BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 87 



the doctrines is concerned ; but the argu- 

 ments brought forward to prove it, were 

 almost always detestable. An imaginary 

 history, formed by artful contrivances, ob- 

 tained credit, and after some centuries, 

 became an authority. From this air of 

 folly and extravagance, which pervades 

 ancient Babylonian histories in Arabian 

 writers of the school of Bagdad, often 

 led away themselves by the false method 

 of their predecessors, "The Book of Na- 

 batheean Agriculture" appears to have been 

 written at the date of this apocryphal and 

 trickish literature. The author is not a 

 forger himself, but he appears to be misled 

 by forgers. The true descendants of the 

 Xabathseans, the Mendaites, continued 

 until the Mussulman epoch, and almost up 

 to our own times, to practise similar frauds, 

 from which small communities free them- 

 selves with such difficulty. Many of their 

 mythological personages have thus become 

 Hebrew patriarchs. 1 The Yezidis have 



1 Chwolson, Die Ssabicr, I. p. 651. 



