Babylon

• cavalry from B. pushed into Mesopotamia

79:1.5But ever-in­creas­ing drought grad­u­ally brought about the great And­ite ex­o­dus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of mi­gra­tion be­gan to veer from north­ward to south­ward, and the Baby­lo­nian cav­al­ry­men be­gan to push into Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

• baptism was religious ceremonial in

85:4.1Man­kind has wor­shiped earth, air, wa­ter, and fire. The prim­i­tive races ven­er­ated springs and wor­shiped rivers. Even now in Mon­go­lia there flour­ishes an in­flu­en­tial river cult. Bap­tism be­came a re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial in Baby­lon, and the Greeks prac­ticed the an­nual rit­ual bath. It was easy for the an­cients to imag­ine that the spir­its dwelt in the bub­bling springs, gush­ing foun­tains, flow­ing rivers, and rag­ing tor­rents. Mov­ing wa­ters vividly im­pressed these sim­ple minds with be­liefs of spirit an­i­ma­tion and super­nat­u­ral power. Some­times a drown­ing man would be re­fused suc­cor for fear of of­fend­ing some river god.

• Marduk was perpetuation of Adam legend

92:5.6Many races have con­ceived of their lead­ers as be­ing born of vir­gins; their ca­reers are lib­er­ally sprin­kled with mirac­u­lous episodes, and their re­turn is al­ways ex­pected by their re­spec­tive groups. In cen­tral Asia the tribes­men still look for the re­turn of Genghis Khan; in Ti­bet, China, and In­dia it is Bud­dha; in Is­lam it is Mo­hammed; among the Amerinds it was Hes­unanin Ona­mo­na­lon­ton; with the He­brews it was, in gen­eral, Adam’s re­turn as a ma­te­rial ruler. In Baby­lon the god Mar­duk was a per­pet­u­a­tion of the Adam leg­end, the son-of-God idea, the con­nect­ing link be­tween man and God. Fol­low­ing the ap­pear­ance of Adam on earth, so-called sons of God were com­mon among the world races.

• Judaism saved from oblivion by teachers from

121:6.8Through­out the whole wide world, no mat­ter where the Jews found them­selves dis­persed by com­merce or op­pres­sion, all with one ac­cord kept their hearts cen­tered on the holy tem­ple at Je­ru­sa­lem. Jew­ish the­ol­ogy did sur­vive as it was in­ter­preted and prac­ticed at Je­ru­sa­lem, not­with­stand­ing that it was sev­eral times saved from obliv­ion by the timely in­ter­ven­tion of cer­tain Baby­lo­nian teach­ers.

• Babylon

130:0.3Af­ter their stay in Rome they went over­land to Tar­en­tum, where they set sail for Athens in Greece, stop­ping at Nicopo­lis and Corinth. From Athens they went to Eph­esus by way of Troas. From Eph­esus they sailed for Cyprus, putting in at Rhodes on the way. They spent con­sid­er­able time vis­it­ing and rest­ing on Cyprus and then sailed for An­ti­och in Syria. From An­ti­och they jour­neyed south to Sidon and then went over to Da­mas­cus. From there they trav­eled by car­a­van to Mes­o­po­ta­mia, pass­ing through Thap­sacus and Larissa. They spent some time in Baby­lon, vis­ited Ur and other places, and then went to Susa. From Susa they jour­neyed to Charax, from which place Gonod and Ga­nid em­barked for In­dia.

• Babylon

134:1.1Af­ter tak­ing leave of Gonod and Ga­nid at Charax (in De­cem­ber of A.D. 23), Je­sus re­turned by way of Ur to Baby­lon, where he joined a desert car­a­van that was on its way to Da­mas­cus. From Da­mas­cus he went to Naz­a­reth, stop­ping only a few hours at Ca­per­naum, where he paused to call on Zeb­e­dee’s fam­ily. There he met his brother James, who had some­time pre­vi­ously come over to work in his place in Zeb­e­dee’s boat­shop. Af­ter talk­ing with James and Jude (who also chanced to be in Ca­per­naum) and af­ter turn­ing over to his brother James the lit­tle house which John Zeb­e­dee had man­aged to buy, Je­sus went on to Naz­a­reth.

• Peter visited

139:2.11Af­ter leav­ing Je­ru­sa­lem and be­fore Paul be­came the lead­ing spirit among the gen­tile Chris­tian churches, Pe­ter trav­eled ex­ten­sively, vis­it­ing all the churches from Baby­lon to Corinth. He even vis­ited and min­is­tered to many of the churches which had been raised up by Paul. Al­though Pe­ter and Paul dif­fered much in tem­per­a­ment and ed­u­ca­tion, even in the­ol­ogy, they worked to­gether har­mo­niously for the up­build­ing of the churches dur­ing their later years.