RELIGION AND THE OTHER SCIENCES 267 



were even before the creation of the world the object of the observa- 

 tion of God; for the faithful Mohammedan the Koran is the copy 

 of an ever-present original in heaven, the contents of which were 

 dictated word for word to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel. Whoever 

 ponders the similar claims of all these religions for the infallibility of 

 their sacred books, to him it becomes difficult to hold the dogma 

 of the Christian Church concerning the inspiration and infallibility of 

 the Bible as alone true and the similar dogmas of other religions 

 as being false. Rather he will accept the view that in all these ex- 

 amples there are found the same motives of the religious mind, that 

 here is given an expression to the same need common to all seeking 

 for an absolute and abiding basis for their faith. 



The study of the comparison of religions has discovered in religions 

 other than that of Christianity many very striking parallels to many 

 narratives and teachings of the Bible. It may be well to recall very 

 briefly some of the important points. Owing to the fact that the 

 Assyrian cuneiform writings have now been deciphered, there has 

 been found a story of the creation which has many characteristics 

 in common with those of the Bible. There is found a story of a flood, 

 which in its very details can be regarded as the forerunner of the 

 story of the flood in the Bible. There have been found Assyrian 

 penitential psalms, which, in consciousness of guilt and in earnest- 

 ness of prayer for forgiveness, can well be compared with many 

 psalms of the Bible. Recently the Code of the Assyrian King Ham- 

 murabi, who reigned two thousand three hundred years before 

 Christ, has been discovered. The similarity of this Code with many 

 of the early Mosaic Laws has called general attention to this fact. In 

 the Persian religion there are found teachings of the Kingdom of God, 

 of the good spirits who surround the throne of God, of the Spirit 

 hostile to God and of an army of his demons, of the judgment of each 

 soul after death, of a heaven with eternal light and of the dark 

 abyss of hell, of the future struggle of the multitudes of good and bad 

 spirits and the victory over the bad through a divine hero and 

 saviour, of the general resurrection of the dead, of the awful destruc- 

 tion of the world and the creation of a new and better world, 

 teachings which are also found in the later Jewish theology and apo- 

 calypse, so that the acceptance of a dependence of Jewish upon 

 corresponding Persian teaching can hardly be avoided. Also Grecian 

 influence is observed in later Jewish literature, in proverbs, in the 

 wisdom of Solomon and the Son of Sirach; especially in the Alex- 

 andrian Jewish theology are found Platonic thoughts of an eternal, 

 ideal world, of the heavenly home of the soul, and the Stoic concep- 

 tion of a world-ruling divine Logos. 



It is from this source that the Logos to which Philo had already 

 ascribed the meaning of the Son of God and the Bringer of a divine 



