ill state explicitly that the god of
Jerusalem, whom he identifies with the Babylonian Nin-ip, is Salim or
Sulman, the god of peace, and that his temple stood on "the mountain of
Jerusalem"; in the other case there will be no mention of Salim, and it
will be left doubtful whether or not the city of Beth-Nin-ip was
included within the walls of the capital. It would seem rather that it
was separate from Jerusalem, though standing on the same "mountain" as
the great fortress. If so, we might identify Jerusalem with the city on
Mount Zion, the Jebusite stronghold of a later date, while "the city of
Beth-Nin-ip" would be that which centred round the temple on Moriah.

However this may be, the fortress and the temple-hill were distinct from
one another in the days of the Jebusites, and we may therefore assume
that they were also distinct in the age of Abraham. This might explain
why it was that the mountain of Moriah on the summit of which the
patriarch offered his sacrifice was not enclosed within the walls of
Jerusalem, and was not covered with buildings. It was a spot, on the
contrary, where sheep could feed, and a ram be caught by its horns in
the thick brushwood.

In entering Canaan, Abraham would have found himself still surrounded by
all the signs of a familiar civilization. The long-continued influence
and government of Babylonia had carried to "the land of the Amorites"
all the elements of Chaldaean culture. Migration from Ur of the Chaldees
to the distant West meant a change only in climate and population, not
in the civilization to which the patriarch had been accustomed.

Even the Babylonian language was known and used in the cities of Canaan,
and the literature of Babylonia was studied by the Canaanitish people.
This is one of the facts which we have learnt from the discovery of the
Tel el-Amarna tablets. The cuneiform system of writing and the
Babylonian language had spread all over Western Asia, and nowhere had
they taken deeper root than in Canaan. Here there were schools and
teachers for instruction in the foreign language and script, and
record-chambers and libraries in which the letters and books of clay
could be copied and preserved.

Long before the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets we might have
gathered from the Old Testament itself that such libraries once existed
in Canaan. One of the Canaanitish cities taken and destroyed by the
Israelites was Debir in the mountainous part of Judah. But Debir