Generally we may say that the Hesiodic cosmogony bears no significant resemblance to the Babylonian, and this negative fact makes against the theory of Mesopotamian influence upon pre-Homeric Hellas.
As a divine cosmogony implies some organic theory of the Universe, so the polytheisms that attempted such speculations would be confronted also with the problem of finding some principle of order by which they might regulate the relations of the various divinities, one to the other. We find such attempts in Mesopotamian religion. Certain deities are affiliated to others, Marduk to Ea, Nebo to Marduk, though such divine relationships are less clear and less insisted on than in Hellenic theology; and the grouping of divinities shifts according to the political vicissitudes of the peoples and cities. We may discern a tendency at times to use the triad as a unifying principle, giving us such trinities as Anu, Bel, Ea, or Sin, Shamash, Adad;[185.2] we have glimpses of a trinitarian cult in early Carthage,[185.3] and slight indications of it in the Minoan-Mycenaean pillar-ritual.[185.4] But I cannot find anything to suggest that among the cultured or uncultured Semites it was ever in the ancient period a powerful and constructive idea, able to beget a living dogma that might capture the popular mind and spread and germinate in adjacent lands.[186.1] We have perhaps as much right to regard the number seven as a grouping principle of Babylonian polytheism, in the later period at least, when we find a group of seven high deities corresponding to the seven planets.[186.2] We might discover a Hittite trinity of Father, Mother, and Son if we concentrated our attention on the Boghaz-Keui reliefs; but the other Hittite evidence, both literary and monumental, gives no hint of this as a working idea in the religion. In fact, in most polytheisms of the Mediterranean type it is easy to discover trinities and easy to deceive oneself about them.
The human family reflected into the heavens naturally suggests the divine trio of Father, Mother, Child. And this may be found on the Asia-Minor shore and in Hellas. It would be more important if we could discover the worship of this triad in an indissoluble union from which the mystic idea of a triune godhead might arise. This is not discernible clearly in the older period on either side of the Aegean. The cult-complex of Zeus, Semele, and Dionysos does not belong to ancient Hellas and is rare at any period; that of Hades Demeter Kore is occasionally found in cults of doubtful antiquity, but usually the mother and daughter were worshipped without the male deity. The Homeric triad so often invoked in adjurations of Zeus, Athena, and Apollo, which misled Mr. Gladstone, is due probably to the exigencies of hexameter verse, and is not guaranteed by genuine cult. No divine triad in Hellas can be proved to have descended from the earliest period of Greek religion, except probably that of the Charites at Orchomenos.[187.1] We have later evidence of a trinity of Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades, expressing the triad that Nature presents to us of sky, sea, and earth. But probably one of these figures is an emanation of Zeus himself; the sky-god having become “chthonian” in a very early period.[187.2] We cannot say, then, that the earliest period of Hellenic religion shows a trinitarian tendency; and if it were so, we could not impute it to early Mesopotamian influence, for the idea of a trinity does not appear in the Eastern religion with such force and strength as to be likely to travel far.
As for the artificial group of the twelve Olympians, we should certainly have been tempted to connect this with Babylonian lore, the number twelve being of importance in astronomical numeration; only that the divine group of twelve does not happen to occur in Babylonian religious records at all. Nor does the complex cult of the Δώδεκα θεοί appear to belong to the earliest period of Greek religion.[187.3] And so far I have been able to discern nothing that justifies the suggestion[187.4] that the principle of unification or divine grouping in early Mediterranean polytheism came from Babylon.
A severely organised polytheism with one chief divinity, to whom all the others were in definite degrees subordinated, might evolve a monotheism. And in Babylonian literature we can mark certain tendencies making in this direction. One tablet contains an inscription proclaiming all the high gods to be forms of Marduk, Nergal the Marduk of war, Nebo the Marduk of land.[188.1] That all the deities were mere forms or emanations of the Eternal might have been an esoteric doctrine of certain gifted minds, though it was difficult thus to explain away and to de-individualise the powerful self-asserting personality of Ishtar, for an attractive goddess-cult is always a strong obstacle to pure monotheism. A particular king might wish at times to exalt the cult of a particular god into a monotheistic ideal; the attempt was seriously made in Egypt and failed. It may have been seriously intended by King Rammannirari III. (B.C. 811-782), who introduced the cult of Nebo, always one of the most spiritual figures of the Pantheon, into Kelach; hence comes a long inscription on two statues now in the British Museum, set up by a governor in honour of the king, which is valuable for its ethical import, and still more interesting for its monotheistic exhortation at the close:[188.2] “Oh man, yet to be born, believe in Nebo, and trust in no other gods but him.” Here is the seed that might have been developed by a powerful prophet into pure monotheism. But the ecstatic Babylonian votary is always falling into contradiction, for in the earlier part of this hymn he has called Nebo, “The beloved of Bel, the Lord of Lords.” What, then, must the congregation think of Bel?
