The Jews could not have lived in Egypt four hundred years without being influenced by the popular belief.  Hence in the wilderness, and in the days of kingly rule, the tendency to animal worship in the shape of the golden calves, their love of ritualistic observances, and their easy submission to the rule of priests.  In one very important thing, however, the Jews escaped a degrading superstition,—­that of the transmigration of souls; and it was perhaps the abhorrence by Moses of this belief that made him so remarkably silent as to a future state.  It is seemingly ignored in the Old Testament, and hence many have been led to suppose that the Jews did not believe in it.  Certainly the most cultivated and aristocratic sect—­the Sadducees—­repudiated it altogether; while the Pharisees held to it.  They, however, were products of a later age, and had learned many things—­good and bad—­from surrounding nations or in their captivities, which Moses did not attempt to teach the simple souls that escaped from Egypt.

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Of the other religions with which the Jews came in contact, and which more or less were in conflict with their own monotheistic belief, very little is definitely known, since their sacred books, if they had any, have not come down to us.  Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments, on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of Nature, and the kings and priests who officiated in religious ceremonies.  From these we learn or infer that among the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians religion was polytheistic, but without so complicated or highly organized a system as prevailed in Egypt.  Only about twenty deities are alluded to in the monumental records of either nation, and they are supposed to have represented the sun, the moon, the stars, and various other powers, to which were delegated by the unseen and occult supreme deity the oversight of this world.  They presided over cities and the elements of Nature, like the rain, the thunder, the winds, the air, the water.  Some abode in heaven, some on the earth, and some in the waters under the earth.  Of all these graven images existed, carved by men’s hands,—­some in the form of animals, like the winged bulls of Nineveh.  In the very earliest times, before history was written, it is supposed that the religion of all these nations was monotheistic, and that polytheism was a development as men became wicked and sensual.  The knowledge of the one God was gradually lost, although an indefinite belief remained that there was a supreme power over all the other gods, at least a deity of higher rank than the gods of the people, who reigned over them as Lord of lords.