CONTENTS.
[CHAPTER I.]
Inaugural Lecture
[CHAPTER II.]
Statement of the Problem and the Evidence.
Indebtedness of primitive Greek religion to Mesopotamian influences—Various kinds of evidence to be considered: Texts and Monuments of Mesopotamia, Syria, Canaan, Hittite Kingdom, Asia-Minor coast, Minoan-Mycenaean area—Necessity of determining when the North-Aryan tribes entered Greece, and what they brought with them—Influences from Mesopotamia on Greece of the second millennium at least not direct—Precariousness of theory of religious borrowing—Special lines that the inquiry will pursue
[CHAPTER III.]
Morphology of the Compared Religions.
Distinction between nature religions and ethical religions unsound—The degree of personality in the cult-objects a better criterion—The earliest system known in Mesopotamia a polytheism with personal deities, but containing certain products of animism and polydaimonism—Other Semitic and non-Semitic peoples of Asia Minor, the Minoan-Mycenaean races, the earliest Greek tribes, already on the plane of personal theism in the second millennium B.C.
[CHAPTER IV.]
Anthropomorphism and Theriomorphism in Anatolia and the Mediterranean.
Mesopotamian religious conception generally anthropomorphic, but the anthropomorphism “unstable”—Theriomorphic features, especially of daimoniac powers—Mystic imagination often theriomorphic—Individuality of deities sometimes indistinct—Female and male sometimes fused—The person becomes the Word—Similar phenomena in other Semitic peoples—Theriolatry more prominent in Hittite religion, though anthropomorphism the prevalent idea—The Minoan-Mycenaean religion also mainly anthropomorphic—The evidence of theriolatry often misinterpreted—The proto-Hellenic religion partly theriomorphic—Some traces of theriolatry even in later period, in spite of strong bias towards anthropomorphism
[CHAPTER V.]
Predominance of the Goddess.
Importance of the phenomenon in the history of religions—In Mesopotamia and other Semitic regions the chief deity male, except Astarte at Sidon—Evidence from Hittite kingdoms doubtful, but at points on the Asia-Minor coast, such as Ephesos, and notably in Phrygia, the supremacy of the goddess well attested—The same true on the whole of Cretan religion—The earliest Hellenes, like other Aryan communities, probably inclined to exalt the male deity, and did not develop the cult of Virgin goddesses—Therefore Athena and Artemis probably pre-Hellenic