e strength which the ethical factor acquired in
the domain of the religion.

This factor appears to less advantage in the unfolding of the views
concerning life after death. Throughout all periods of Babylonian-Assyrian
history, the conception prevailed of a large dark cavern below the earth,
not far from the Apsu--the ocean encircling and flowing underneath the
earth--in which all the dead were gathered and where they led a miserable
existence of inactivity amid gloom and dust. Occasionally a favoured
individual was permitted to escape from this general fate and placed in a
pleasant island. It would appear also that the rulers were always singled
out for divine grace, and in the earlier periods of the history, owing to
the prevailing view that the rulers stood nearer to the gods than other
mortals, the kings were deified after death, and in some instances divine
honours were paid to them even during their lifetime.

The influence exerted by the Babylonian-Assyrian religion was particularly
profound on the Semites, while the astral theology affected the ancient
world in general, including the Greeks and Romans. The impetus to the
purification of the old Semite religion to which the Hebrews for a long
time clung in common with their fellows--the various branches of nomadic
Arabs--was largely furnished by the remarkable civilization unfolded in the
Euphrates valley and in many of the traditions, myths and legends embodied
in the Old Testament; traces of direct borrowing from Babylonia may be
discerned, while the indirect influences in the domain of the prophetical
books, as also in the Psalms and in the so-called "Wisdom Literature," are
even more noteworthy. Even when we reach the New Testament period, we have
not passed entirely beyond the sphere of Babylonian-Assyrian influences. In
such a movement as early Christian gnosticism, Babylonian
elements--modified, to be sure, and transformed--are largely present, while
the growth of an apocalyptic literature is ascribed with apparent justice
by many scholars to the recrudescence of views the ultimate source of which
is to be found in the astral-theology of the Babylonian and Assyrian
priests.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Morris Jastrow, jun., _Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens_
(Giessen, 1904), enlarged and re-written form of the author's smaller
_Religion of Babylonia and Assyria_ (Boston, 1898); A. H. Sayce, _The
Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_ (Hibbert Lectures, London, 1887),