384 FISH IN OFFERINGS, AUGURIES, ETC. 



This whole passage ought, however, to be regarded not as 

 a Penitential Psalm so much as " a ceremony for cleansing a 

 man from tabu, when he wishes to see something in a dream. 

 It finds close connection with the Levitical charm, originating 

 from sympathetic magic, e.g. for cleansing the leper or leprous 

 house," i.e. by the two doves, as in Leviticus xiv. 4.1 



Langdon asserts that in the Sumero-Babylonian religion 

 each individual in normal conditions was guided by a divine 

 spirit or god (cf. the caifxwv of Socrates and the genius of the 

 Romans). When a man was possessed by the powers of evil 

 he was estranged from his personal god, because some demon 

 had attacked or driven out the protecting deity from his body. 

 In this ancient period there seems to be no moral element what- 

 ever in the case. If a man became tahu (which the eating of 

 fish in other countries than Assyria would involve), or possessed 

 by some dangerous unclean power, which made him unholy 

 and filled him with bodily or mental distress, this state came 

 about solely because at some unguarded moment a demon 

 had expelled the indwelling god. 



The demon had to be exorcised by some method of atone- 

 ment, of which the most important element was in Sumerian 

 magic water, in Hebrew blood. " In view of the great influence 

 which Babylonian magic appears to have exerted upon the 

 Hebrew rituals, it is curious it did not succeed in banishing 

 this gross Semitic practice. Blood of animals does not occur 

 as a cleansing element in Babylonia," an omission due apparently 

 to the culture of the Sumerians " not permitting such crude 

 ideas, and to their teaching those Semites with whom they 

 came in contact a cleaner form of magic." 2 



In addition to the demons or spirits described above we find 

 others, which could and, unless the proper rites were paid to 

 the dead, did affect the living. The greatest misfortune which 

 could befall a man was to be deprived of proper burial. 3 His 



* Semitic Magic (London, 1908), pp. 181, 186. 



^ Babylonian Magic (Bologna, 1914), pp. 237-8. 



' "In Israel not to be buried was a terrible disgrace which one could hardly 

 wish for one's enemy : the spirits of the unburied wandered restlessly about . 

 Burial alone so bound the spirit to the body that it had rest and could harm 

 no one." Cheyne's assertion in Encyl. Bibl. {op. cit.), p. 1041, seems to me 



