Note 192.1 — Chapter XI · The Religious Temperament of the Eastern and Western Peoples.

A sympathetic study of the Babylonian-Assyrian documents impresses us with certain salient traits of the Mesopotamian religious spirit, some of which are common to other members of the great Semitic race. In a certain sense the Babylonian might be described as “ein Gott-betrunkener Mensch”: as one possessed with the deepest consciousness of the ineffable greatness of God, of his own utter dependence, and at the same time of the close personal association between himself and the divinity. The ecstatic adoration we have marked in the liturgies is the result of a purely mental contemplation, will-power, and conviction, not of mystic initiation—for Babylonia had no mysteries—nor of orgiastic rites that could afford a physico-psychic stimulus. The individual seems to have regarded himself at times as the son, more often as the bond-slave, of his own tutelary divinity, who is angry when he sins and becomes favourable and a mediator in his behalf with other gods when he repents. In private letters of the time of Hammurabi we find the greeting, “May thy protecting god keep thy head well.” A common formula occurs in the incantations: “I, whose god is so-and-so, whose goddess is so-and-so.”192.1 In the penance-liturgy the priest speaks thus of the suppliant sinner, “Thy slave who bears the weight of thy wrath is covered with dust,… commend him to the god who created him.”192.2 With this we may compare certain phrases in a well-known penitential psalm, “Oh mighty Lady of the world, Queen of mankind.… His god and goddess in sorrow with him, cry out unto thee.… As a dove that moans I abound in sighings.”192.3 Abject remorse, tears and sighing, casting-down of the countenance, are part of the ritual that turns away the anger of the deity: hence fear of God and humility are recognised religious virtues. Merodach-Baladin of Babylon, in Sargon’s inscription, is described as a fool “who did not fear the name of the Lord of Lords,”192.4 and the idea is shaped in a general ethical maxim in another inscription, “He who does not fear his god is cut down like a reed.”192.5 “I love the fear of God,” says Nebukadnezar in the record of his life.192.6