ligions alike sprang, and which
gave them a common character; and we shall then proceed to discuss
the Semitic religions each by itself. We shall then discuss the
common belief of the Aryans, and go on to the religions of the more
important Aryan nations. Our last chapters will deal with
Christianity and will point out the nature of development which our
study as a whole may have taught us to recognise in the religion of
mankind.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED

On the classification of Religions see Tiele's article on "Religion"
in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, Ninth Edition.

Alb. Reville, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as
illustrated by the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru. _Hibbert
Lectures_, 1884.

De la Saussaye, Third Edition, pp. 5-16, gives a good conspectus of
the various classifications which have been proposed.

PART II
ISOLATED NATIONAL RELIGIONS

CHAPTER VII
BABYLON AND ASSYRIA

The religion of Babylonia, of which that of Assyria is a late form,
as the Assyrians appropriated all they could of the religion and the
literature of this southern empire which they conquered, cannot be
classed along with any other without some inconvenience. In point of
remoteness in time it takes precedence even of the religions of China
and of Egypt; like these great faiths it also is, in its earlier
stage, a growth by itself in a land and people of its own, where
apparently it grew up independently from rude beginnings. It is
undoubtedly one of the Semitic religions; but it had a character of
its own which other Semitic religions did not share, and of the
simple and early Semitic religious attitude which will be set forth
in another chapter it retained but little. It had an immense
influence. Its ideas entered the religion of the Old Testament by
several roads. Abram came to Canaan through Haran from Ur of the
Chaldees; and in Canaan the religious ideas, myths, and legends of
Babylon must have been well known. The discovery of this code of
Hammurabi has shown that many of the laws of Moses were laws of
Babylonia long before Moses. In a later period the tread of
Babylonian soldiery was heard in Palestine many a time before the
great captivity, in which Israel sat down and wept remembering Zion
by the waters of Babylon. In Greece also we find that ideas which
came from Babylon had become known, by way of Phenicia, at a very
early period. Recent discoveries, however, seems to make it
impossible