The importance of this study is suggested in the following quotation from a prominent Assyriologist, Hugo Winckler: "We come in the end to this, that we can distinguish only two views of the world which the human race has known in its historical development: the old Babylonian, and the modern empirical naturalistic, which is still in process of development and is yet struggling with the old one in many departments of life."[3] To avoid misunderstanding respecting the extent of the Babylonian influence, he adds, "The view of the world and religion are one for the ancient Oriental."[3] In this statement Winckler robs the Old Testament religion of all originality; he considers it simply a natural development of the Babylonian religion. Friedrich Delitzsch, in his lectures on "Babel and Bible,"[4] expresses the same idea in a slightly modified form and attempts to show the predominance of Babylonian thought in the Hebrew conception of the origin of the world, the Fall, the Flood, life after death, angels, demons, the devil, the Sabbath, a large part of the sacrificial cult, the directions concerning the priesthood, the name and worship of Jehovah, and even in the monotheistic conception of Deity. How much truth is there in these claims? Or, to put the question in another form, If the religious { 165} ideas expressed in the Old Testament have parallels among nations commonly called heathen, and if these extra-biblical ideas cannot be explained as dependent on the Bible, does it follow that the ideas of the Bible are appropriated from these nations, and if so, what becomes of the uniqueness, the sacredness, the inspiration of the Old Testament? In order to answer the question adequately it is necessary to consider in detail the most important phases of the religious ideas of the Hebrews on the one hand, and of the nations with whom the Hebrews came in contact on the other.
Fundamental to all religious thinking is the conception of Deity. The origin of the Babylonian conception of Deity, which shows more striking similarities to the ideas of the Old Testament than do the conceptions of the other nations above mentioned, belongs to a period of which little or nothing is known. But there are indications that a fundamental aspect of the earliest religion of the country was animism, that is, the belief that every object was possessed and animated by a spirit. "Life was the only force known to man which explained motion, and, conversely, motion was the sign and manifestation of life. The arrow which sped through the air, or the rock which fell from the cliff, did so in virtue of their possessing life, or because the motive force of { 166} life lay in some way or other behind them. The stars, which slowly moved through the sky, and the sun, which rose and set day by day, were living beings. It was life which gave them the power of movement as it gave the power of movement to man himself, and the animals by whom he was surrounded."[5] Besides this belief in animism, the Babylonian religion shows evidences of a belief in ghosts that were related to the world of the dead. These ghosts were thought to exercise an evil influence upon men and could be cast out only by the use of incantations.