e
Babylonian mind."[7] In the words of Delitzsch, "Notwithstanding all
this, however, and despite {168} the fact that many liberal and
enlightened minds openly advocated the doctrine that Nergal and Nebo,
that the moon-god and the sun-god, the god of thunder, Ramman, and all
the rest of the Babylonian pantheon, were one in Marduk, the god of
light, still polytheism, gross polytheism, remained for three thousand
years the Babylonian state religion--a sad and significant warning
against the indolence of men and races in matters of religion, and
against the colossal power which may be acquired by a strongly
organized priesthood based upon it."[8]

Even the most spiritual expressions of the Babylonian religion, the
so-called penitential psalms, bear witness to the fact that the writers
continued to worship many deities. In one of the most spiritual of
these psalms, the psalmist prays:

That the heart anger of my lord be appeased,
A god unknown to me be appeased,
A goddess unknown to me be appeased,
A known and unknown god be appeased,
A known and unknown goddess be appeased,
That the heart of my god be appeased,
The heart of my goddess be appeased,
God and goddess, known and unknown, be appeased.[9]

Some of the hymns and prayers addressed to certain deities read almost
as if the authors were monotheists. But this is due simply to the fact
that just at the time they are interested in the power or {169}
splendor or favor of a specific deity. Again and again the fact that
they believe in the existence of other deities, and in their duty to
pay homage to different deities, crops out. At no period of the
religious history of Babylonia is there any indication of a clear and
well-defined monotheism.

In Egypt also a tendency toward monotheism manifested itself,
especially during the reign of Amenophis IV, soon after B.C. 1400,[10]
that is, during the period when the Hebrews were in Egypt. He tried to
do away with the worship of many deities and to establish as the one
supreme deity the orb of the sun; but after the death of Amenophis, who
was considered a heretic, the new cult disappeared without exerting any
noticeable influence on Egyptian religion. There certainly is no
evidence that either the Babylonian or the Egyptian monotheistic
tendencies influenced in any direct way the development of Israel's
religion.

Turning now to the religion of the Old Testament, we soon discover that
Hebrew relig