260 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



be the sacred and central cit} of the world, and 

 heaven itself only a new and idealised edition of 

 their metropolis. Every Jev was bound to every 

 other Jew by high-wrought ceremony and obliga- 

 tion. But all non-Jews were ' Gentiles,' chaff-like 

 'pagans,' who possessed no rights which a 'child 

 of Abraham ' was bound to respect. Their tribal 

 god is said to have been so indulgent toward them 

 as his ' chosen people ' that he allowed them to 

 exact usury from foreigners, to sell them diseased 

 meats, and to borrow jewels from them and after- 

 wards run away with them. He even permitted 

 them to make war upon weak peoples and dis- 

 possess them of their lands. ' Whomsoever the 

 Lord our God shall drive out from before us, 

 them will we possess* (Judg. xi. 24). 



The kings of the ancient Assyrians were so 

 accustomed to cruelties upon non-Assyrians, and 

 were so proud of these cruelties, that they recorded 

 them in stone as a claim to immortality among 

 men. Assurbanipal, in speaking of the conquered, 

 says : ' I pulled out their tongues and cut ofLtheir 

 limbs, and caused them to be eaten by dogs, bears, 

 eagles, vultures, birds of heaven.' Assur-natsir-pal, 

 another wonderful fellow, boasts similarly : ' I 

 flayed the nobles and covered the pyramid with 

 their skins, and their young men and maidens I 

 burned as a holocaust.' ' Their carcasses covered 

 the valleys and the tops of the mountains,' says 

 Tiglath-Pileser in his account of the slain Mus- 

 kayans ; and Sennacherib informs us proudly that 

 he drove his chariot over the dead bodies of his 



