460 HISTORY OF RELIGION 



concerning the creation, the garden of the gods, the deluge, and the 

 tower were derived by the Israelites from Babylonia; that some 

 figures in later Jewish apocalyptic have the same origin; that the 

 idea of a resurrection came to the Jews from Persia, and that the 

 figures of Satan and some other demons, as well as the archangels, 

 were developed under Persian influence; that the Christian Logos- 

 idea came through Philo from Greek philosophy; and that Mu- 

 hammad drew some of his ideas from Christian and Jewish sources. 

 No such probability attaches to the conjectures that Varuna and 

 some other Indian gods had a Semitic origin; that the Gathas were 

 written under the influence of Greek thought; that the Christian 

 gospels contain ideas borrowed directly from Buddhism; that there 

 were in the Greek pantheon some originally Phoenician gods; that 

 the great gods of Egypt during the Old Empire were identical with 

 the chief divinities of Babylonia; that the author of Voluspa was 

 familiar with Christian ideas; or that the religious conceptions of the 

 American aborigines were derived from the Mongolians of Asia. 

 Far greater difficulties are encountered when the attempt is made to 

 determine such questions as the precise relations between Jainism- 

 and Buddhism, Mazdaism and the faith of the Iranians before the 

 reform, the gods of the Semitic Babylonians and those of the Shu- 

 merians, the Baptists on the Jordan and those on the Euphrates, the 

 Christology of the Parables of Enoch and that of the early church, 

 the Christian and the Mithraic cult-societies, the reported beliefs of 

 the Druids and Greek speculation, the tabus of the different groups 

 of islands in the Pacific, and many others. 



The more carefully the comparative method is applied, the more 

 sparingly recourse is had to the theory of borrowing. Even where 

 there is satisfactory evidence of an historic transfer of ideas or cus- 

 toms, distinction is made between the taking over of a mere sugges- 

 tion subsequently developed in an original manner and a more 

 extensive and unassimilated appropriation. The Greeks, for instance, 

 put so completely the stamp of their own genius on what they bor- 

 rowed that the ultimate origin cannot easily be detected, and the 

 addition is often more significant than the material appropriated. A 

 similar transformation may be seen in the case of the myths borrowed 

 by the Hebrews from other peoples. But at present there is a strong 

 reaction against the tendency of earlier interpreters to explain in 

 this manner the occurrence in different places of substantially the 

 same conceptions or practices. The similarities are more frequently 

 accounted for by the similarity of the natural phenomena giving rise 

 to the peculiar religious beliefs and of the social conditions reflected 

 in the cult. The limitations of the human mind and the laws of its 

 operation are such as to force it into certain channels; and the 

 customs of human society dictate the forms of intercourse with divine 



