ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the religion of the Semitic peoples, that is, of the group of kindred nations, including the Arabs, the Hebrews and Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Babylonians and Assyrians, which in ancient times occupied the great Arabian Peninsula. With the more fertile lands of Syria Mesopotamia and Irac, from the Mediterranean coast to the base of the mountains of Iran and Armenia. Semitic origin which still exercise so great an influence on the lives of men can be completely understood without enquiry into the older traditional religion of the Semitic race. Religion was a part of the organised social life into which a man was born, and to which he conformed through life in the same unconscious way in which men fall into any habitual practice of the society in which they live. Religion was entirely comprehended in the observance of certain fixed rules of outward conduct.
