The Religions of Antiquity

Abstract

In his appraisement of the future task of the History of Religion Professor Bleeker at the recent Congress at Marburg made a timely and much needed plea for more attention to be given to the religions of antiquity by workers in this field. This is particularly important in respect of the vast amount of material, archaeological and documentary, that is now available in the Ancient Near East and in the Eastern Mediterranean, extending from Western Asia to India, and from North Africa and Anatolia to the Aegean, Crete and the Graeco-Roman world. As Professor Albright has said, 'archaeological research has established beyond doubt that there is no focus of civilization in the earth that can begin to compete in antiquity and activity with the basin of the eastern Mediterranean and the region immediately to the east of it Breasted's Fertile Crescent. Other civilizations in the Old World were all derived from this cultural centre or were strongly influenced by it; only the New World was entirely independent. In tracing our civilization of the West to its earliest home we are, accordingly, restricted to the Egypto-Mesopotamian area.' 1) Hence the importance of the attention that is now being paid to this crucial area as the cradleland of civilization, which once again is in process of becoming the dynamic centre of world affairs, and the significance of the results of the archaeological and literary evidence for the history of religions. It was in this region that the higher living monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, emerged, and on its eastern fringe in the Indus valley and the surrounding district, at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, where the history of India has been carried back to the period 3000 to 2500 B.C., new light is being thrown on the pre-Vedic origins of Hinduism by the evidence derived from seal-amulets and figuries.