w, not purity of race.

That Egypt must have exercised an influence upon Israel has long been
known. The Israelites were born as a nation in the land of Goshen, and
the Exodus from Egypt is the starting-point of their national history.
But it is only since the decipherment of the Egyptian inscriptions that
it has been possible to determine how far this influence extended, and
to what extent it prevailed. And the result is to show that it was
negative rather than positive; that the regulations of the Mosaic Code
were directed to preventing the people from returning to Egypt and its
idolatries by suppressing all reference to Egyptian beliefs and customs,
and silently contradicting its ideas and practices. Even the doctrine of
the future life, and the resurrection of the body, which plays so
prominent a part in Egyptian religion, is carefully avoided, and the Ten
Commandments have little in common with the ethical code of Egypt.

But while the influence of Egypt has thus been shown to be negative
rather than positive, the influence of Babylonia has proved to be
overwhelming. Perhaps this is one of the greatest surprises of modern
research, though it might have been expected had we remembered that
Abraham was a native of Babylonia, and that Israelites and Semitic
Babylonians belonged to the same race. We have seen that the early
culture of western Asia was wholly Babylonian, and that Babylonian
influence continued undiminished there down to the days of the Exodus.
The very mode of writing and the language of literature were Babylonian;
the whole method of thought had been modelled after a Babylonian pattern
for unnumbered generations. Israel in Goshen was no more exempt from
these influences than were the patriarchs in Canaan.

Babylonian influence is deeply imprinted on the Mosaic laws. The
institution of the Sabbath went back to the Sumerian days of Chaldaea;
the name itself was of Babylonian origin. The great festivals of Israel
find their counterparts on the banks of the Euphrates. Even the year of
Jubilee was a Babylonian institution, and Gudea, the priest-king of
Lagas, tells us that when he kept it the slave became "for seven days
the equal of his master." It was only the form and application of the
old institutions that were changed in the Levitical legislation. They
were adapted to the needs of Israel, and associated with the events of
its history. But in themselves they were all of Babylonian descent.

There is