Word: babylonia
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WITH its own kind of mathematics and a menagerie of strange-looking symbols, the young science of genetics was for years no more meaningful to the general public than the cuneiform inscriptions of ancient Babylonia. Hiroshima changed that. The possible genetic effects of radioactive fallout-monstrous malformations of the human form brought about by exposure of human genes to radioactivity-were easily, and chillingly, imaginable. Genetics became a matter of immediate concern to all men. Last summer TIME'S editors explored this mysterious area at the root of life in a cover story on Geneticist George Wells Beadle...
...last period in the ninth grade is spent in a consideration of ancient history--from the Sumerians through the kingdoms of Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia, the Hebrews, the Minoans of Crete, the Persian Empire, and the Greek city states down to the victory of Philip of Macedon...
...paleography by a giant step; they provide a far earlier authority for the text of the Old Testament than had been available. The Old Testament is based on the so-called Masoretic text (from masora, tradition) developed in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries A.D. by the schools of Babylonia and Palestine. Older than the Masoretic Bible is the Septuagint, a pre-Christian Greek translation which has been thought to be less authoritative than the Masoretic because of the difficulties of translating Hebrew terms into Greek. The Biblical manuscripts from Cave 4, yielding some texts far earlier than either, have...
Harran's fortunes rose and fell with shifts of local politics, but its religious importance persisted. The last king of Babylonia, Nabonidus, was so devoted to Moon-God Sin that he tried to make him supreme above all the other gods of the densely populated Mesopotamian pantheon. This religious move was a tactical mistake; the local priests had a vested interest in other gods, and their machinations drove Nabonidus into the wilderness. He came back after a while, but was overwhelmed by Cyrus of Persia...
That was the end of Babylonia as an independent country, but Harran. the moon-god's city, clung tenaciously to Sin. Dr. Rice has found references in many ancient languages to the city's extreme conservatism. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire meant little to it. Christianity stopped at its walls; Harran held fast to the ancient faith. Even Islam came to terms with the conservatives of Harran...