Note 151.1 — Chapter VIII · Religion and Morality.

Looking at the code of family and social duties in the ethical religion of Babylon, of which the private penitential hymns and confessional ritual of exorcism are the chief witnesses, we find no figures whose concept and function remind us at all of the Erinyes, the curse-powers on the side of righteousness; but there is evidence in the literature of a family morality more advanced and more articulate than the primitive Greek. Among the sins mentioned in the ritual of confession, alluded to above, those indicated by the following questions are of interest: “Has he caused variance between father and son, mother and daughter, father-in-law and daughter-in-law, brother and brother, friend and friend, partner and partner? Has he conceived hatred against his elder brother, has he despised his father and mother, insulted his elder sister?”151.1 All these acts of social misconduct are supposed to give a man into the possession of the evil demon, which must be exorcised before God will admit him to his fellowship again. Though magical ideas are operative in the ceremony, yet we discern here a high religious morality. And among the other moral offences clearly considered as sins in the same formula are such as shedding one’s neighbour’s blood, committing adultery with one’s neighbour’s wife, stealing from one’s neighbour. We find also a certain morality in the matter of property and commerce given a religious sanction in this text: “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark” was a religious law in ancient Babylonian ethics as in our present liturgy; it would appeal to the Hellene who reverenced Zeus Ὅριος; and there are reasons for believing this cult-idea to have been in vogue very early in Greece. The Babylonian code also recognises the sin of using false measure or false coin. And the confessional liturgy agrees in many points with the famous hymn to Shamash, where phrases occur such as “Shamash hates him who falsifies boundaries and weights”; “Shamash hates the adulterer.”152.1 It excites our envy also, by stamping as sins certain unpatriotic acts, such as “the spreading a bad report concerning one’s city,” or “bringing one’s city into evil repute.”