320 THE VEX. AECHDEACON POTTER^ 31. A. ^ ON THE INFLUENCE 



Ahunavar, that is the twenty-one sacred Avesta words, which begin 

 " AVhen a heavenly lord is to be chosen." This is neither a prayer 

 nor a creed, but a formula, or incantation ; so that in the purest 

 religion outside Judaism, an incantation is nevertheless counted as 

 having greater power even than God Himself. The Talmud simply 

 reeks with incantations. 



In the Apocryphal book of Tobit, perhaps from a literary view 

 one of the best books in the Apocrypha, we are introduced to both 

 demons and spells. The author of ii Esdras, being more intellectual, 

 is great on mystical numbers. But from the first chapter of Genesis 

 to the last chapter of the Revelation there is not an incantation 

 nor a reference to the power of a magic number. The whole of the 

 Bible is clean as driven snow, clean from the Babylonian imprint.^ 

 To speak of these writings as being influenced by Babjdonian 

 conceptions, when there is no trace of Babylonian sorcery in them, is 

 to speak in ignorance of what Babylonian conceptions really were. 

 ' The Rev. W. H. Griffith Thomas, D.D., said : I am afraid 

 the differences between the writer of the paper and myself are too 

 fundamental to allow of any proper detailed criticisms of his paper, 

 but the following points seem to call for special notice : — 



1. His view of revelation is seriously open to question and does not 



Sseem consistently expressed. On p. 300 he speaks of the conditions 

 under which religion " took its rise," and he distinguishes between 

 the historical setting and the religious conception. This, at once, 

 raises the question as to the origin of religion. Did it " takes its 

 rise " from above or below 1 Is there such a thing as primitive 

 revelation, or are we to assume that religion emanated from man 1 

 When all the possibilities have been exhausted it seems essential to 

 contend that Genesis i is either a divine revelation or a himian 

 composition. The precise form or channel of the information is 

 unimportant ; the real question is as to its source. So also on p. 315, 

 revelation is said to mean " the conveyance to the mind and soul of 

 man of spiritual and moral truths . . Does not this confuse 

 between substance and form, between source and channel, between 

 revelation and inspiration 1 AVe are not really concerned with the 

 precise conveyance or method ; what we need to know is^the reality 

 of the spiritual and moral truths conveyed. 



2. On p. 300 f . we are rightly told of the remarkable correspondences 

 between Babylonian and Old Testament records. But the differences 



