quote the latter or are dependent upon him.

Of all these sources it may be said, that what information they furnish
of Babylonia and Assyria bears largely upon the political history, and
only to a very small degree upon the religion. In the Old Testament, the
two empires appear only as they enter into relations with the Hebrews,
and since Hebrew history is not traced back beyond the appearance of the
clans of Terah in Palestine, there is found previous to this period,
barring the account of the migrations of the Terahites in Mesopotamia,
only the mention of the Tigris and Euphrates among the streams watering
the legendary Garden of Eden, the incidental reference to Nimrod and his
empire, which is made to include the capitol cities of the Northern and
Southern Mesopotamian districts, and the story of the founding of the
city of Babylon, followed by the dispersion of mankind from their
central habitation in the Euphrates Valley. The followers of Abram,
becoming involved in the attempts of Palestinian chieftains to throw off
the yoke of Babylonian supremacy, an occasion is found for introducing
Mesopotamia again, and so the family history of the Hebrew tribes
superinduces at odd times a reference to the old settlements on the
Euphrates, but it is not until the political struggles of the two Hebrew
kingdoms against the inevitable subjection to the superior force of
Assyrian arms, and upon the fall of Assyria, to the Babylonian power,
that Assyria and Babylonia engage the frequent attention of the
chronicler's pen and of the prophet's word. Here, too, the political
situation is always the chief factor, and it is only incidentally that
the religion comes into play,--as when it is said that Sennacherib, the
king of Assyria, was murdered while worshipping in the temple dedicated
to a deity, Nisroch; or when a prophet, to intensify the picture of the
degradation to which the proud king of Babylon is to be reduced,
introduces Babylonian conceptions of the nether world into his
discourse.[5] Little, too, is furnished by the Book of Daniel, despite
the fact that Babylon is the center of action, and what little there is
bearing on the religious status, such as the significance attached to
dreams, and the implied contrast between the religion of Daniel and his
companions, and that of Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians, loses some
of its force by the late origin of the book. The same applies, only in a
still stronger degree, to the B