older Semitic races. Their late traditions trace back their ancestry to
ancient Babylonia. Already for long centuries, by conquest and by
commerce, the dominant civilization of the Euphrates valley had been
regnant in the land of Canaan, The Tell-el-Amarna letters, written from
Palestine in the fourteenth century, employ the Babylonian language and
system of writing, and reveal a high Semitic civilization, closely
patterned after that of Babylonia. When the Israelites settled in Canaan
and began to intermarry and assimilate with the older inhabitants, as
the earliest Hebrew records plainly state (_cf_. Judg. I.), they found
there, among the Canaanites, established civil and religious
institutions and traditions which were largely a reflection of those of
Babylonia. Also, when in the eighth and seventh centuries Assyrian
armies conquered Palestine, they brought Babylonian institutions,
traditions, and religious ideas. We know that during the reigns of Ahaz
and Manasseh these threatened to displace those peculiar to the Hebrews.
Again, during the Babylonian exile the influence of the same powerful
civilization upon the thought and religion of Israel was also strongly
felt. Thus the opportunities, direct and indirect, for receiving from
Babylonia much of the rich heritage that it held were many and varied.

[Sidenote: _Heirs of the older Semitic civilizations_]

Certain parts of the Old Testament itself testify that the wealth of
tradition, of institutions, of laws, and religious ideas, gradually
committed to the Semitic ancestors of the Hebrews and best preserved by
the Babylonians, was not lost, but, enriched and purified, has been
transmitted to us through its pages. A careful comparison of the
biblical and Babylonian accounts of the creation and the flood leaves
little doubt that there is a close historical connection between these
accounts. Investigation reveals in language, spirit, and form many