Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters
The social institutions, manners, and customs of an ancient people must always be of deep interest for all those to whom nothing is indifferent that is human. But even for modern thinkers, engrossed in the practical problems of our advanced civilization, the records of antiquity have a direct value. We are better able to deal with the complicated questions of the day if we are acquainted with the simpler issues of the past. We may not set them aside as too remote to have any influence upon us. Not long ago men looked to Greece and Rome for political models. We can hardly estimate the influence which that following of antiquity has had upon our own social life.
But there is a deeper influence even than Greek politics and Roman law, still powerfully at work among us, which we owe to a more remote past. We should probably resent the idea that we were not dominated by Christian principles. So far as they are distinct from Greek and Roman ideals, most of them have their roots in Jewish thought. When a careful investigation is made, it will probably be found that the most distinctive Christian principles in our times are those which were taken over from Jewish life, since the Old Testament still more widely appeals to us than the New. But those Jewish ideas regarding society have been inherited in turn from the far more ancient Babylonian civilization.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