In Greek religion the germs of monotheistic thought were still weaker and still less likely to fructify. The earliest Hellenic tribes had already certain deities in common, and the leading stocks at least must have regarded Zeus as the supreme god. They must have also adopted many indigenous deities that they found powerful in their new homes, whose cult could not be uprooted even if they wished to do so. We must therefore imagine the pre-Homeric societies as maintaining a complex polytheism, with some principle of divine hierarchy struggling to assert itself. Homer, if it is ever true to speak of him as preaching, seems certainly the preacher of the supremacy of Zeus. How far this idea was accepted in the various localities of cult we have not sufficient material for deciding: much would depend on the degree to which the individuals were penetrated by the higher literature, which from Homer onwards proclaimed the same religious tenet.[189.1] We can at the same time be sure that in many localities the countryfolk would be more under the spell of some ancient deity of the place than of the sky-father of the Aryan Hellenes. And though his cult was high placed by the progressive races, and his personality powerfully pervading in the realm of nature and human society, so that the higher thinkers entered on a track of speculation that leads to monotheism, the masses did not and could not follow them, having, in fact, the contrary bias. The popular polytheism showed itself most tenacious of divine personalities; and owing partly to the sacred power of divine names, the various titles of a single divinity tend occasionally to engender distinct divine entities. I have also already indicated that art contributed to the same effect through multiplying idols. So far, then, from displaying monotheistic potentialities, Greek polytheism, from the pre-Homeric period we may suspect, and certainly after the Homeric age, tended to become more polytheistic.
CHAPTER XI.
The Religious Temperament of the
Eastern and Western Peoples.
A more interesting and fruitful ground of comparison is that which looks at the inward sentiment or psychic emotion of the different religions, at the personal emotional relation of the individual towards the godhead. As I observed before, a clear judgment on this question is only possible when the religious memorials of a people are numerous, varied, and personal, so that some of them at least may be regarded as the expression of the individual spirit. Even if the priest or the ritual dictates the expression, the pious and frequent votary may come to feel genuinely what is dictated to him. Hence we can gather direct testimony concerning the ancient Babylonian as we can of the ancient Hebrew religious temper and emotion; for though most of the Mesopotamian documents are concerned with the royal ceremonial, which does not usually reveal genuine personal feeling, yet in this case the royal inscriptions, whether religious narrative or liturgies or prayers, are unusually convincing as revelations of self. And besides these, we have many private hymns of penance and formulae of exorcism.
On the other hand, the ancient Western world and even historic Greece is singularly barren of this kind of religious testimony. We know much about the State religion, but we have very few ritual formulae or public or private prayers. Our evidence is mainly the religious utterances of the higher poetry and literature and a few lyric hymns composed not for the solitary worshipper, but for common and tribal ritual-service. But we have also the mythology and the art and the general manifestations of the Hellenic spirit in other directions that enable us to conclude something concerning the religious psychology of the average man in the historic periods, and if we find this markedly different from that of the oriental, we shall find it hard to believe that the Babylonian spirit could have worked with any strong influence on the proto-Hellene.
A sympathetic study of the Babylonian-Assyrian documents impresses us with certain salient traits of the Mesopotamian religious spirit, some of which are common to other members of the great Semitic race. In a certain sense the Babylonian might be described as “ein Gott-betrunkener Mensch”: as one possessed with the deepest consciousness of the ineffable greatness of God, of his own utter dependence, and at the same time of the close personal association between himself and the divinity. The ecstatic adoration we have marked in the liturgies is the result of a purely mental contemplation, will-power, and conviction, not of mystic initiation—for Babylonia had no mysteries—nor of orgiastic rites that could afford a physico-psychic stimulus. The individual seems to have regarded himself at times as the son, more often as the bond-slave, of his own tutelary divinity, who is angry when he sins and becomes favourable and a mediator in his behalf with other gods when he repents. In private letters of the time of Hammurabi we find the greeting, “May thy protecting god keep thy head well.” A common formula occurs in the incantations: “I, whose god is so-and-so, whose goddess is so-and-so.”[192.1] In the penance-liturgy the priest speaks thus of the suppliant sinner, “Thy slave who bears the weight of thy wrath is covered with dust,… commend him to the god who created him.”[192.2] With this we may compare certain phrases in a well-known penitential psalm, “Oh mighty Lady of the world, Queen of mankind.… His god and goddess in sorrow with him, cry out unto thee.… As a dove that moans I abound in sighings.”[192.3] Abject remorse, tears and sighing, casting-down of the countenance, are part of the ritual that turns away the anger of the deity: hence fear of God and humility are recognised religious virtues. Merodach-Baladin of Babylon, in Sargon’s inscription, is described as a fool “who did not fear the name of the Lord of Lords,”[192.4] and the idea is shaped in a general ethical maxim in another inscription, “He who does not fear his god is cut down like a reed.”[192.5] “I love the fear of God,” says Nebukadnezar in the record of his life.[192.6]