The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East; with an Historical Survey and Descriptions ([1917]) Volume 1 (Electronic book text)

THE ancient Asiatic land of Babylonia, the fertile valley of the great Euphrates river, has a double interest, sufficient to arouse the eager attention of every modern reader. In the first place this valley was the home of the oldest civilization that has survived in any intelligible form, and in its literature we may study the earliest upward steps of the thought and intelligence of our human race. In the second place, the Hebrew people were Babylonians, who left the land some two thousand years before Christ, under the guidance of their patriarch Abraham. Hence much as the Hebrew religion was afterward uplifted by the teachings of Moses, of Jesus, and of many a lesser spiritual leader, yet the human beginnings of both Jewish and Christian faiths are founded on Babylonian thought and knowledge. Our religious beliefs of to-day are still interwoven with many a strand that can be traced back to its Babylonian source.