THE EXPOSITORY TIMES. Notes of Recent Exposition. MR. R. CAMPBELL THOMPSON, M.A., Assistant in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, has published the second volume of his work on The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia (Luzac; 8vo, 13s. 6d. net). The volume contains the text and a translation of five groups of tablets, which are all of a magical order. It also contains Mr. Thompson's introduction to the tablets, in which he states the sum of their contents, and mentions some startling conclusions to which they have led him concerning things in the Old Testament and the New. One conclusion is that the whole idea of Atonement, so fundamental to the Old Testament, and we thought so characteristic of it, was taken over by the Jews from the Babylonians. By the Jews, you observe, not by the Hebrews. For not only does Mr. Thompson believe that the idea came from Babylon, with all the rites and ceremonies attaching to it, but he also believes that it was acquired during the Captivity. What is his evidence? It is really very little in amount. Its one striking item is the similarity of the word 'to atone' in the two languages. In Hebrew, 'to atone' or 'to make atonement' is kipper; in Babylonian it is kupparu. Mr. Thompson has no doubt of the identity of the words. Nor has he any doubt of the originality VOL. XVI.-I of the Babylonian form. For it is really Sumerian. It belongs to the language that prevailed in Babylonia before the Semitic Babylonians entered it. Just as the Babylonians accepted it from the Sumerians, the Hebrews must have accepted it from the Babylonians. And when? Clearly in the time of the Captivity. For it is only in the literature of the post-Exile period, in the Priests' Code, that the idea and ceremonial of Atonement are found. Well, what then? Then Mr. Thompson reads out of the Old Testament narratives of the Atonement the same magical efficacy as he finds in the Assyrian tablets. In the Assyrian tablets the magic is explicit and unmistakable; in the Hebrew books it is implicit but undeniable. If a man fell sick in Babylonia, he was understood to be under the spell of some enemy, and he was tabu until the spell or ban was lifted off him. This was done by a priest. And in order to do it, the priest had to perform certain ceremonies and utter certain words, which, if precisely performed and uttered, had the magical effect of expelling the demon or removing the ban and restoring the man to health. In doing all this the priest was said to 'make an atonement' for the man. It is the same, says Mr. Thompson, in the Old Testament. First there is the tabu. A houseit is awkward that we cannot get a man-a house is affected with leprosy (Lv 1433-53). For the time that house is tabu or 'unclean.' The priest is called in to remove the uncleanness. He takes two birds, cedar, scarlet, and hyssop. After killing one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water, he dips the cedarwood, the hyssop, and the scarlet, as well as the living bird, in the blood of the dead bird and in the running water, and sprinkles the house seven times. The living bird he lets go; it flies out of the city into the open fields. What is all this, asks Mr. Thompson, but sympathetic magic? Why does the living bird fly into the fields but that it may carry the curse of the house with it, for which the atonement has been properly and precisely made? In There is a yet more familiar example in the Old Testament. It is the example of the Scapegoat. Mr. Thompson mentions the Scape-goat. But he does not make so much of it as we should expect. The fact is that his comparison breaks down just where it would be most impressive. Babylonian there is no mention of a Scape-goat and there is no mention of a living bird. The animal that bears the ban is simply slain. Nevertheless, Mr. Thompson does not give up his fascinating discovery. He holds that the essential matter is the charm, and the charm is common to both the Babylonian tablet and the Hebrew text. We are not quite sure about Mr. Thompson. There is just a little suspicion that he first puts into his Old Testament text what he afterwards takes out of it. And the suspicion grows stronger when we come upon his way with the New Testament. There is a form of sympathetic magic prevalent in some countries, Mr. Thompson names Morocco, which he thinks has a parallel in a certain miraculous incident in the Gospels. If a man has a headache, he will take an animal and beat it until it falls down. He supposes that in this way he will transfer his headache to the animal. In Morocco it is usually a lamb or a kid that is taken and beaten. In Assyria it seems to have been a pig. Mr. Thompson translates one of his tablets in this way— Give the pig in his stead, And give the flesh as his flesh, The blood as his blood, And let him take it; Its heart (which thou hast set on his heart) Give as his heart, And let him take it. 'Now,' he says, 'the most remarkable parallel to this spell is contained in the New Testament story of the Gadarene swine. The devils which possess the two men beseech Jesus Christ, if He cast them out, to send them into the herd of swine which is feeding close at hand, and when the devils leave the men they at once take up their abode in the swine, which, according to the story, go mad and rush down the hill into the water, where they are drowned. Undoubtedly here is some reminiscence of the Assyrian or some similar tradition; in the cuneiform text we find the disease-devil leaving the possessed man at the sorcerer's invocation and entering the body of the pig. In the New Testament story the swine are represented as alive when the demons enter them, but as soon as this happens they are immediately made to destroy themselves.' If we were anxious to know the direction in which scientific thought is moving in America, we should see the first number of The American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education. It is edited by Dr. G. Stanley Hall, the President of Clark University, and it is published at the Clark University Press. But it is not a local conPresident Stanley Hall has the co-operation in its editorship of Professor Coe of the NorthWestern University, Professor Leuba of Bryn Mawr College, Professor Starbuck of Stanford University, and Professor Wenley of the University of Michigan. The movement covers America. And it is a distinctly religious movement. cern. |