THE RELATION OF SEMITICS TO RELIGION 77 



or 7000 B.C. That means, then, that we have evidence of the worship 

 of the sun and other heavenly bodies as early as this period, a couple 

 of millenniums before the time when, but a few years ago, sober- 

 minded men, on the basis of the Bible, declared that the world was 

 created. 



When we meet with the old Babylonian on the threshold of his- 

 tory, we find him prostrate before the sun and other heavenly bodies, 

 though not worshiping astral deities exclusively. The Egyptian, 

 likewise, bows before his Osiris and Ra, and the priests of India 

 teach their followers to worship Surya, the same word as the Greek 

 Helios, the sun. The sun is the most awe-impelling and thought- 

 awakening object of the visible universe, majestic in splendor as he 

 marches across the heavens upon his daily round. What a contrast 

 to human experience he forms ! Man sees himself and everything that 

 is about him subject to change, his plans are frustrated, his way is 

 blocked, but yonder is a power, a being, for so the early-minded must 

 have thought, that knows unerringly his way and walks it unhindered, 

 unafraid. He is also beneficent and good, so good that when the 

 Hebrew prophet wishes a simile expressive of the goodness of his 

 national redeemer, he calls him "the sun of righteousness" who 

 comes with healing in his wings, as the Babylonian sun-god is repre- 

 sented on the cylinders. 



" Unpropped beneath, not fastened firm, how comes it 

 That downward turned he falls not downward? 

 The guide of his ascending path, who saw it? " 



Thus speaks the sage and worshiper of India. 



Every lifeless thing unsupported in space, experience tells him, 

 falls. How does he always find his path so unerringly in the heavens 

 when there is none to guide him? He must choose it and adhere to 

 it himself, and it must be that behind all this regularity and persist- 

 ence of movement there is a purpose, for even the most primitive 

 man is conscious of a purpose within himself. 



The Semitic literature of Babylonia, so far as I am able to see, 

 furnishes no evidence for the doctrine of a primitive monotheism, 

 but points rather to a polytheistic astral worship as, at least, one of 

 the earliest forms of religion. I am well aware that some Semitic 

 scholars have endeavored to support the monotheistic theory from 

 a study of other Semitic literature. This has been done especially 

 by one scholar, to whom I may refer, the eminent Assyriologist and 

 Semitist, Professor Hommel, of Munich. In his Ancient Hebrew Tra- 

 dition, published a few years ago, Dr. Hommel makes extended use 

 of the South Arabian Minsean and Sabsean inscriptions, so laboriously 

 collected by Dr. Glazer. In dealing with the proper names of these 

 inscriptions, and while admitting the polytheistic character of the 

 South Arabian religion, he nevertheless endeavors to make it appear 



