Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS. 377
But while archaeologists thus influenced enlightened opinion,
another body of scholars rendered services of a different
sort the centre of their enterprise being the
University of
Oxford. By their efforts was presented to the English-speaking
world a series of translations of the sacred books of the
East, which showed the relations of the more Eastern sacred
literature to our own, and proved that in the religions of the
world the ideas which have come as the greatest blessings
to mankind are not of sudden revelation or creation, but of
slow evolution out of a remote past.
The facts thus shown did not at first elicit much gratitude
from supporters of traditional theology, and perhaps few
things brought more obloquy on Renan, for a time, than his
statement that " the influence of Persia is the most powerful
to which Israel was submitted." Whether this was an over-
statement or not, it was soon seen to contain much truth.
Not only was it made clear by study of the Zend Avesta that
the Old and New Testament ideas regarding Satanic and
demoniacal modes of action were largely due to Persian
sources, but it was also shown that the idea of immortality
was mainly developed in the Hebrew mind during the close
relations of the Jews with the Persians. Nor was this all.
In the Zend Avesta were found in earlier form sundry myths
and legends which, judging from their frequent appearance
in early religions, grow naturally about the history of the
adored teachers of our race. Typical among these was the
of Zoroaster.
Temptation
It is a fact very significant and full of promise that the
first large, frank, and explicit revelation regarding this whole
of these to neighbouring nations, pp. 782, 783. For visions and use of dreams as
oracles, ibid., p. 641 and elsewhere. See also, on these and other resemblances,
Lenormant, Origines de PHistoire, vol. \, passim ;
see also George Smith and Sayce,
as above, chaps, xvi and xvii, for resemblances especially striking, combining to
show how simple was the evolution of many Hebrew sacred legends and ideas out
of those of earlier civilizations. For an especially interesting presentation of the
reasons why Egyptian ideas of immortality were not seized upon by the Jews, see
the Rev. Barham Zincke's work upon Egypt. For the sacrificial vessels, temple
rites, etc., see the bas-reliefs figured by Lepsius, Prisse d'Avennes, Mariette, Mas-
pero, et al. For a striking summary by a brilliant scholar and divine of the Anglican
Church, see Mahafify, Prolegomena to Anc. Hist., cited in Sunderland Tht
Bible, New York, 1893, p. 21, note.