Note 160.2 — Chapter VIII · Religion and Morality.

The Babylonian conception of divine mercy gave rise to an interesting phrase which is attached as a quasi-liturgical formula to many of the leading gods and goddesses—“the awakener of the dead,” “thou who raisest up the dead”: a phrase which has erroneously been supposed to refer to an actual resurrection of the dead:160.2 various contexts attest its real significance as an expression of the divine grace shown in restoring the sick to health, in saving men from the hand of death. Hellenic religious vocabulary affords no parallel to this formula nor to that title of Enlil—“Lord of the breath of life of Sumer”;160.3 or that of Bel, “Lord of the life of the Land.”160.4 In some passages of Babylonian literature we mark the glimmering of the idea that life in its varied forms on the earth is a divine substance sustained by the personal deity. Ishtar is described as the protectress of all animate existence, and all life languishes when she descends to the nether regions.160.5 The goddess of Erech, identified with Ishtar, speaking of her own functions, exclaims, “In the place of giving birth in the house of the begetting mother, guardian of the home am I.”160.6 It is specially Tammuz who, by the side of Ishtar, impersonates the life of the soil, as appears in the striking refrain recurring in his hymn of lament: “When he slumbers, the sheep and the lambs slumber also; when he slumbers, the she-goats and the kids slumber also”;161.1 and the same thought may have inspired a phrase that is doubtfully translated at the end of the hymn: “In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of life perishes.” Still more explicit is another Tammuz hymn, in which, while bewailing the departed god, they wail for all the life of the earth, “the wailing is for the herbs;… they are not produced: the wailing is for the grain, ears are not produced: the wailing is for the habitations, for the flocks, the flocks bring forth no more. The wailing is for the perishing wedded ones, for the perishing children; the dark-headed people create no more.”