Note 283.1 — Chapter III · NOTES

Vide supra, p. 163. The writer of the late apocryphal document, “The Epistle of Jeremy,” makes it a reproach to the Babylonian cult that “women set meat before the gods” (v. 30), and “the menstruous woman and the woman in child-bed touch their sacrifices” (v. 29), meaning, perhaps, that there was nothing to prevent the Babylonian priestess being in that condition. But we cannot trust him for exact knowledge of these matters. Being a Jew, he objects to the ministration of women. The Babylonian and Hellene were wiser, and admitted them to the higher functions of religion.