Chapter VII · The Deities as Social-Powers.
Reading edition
The next important section of our survey is the comparison of the social and ethical aspects of the religions in the eastern and western areas. Here again the former warning may be repeated, not to draw rash conclusions from the observance of mere general points of similarity, such as occur in the religious systems of all the more advanced societies of which we have any explicit record.
The idea that religion is merely a concern of the private individual conscience is one of the latest phenomena in all religious history. Both for the primitive and the more cultured communities of ancient history, religion was by a law of its nature a social phenomenon, a force penetrating all the institutions of the political life, law and morality. But its precise contribution to the evolution of certain social products in the various communities is still a question inviting and repaying much research. It will be interesting to compare what may be gleaned from Assyriology and the study of Hellenism bearing on this inquiry, although it may not help us much towards the solution of our main question.
We may assume of the Mesopotamian as of other peoples, that its “social origins” were partly religious; only in the valley of the Euphrates, society had already so far advanced in the fifth millennium B.C. that the study of its origins will be always problematic. The deities are already national, having developed far beyond the narrow tribal limits before we begin to discern them clearly; we have not to deal with the divinities of clans, phratries, or septs, but of complex aggregates, such as cities and kingdoms. And the great cities are already there before our knowledge begins.
But we must not, I think, hope to be able to trace with any exactness the part played by religion in constructing the various departments of the social fabric of Babylonia; for when we get our first glimpse of that society it is already so far advanced, so complex in its civilisation, in a sense so modern, that its embryology is likely to escape us. Nevertheless, it is interesting for our purpose to study the earliest material, the code of Hammurabi, to watch what light it throws on the correlation of religious and secular life.
But for the present let us pursue the code further. Another crime that early society regards with religious horror, and of which religion always takes cognisance, is incest. The enactments of the code deal only with three cases: incest with daughter, mother, and stepmother; in the first, the sinner is driven from the land, probably into perpetual exile; in the second, both parties are burned alive; in the third, he is merely driven from the paternal house. The first two punishments reveal, I think, religious feeling, stronger in the second case than in the first: the sinner pollutes the land, therefore the pollution must be purged by his flight, or when most deadly must be purged away by fire; for execution by burning had often the religious significance of a holocaust. Still it is only by surmise that we detect religious colour in the code at this point: in fact, it emerges clearly only in a few clauses. We note that the code allows of expurgation by oath-taking; so did the early Greeks and our own forefathers, and the practice is not distinctive of any particular people or group. The code allows the ordeal in certain cases, as did the Greek, and as probably every community has done at a certain stage of religious feeling; also civilised Babylon countenanced trials for witchcraft, and enacted a similar water-ordeal to that which prevailed in England till fairly recent times.
In this, as in other respects, we may feel how advanced, modern and secular, was Babylonian society. No trace has appeared as yet of the tribal or phratric system; the family is the unit of the State, but individualism is much developed.
On the other hand, the function of religion as a constructive force in early Greek society, in the evolution of tribal and intertribal law, is more obvious and transparent, for in this land we are fortunate enough to catch glimpses of civilised society in its making, which are denied to us in Mesopotamia. Hellenic religion penetrated every domain and department of Hellenic life to an even greater degree than did Babylonian religion the society of Babylon. And yet the Greek mind as it develops becomes pronouncedly secular, at least in comparison with the Oriental. The contradiction is only apparent. The Hellene used religion as an instrument for constructing his social order, for utilitarian ends, as a serviceable minister that could rarely, and never for long, establish a tyranny. He even used it to assist and glorify his sports, yet he varied and arranged these according to his pleasure. The detrimental tendency of religion to petrify custom was less marked in his midst than elsewhere; as usual, it often lagged behind in the progress of the race, yet it followed the progress on the whole, and often assisted it.
A festival such as the Ἀπατούρια, instituted to cement a social organisation, and to all appearances of great antiquity, has nothing like it in the Babylonian festival calendar, so far as I am aware; and again, to the many political and social titles of the Hellenic divinities such as Πολιεύς, Ἀγοραῖος, Πάνδημος, Βουλαῖος, it would be hard to find parallels in the cult-terminology of Babylon.