5. In all rude and imaginative nations, which have lost the distinct idea of the one God, the Creator, nature becomes more or less a source of superstitions. Its grand and more rare phenomena of volcanoes, earthquakes, thunder-storms, eclipses, become supernatural portents; and as the idea of power associates itself with them, they are personified as actual agents and become gods. In like manner, the more constant and useful objects and processes of nature become personified as beneficent deities. This may be, to a great extent, the character of the Aryan theology; but, except where all ideas of primitive religion and traditions of early history have been lost, it can not be the whole of the religion of any people. The Bible negatively recognizes this source of idolatry, in so constantly referring all natural phenomena to the divine decree. In connection with this, it is worthy of remark that rude man tends to venerate the new animal forms of strange lands. Something of this kind has probably led some of the American Indians to give a sort of divine honor to the bear. It was in Egypt that man first became familiar with the strange and gigantic fauna of Africa, whose effect on his mind in primitive times we may gather from the book of Job. In Egypt, consequently, there must have been a strong natural tendency to the adoration of animals.
The above origins of idolatry and mythology, as stated or implied in the Bible, of course assume that the Semitic monotheistic religion is the primitive one. The first deviations from it probably originated in the family of Ham. A city of the Rephaim of Bashan was in the days of Abraham named after Ashtoreth Karnaim—the two-horned Astarte, a female divinity and prototype of Diana, and perhaps an historic personage, in whom both the moon and the domestic ox were rendered objects of worship. This is the earliest Bible notice of idolatry. [160] In Egypt a mythology of complex diversity existed at least as far back. We must remember, however, that Egypt is Cush as well as Mizraim, and its idolatry is probably to be traced, in the first instance, to the Nimrodic empire, from which, as from a common centre, certain new and irreligious ideas seem to have been propagated among all the branches of the human family. It is quite probable that the correspondences between Egyptian, Greek, and Hindoo myths go back as far as to the time when the first despotism was erected on the plain of Shinar, and when able but ungodly men set themselves to erect new political and social institutions on the ruins of all that their fathers had held sacred. In addition to this, the mythology and language of the Aryans alike bear the impress of the innovating and restless spirit of the sons of Japhet.
I have stated the above propositions to show that the Bible affords a rational and connected theory of the origin of the false religions of antiquity; and to suggest as inquiries in relation to every form of mythology—how much of it is primitive monotheism, how much cherub-worship, how much hero-worship, how much ancestor-worship, how much distorted cosmogony, how much pure idealism and superstition, since all these are usually present. I may be allowed further to remind the reader how much evidence we have, even in modern times, of the strong tendency of the human mind to fall into one or another of these forms of idolatry; and to ask him to reflect that really the only effectual conservative element is that of revelation. How strong an argument is this for the necessity to man of an inspired rule of religious faith.
[The above note was in substance contained in the Appendix to "Archaia" in 1860, and its correctness has, I think, been confirmed by subsequent discoveries.
K.—ASSYRIAN AND EGYPTIAN TEXTS.
Progress is continually being made in the decipherment and publication of these, and new facts are coming to light in consequence as to the religions of the early postdiluvian period.
According to the late George Smith and to Mr. Sayce, in their contributions to Bagster's "Records of the Past," the earliest monumental history of Babylonia reveals two races, the Akkadian or Urdu, a Turanian race, with an agglutinate language of the Finnish or Tartar type, and the Sumir or Keen-gi, believed to be Shemitic. The race of Akkad seems to have invented the cuneiform writing at a very early period, and it no doubt represents the primitive Cushites of the Bible, to whom is attributed the empire of Nimrod, whose first cities were Babel and Erech and Akkad and Calneh. Very ancient inscriptions of this early Chaldean or Cushite race exist, probably earlier than the time of Abraham. That of king Urukh, who is called "a very ancient king," on an inscription of Nabonadius, 555 B.C., represents himself as building temples to several gods and goddesses, so that in his time there was already a developed polytheism, unless, indeed, he was himself the inventor or introducer of much of it. Yet one can gather from the probably contemporary Creation and Deluge tablets translated by Mr. Smith, that a Supreme God was still recognized, and that the subordinate deities, though their worship was probably gaining in importance, were still only local and created beings. Yet it was undoubtedly from this embryo idolatry that Abraham dissented, and was thus led to leave his native land.
In like manner, in the early Egyptian Hymn to Amen Ra, translated by Mr. Goodwin, though we have the gods mentioned, they are inferior beings, and not higher in position than the angels of the Old Testament, while Ra himself is "Lord of Eternity, Maker Everlasting," and is praised as
"Chief creator of the whole earth,
Supporter of affairs above every god,
In whose goodness the gods rejoice."