Thus, we see that other nations, beside the Hebrews, believed that their laws were actually received from God, that they had legends to that effect, and that a _mountain_ figures conspicuously in the stories.
Professor Oort, speaking on this subject, says:
"No one who has any knowledge of antiquity will be surprised at this, for similar beliefs were very common. All peoples who had issued from a life of barbarism and acquired regular political institutions, more or less elaborate laws, and established worship, and maxims of morality, attributed all this--their birth as a nation, so to speak--to one or more great men, all of whom, without exception, _were supposed to have received their knowledge from some deity_.
"Whence did Zoroaster, the prophet of the Persians, derive his religion? According to the beliefs of his followers, and the doctrines of their sacred writings, it was from Ahuramazda, the God of light. Why did the Egyptians represent the god Thoth with a writing tablet and a pencil in his hand, and honor him especially as the god of the priests? Because he was 'the Lord of the divine Word,' the foundation of all wisdom, from whose inspiration the priests, who were the scholars, the lawyers, and the religious teachers of the people, derived all their wisdom. Was not Minos, the law-giver of the Cretans, the friend of Zeus, the highest of the gods? Nay, was he not even his son, and did he not ascend to the sacred cave on Mount Dicte to bring down the laws which his god had placed there for him? From whom did the Spartan law-giver, Lycurgus, himself say that he had obtained his laws? From no other than the god Apollo. The Roman legend, too, in honoring Numa Pompilius as the people's instructor, at the same time ascribed all his wisdom to his intercourse with the nymph Egeria. It was the same elsewhere; and to make one more example,--this from later times--Mohammed not only believed himself to have been called immediately by God to be the prophet of the Arabs, but declared that he had received every page of the Koran from the hand of the angel Gabriel."[61:2]
It was a common belief among ancient Pagan nations that the gods appeared and conversed with men. As an illustration we may cite the following, related by _Herodotus_, the Grecian historian, who, in speaking of Egypt and the Egyptians, says: "There is a large city called Chemmis, situated in the Thebaic district, near Neapolis, in which is a quadrangular temple dedicated to (the god) Perseus, son of (the Virgin) Danae; palm-trees grow round it, and the portico is of stone, very spacious, and over it are placed two large stone statues. In this inclosure is a temple, and in it is placed a statue of Perseus. The Chemmitæ (or inhabitants of Chemmis), _affirm that Perseus has frequently appeared to them on earth, and frequently within the temple_." (Herodotus, bk. ii. ch. 91.)