ly affairs were indicated by the
movements of the heavenly bodies, whence arose the whole religious
system of Western Asia and Greece.

+867+. What is true in this theory (to which the name of
"Panbabylonianism" has been given) is that Semitic mythology is a unit,
with Babylonia as its birthplace, and that certain elements are common
to the Egyptian, Semitic, Greek, and other mythological systems. The
substantial identity of Babylonian, Aramean (Syrian), and Canaanite
myths is generally acknowledged:[1514] the Old Testament dragon-myth
(which occurs also in the New Testament Apocalypse) is found in full
shape only in Babylonian material;[1515] the Syrian Adonis myth is at
bottom the Babylonian story of Tammuz and Ishtar. The probability is
that all early Semitic schemes of creation and prehistoric life are
essentially one. Further, such conceptions as the origin of the world
from an unshaped mass of matter and the origin of man from the earth are
widely distributed over the earth.

+868+. Babylonia, then, is the chief mythopoeic center for the Semitic
region, but we are not warranted in extending its influence as
myth-maker beyond this region. The myths of the Indo-European peoples
have in general the stamp of independent creation. Loans there may be
(as, for example, in the myths connected with Aphrodite and Heracles,
and perhaps others), but these do not affect the character of the whole.
The relation between the Semitic and the Egyptian mythologies is still
under discussion.

+869+. The astral element of the theory, based on arbitrary parallelisms
carried out without regard to historical conditions, is an unauthorized
extension of the generally accepted fact that certain myths are astral.
Winckler's assumption of an astral "system" that obtained throughout the
Western world is supported only by unproved assertions of the sort just
referred to.

+870+. Jensen's contention that all myths come from the Babylonian
Gilgamesh story[1516] exhibits the same general method as the theories
of Stucken and Winckler (giving assertion in place of proof), differing
from them only in the material of comparisons.

+871+. The fundamental vice of these theories (apart from the arbitrary
character of the assertions made by their authors) is the failure to
take into account the historical development of mythical conceptions,
their beginnings in the rudest periods of human thought, and their
gradual elaboration and distinct formulat