonia as early as 2500 B. C., and to whom Hammurabi himself belonged, such beautiful proper names as "God has given," "God be with thee," "With the help of my God, I go my way." Now we submit whether such bold assertions are any evidence, much less conclusive proofs, that the Babylonians were monotheists 2500 B. C. It has neither grammar, logic, nor history on its side.

The discoveries of Babylonia prove most conclusively that the Babylonians were polytheists during every period of their history, and that monotheism never took a firm root in their religious ideas. The legends of creation and the flood are full of polytheism. The same is true of the recently discovered code of Hammurabi, that enlightened king and mighty conqueror, in whose reign, according to Delitzsch, those "beautiful proper names" above mentioned were found.

Anyone who will take the trouble to read even in a cursory way a portion of this most ancient code will see that Hammurabi worshiped Anu, Bel, Belit, Ea, Ishtar, Marduk, Nergal, Nintu, Shamash, Zamara, Zarpad, etc., etc. It would be easy to cite passages in proof of this statement, but let the following brief imprecation suffice: Hammurabi says, “And may the great gods of heaven and earth, the Anunaki altogether, inflict a curse," etc.

The beautiful simplicity and the lofty morality of the Old Testament stands out in bold contrast not only with the writings, but also with the practices of the Assyrians and Babylonians. And how could it be otherwise? The Hebrews had attained to the idea of monotheism at the very beginning of their national life; yea, before. Abraham left his native Ur, "beyond the river," where his ancestors had "served other gods," in order that he might have a fair chance to worship the one true God and become the founder of a new religion, whose chief corner stone was monotheism. Ages later Moses brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt in order to establish the worship of Jehovah in a purer form than the worship of any deity had been before his time by any people.

Thus, Israel, in ancient times and for many centuries, stood high above the surrounding nations in depth and purity of religious feeling and teachings, just as Christianity, in our day and through the centuries, has towered up high above all forms of philosophy and systems of religion, loudly proclaiming to all lost humanity, "Jesus! the name high over all."

No one will deny the great number of parallelisms in the several Semitic religions and literatures. Indeed, it would be exceedingly strange if peoples or nations which could trace their origin to one original stock, one common cradle and language, would not have many laws, ideas, religious as well as civil, which were all but identical. The careful student of comparative religions and history, however, cannot fail to see that the religious thought of Israel was far loftier and purer than that of the other Semitic tribes or peoples, near or far. But, though there are many parallels and points of agreement in the religion of Israel and that of Babylonia, as illustrated in the literatures of the two nations, the points of divergence are far more numerous. While conceding that Hebrew and Babylonian literatures present some very striking parallels, we are far from granting that the best that Israel had was borrowed from Babylonia, or indeed that the latter possessed a purer literature or cherished loftier ethical conceptions than the former.

FOREIGN OUTLOOK.

SOME LEADERS OF THOUGHT.

Fr. Giesebrecht. In a work published in 1901, entitled Die alttestamentliche Schätzung des Gottesnamens und ihre religiousgeschichtliche Grundlage (The Old Testament Reverence for the Name of God, and its Basis in General Religious History), Königsberg i. Pr., Thomas & Oppermann, he gives us a novel, interesting, and plausible reason for the reverence in which the Jews held the name of God. He claims that it is grounded in a view of the world entirely different from ours. He first studies the use of the word "name" in its application to others than God, and reaches the conclusion that names were, with the Hebrews, something more than vocal signs by which to distinguish one person from another. In many cases the name is identical with the reputation of the person, and it is often the representative of the person himself. A special power was attributed to the name of God as distinguished from God himself. The Deuteronomists place the name of God into such relationship with sacred places as to indicate that in their thought the name has a value independent of God. In the religious language of the time the places of worship were designated as places of the name of Jehovah. Another proof that the name of God was regarded as an entity independent of God is found in the fact that the name of Jehovah was used as a force apart entirely from God. Giesebrecht holds that all attempts to explain the reverence in which the Jews held the name of God have overlooked the extraordinary frequency of the expression "name of God," the analogous high estimate of the names of individual names, the use of name as equivalent to existence, including actual presence, and many other similar phenomena. To his mind the universal phenomena in connection with the use of names indicates that primitive men regarded the name as having a supernatural value-that the name, in the case of men at least, is relatively independent of the person who wears it; that it is an entity parallel to the human being himself, at once representing him and affecting his weal or woe. He finds that among Semitic personal names, even when they have a distinctly religious character, the real name of God remains in the background, and thinks that this custom arose from the fact that in the minds of the originators of these names the names of the tribal gods were taboo. In Phoenician language both the name and the face of God are expressions for the designation of a being independent of yet subordinate to God. In such passages as Amos vi, 10, he thinks the evidence is that the name of the spirits of vengeance must remain unmentioned because the mention might

easily bring up the spirits themselves. According to all these considerations he concludes that in the Old Testament the power and significance of the name of God is in no sense dependent upon any revealed, and therefore secret, designation, but on the contrary it is the result of universal human phenomena. Even in the religion of the prophets the characteristic of the name of God is that by it divine energy is caused to flow. Still, he does not regard the old Jewish thought as being that by the mention of the name results must mechanically follow; rather does he think that, all in all, the Jewish conception of the relation of the name of Jehovah to God and to man was ethical. But the difference between their view and ours is in the fact that we no longer believe in the power of the name as ancient Israel so firmly did. Whatever anyone may think of the conclusions reached by Giesebrecht, it is clear that he has made a serious attempt to explain the striking phenomena connected with the frequent expression, "the name of the Lord."

Gerhard Bindemann. It has often been remarked that while Paul refers justification by faith to the initial reception of the sinner into a state of peace, he does not emphasize the need of constant forgiveness, but rather the possibility and necessity of release from the power of sin. Whether this generally accepted view of Paul's representation is correct Bindemann undertakes to examine in his Das - Gebet um tägliche Vergebung der Sünden in der Heilsverkündigung Jesu und in den Briefen des Apostels Paulus (Prayer for Daily Forgiveness of Sin in the Proclamation of Salvation, by Jesus and in the Letters of the Apostle Paul), 1902, Gütersloh, C. Bertelsmann. He holds that Jesus taught his disciples, in the Lord's Prayer, to ask for the forgiveness of their sins, although they were already forgiven when they became his disciples. He next undertakes to show that Paul and the Pauline churches were acquainted with the Lord's Prayer. He finds evidence of this in 2 Tim. iv, 18, where some of the phrases are strikingly like those of the Lord's Prayer, and in the "Abba, Father," of Rom. viii, 15, and Gal. iv, 6. Besides, Paul was more or less frequently, and at times for comparatively long periods, in personal intercourse with the primitive apostles and the church at Jerusalem. It is therefore practically impossible that Paul should not have known the Lord's Prayer. The only question that seems to him to remain is whether Paul used that prayer, especially the petition, "Forgive us our sins," as Christ desired it to be used. Paul was in the habit of praying for things, and he had a sense of his own sinfulness as a present fact, as 1 Cor. xv, 9; 1 Tim. i, 15f.; and Rom. vii, 14ff. show. How he thought of the method by which Christians were to rid themselves of their ever-repeated sins is seen in 2 Cor. vii, 1. In this passage the apostle does, indeed, urge upon Christians the necessity of cleansing themselves from their