62 Evolution and Religion 



has proved this statement incorrect. Out of a list of 

 more than a hundred which he enumerates, over one 

 half were regarded as sacred, the rest were not; a 

 fact which might have been suspected from their fa- 

 vorite pastimes of hunting and fishing. 



Influence on Judaism 



The speculative thought of Egypt seems to have 

 profoundly influenced Pythagoras, and through him 

 Greece and Rome. That it influenced Moses is far 

 more doubtful. Its ritual did indeed include the rite 

 of circumcision, the use of figures resembling the 

 Cherubim above the ark, the inner sanctuary or holy 

 of holies in the temple. The custom too of offering a 

 prayer over a victim's head, "that if any calamity were 

 about to befall the land of Egypt, it might be averted 

 on this head," recalls strongly to mind the Jewish 

 scapegoat on whose head the high priest was to lay 

 his hands, confessing the national sins and putting 

 them upon the head of the goat, so that he might bear 

 upon him all their iniquities into a land not inhabited. 1 



Influence on Christianity 



But the influence of Egyptian thought on Christian 

 theology appears to have been more pronounced. Its 

 fervid African spirit introduced asceticism which later 

 developed into monasticism. The Alexandrian schools 

 rendered materialistic the Church's conceptions of God, 

 Satan, Angels, Devils, Heaven, Hell, Judgment, and 

 1 Clarke's Ten Great Religions pp. 251, 252, 



