534th OEDINARY GENERAL MEETING. 



HELD IN THE ROOMS OF THE INSTITUTE ON MONDAY^, 

 JUNE 3rd, 1912, AT 4.30 p.m. 



Lt.-Geneeal Sir Henry L. Geary, K.C.B., Presided. 



The Minutes of the preceding Meeting were read and confirmed. 

 The Secretary announced the following elections : — 



Members : The Rev. J. Iverach Munro, M.A. ; Charles Stewart 

 Campbell, Esq., B.A., LC.S. 



Associate : Major H. J. H. de Vismes. 



The Chairman then called upon Archdeacon Potter to read his 

 paper. 



THE INFLUENCE OF BABYLONIAN CONCEPTIONS 

 ON JEWISH THOVGHT.^ By The Venerable Arch- 

 deacon Potter, M.A. 



IN introducing this question my first duty is to apologize for 

 venturing to undertake to write on it, because the subject 

 is one which needs a master-hand to render it full justice. My 

 excuses must be (1) that I endeavoured to get one who is much 

 better qualified than I to undertake it, but he apparently was 

 unable to find the time ; (2) that I think it possible that a 

 person like myself, not an original worker in archaeological 

 fields, but only one who studies work accomplished by distin- 

 guished men, has some advantage in co-ordinating these results 

 with those attained in other sciences, because his mind being 

 less devoted to one particular study may be more pliable in 

 reconciling the results of several ; (3) I have always had an 

 intense conviction, which has grown with years, reading, and 

 thought, that every science is a revealer of God ; and that 

 religion gains enormously, and loses nothing in the application 



* N.B. — The letters. P., J.E., E., in this paper, refer to the different 

 sections in the Old Testament, as distinguished by the Higher Critics, 

 P. being the latest, supposed not to have been completed till the period 

 of the exile ; the others being earlier, their completion dating certainly 

 before 750 b.c. 



