Science and Christian tradition : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Thomas Henry Huxley
Date:
1894
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Science and Christian tradition : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    454/464 page 416
    xr of Christians liave held them and still hold them. Moreover the oldest records we possess of the early conceptions of mankind in Egypt and in Mesopotamia prove that exactly such demonology, as is implied in the Gadarene story, formed the substratum, and, among the early Accadians, apparently the greater part, of their supposed knowledge of the spiritual world. M. Lenormant's jDrofoundly interesting work on Babylonian magic and the magical texts given in the Appendix to Professor Sayce's Hibbert Lectures leave no doubt on this head. They prove that the doctrine of possession, and even the particular case of pig possession,^ were firmly believed in by the Egyp- tians and the Mesopotamians before the tribes of Israel invaded Palestine. And it is evident that these beliefs, from some time after the exile and probably much earlier, completely interpene- trated the Jewish mind, and thus became insep- arably interwoven with the fabric of the synoptic Gospels. Therefore, behind the question of the acceptance of the doctrines of the oldest heathen demonology as part of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, there lies the question of the credibility of the 1 The wicked, before being auniliilated, returned to the world to disturb men ; they entered into the body of unclean animals, often that of a pig, as on the Sarcophagus of Seti I. in the Soane Museum.—Leuormaut, Chaldean Mafjic, p. 88, Editorial Note.
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