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.dt Mythology Among the Hebrews, by Ignaz Goldziher, a Project Gutenberg eBook
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.dv class='tnotes'
Transcriber’s Note:
.if t
This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical
effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. Bold
font is delimited by the ‘=’ character. The rendering of certain
characters in classical languages may not display correctly in your
reader. Superscripted characters appear as ^{m}.
.if-
.if h
Minor errors and omissions in punctuation and formatting have been silently
corrected. Please see the transcriber’s #note:endnote# at the end of this
text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues
encountered during its preparation.
In this version, there several instances of
Arabic or Hebrew words with more than one character. At this time
such bidirectional text cannot be reliably rendered. The author provided
transliterations; however a separate Hebrew transliteration has been included
here based on the scheme provided by the Society of Biblical Literature.
These appear in bold as yĕšārĕtû in order to indicate
where these characters appear in the text. The same has been done
for the few Arabic and Aramaic words.
.if-
Footnotes, which appeared at the bottom of each page, have been gathered
.if h
at the end of the text, and hyperlinks provided for easy access.
.if-
.if t
at the end of each chapter.
.if-
They have
also been renumbered consecutively in order establish the uniqueness
required to facilitate searches. Any references to specific notes in the
text have been corrected to follow the new numbering.
.if h
The cover image has been fabricated and is placed in the public domain.
.if-
.dv-
.bn 001.png
.sp 4
.h1
MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HEBREWS
.bn 002.png
.sp 2
.nf c
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
.nf-
.bn 003.png
.sp 2
.nf c
MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HEBREWS
AND
ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
.sp 2
BY
IGNAZ GOLDZIHER, Ph.D.
MEMBER OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
.sp 4
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, WITH ADDITIONS BY THE AUTHOR
BY
RUSSELL MARTINEAU, M.A.
OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
.sp 4
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1877
.sp 2
All rights reserved
.nf-
.bn 004.png
.bn 005.png
.sp 4
.nf c
TO
PROFESSORS
H.L. FLEISCHER
FRIEDRICH MAX MÜLLER
H. VÁMBÉRY
THE PIONEERS OF SEMITIC, ARYAN, AND TURCO-TATARIC PHILOLOGY
This Work is Dedicated
By THE AUTHOR and THE TRANSLATOR
.nf-
.bn 006.png
.sp 4
.ce
Errata.
.pm start_quote
.in 6
.ti -6
P. 13 line 5 from below, for ‘with all his advanced ideas’ read ‘notwithstanding
the progress of modern ideas.’
.ti -6
P. 209, first line of note, after ‘ball,’ insert ‘that descended from heaven.’
Whether this feather-ball
.in
.pm end_quote
.bn 007.png
.pn vii
.sp 4
.h2
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
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.hr 25%
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.sp 2
Conscious that Comparative Mythology is not
very generally studied even in England, where some of
the earliest and ablest expositions of its principles have
appeared, I foresee that this work is likely to fall into
the hands of many who have not the preliminary
intellectual training necessary to an appreciation of its
principles. If anyone takes up the book with an idea
that it will settle anything in the history of the Jews,
he will be disappointed. Its aim is not theological nor
historical, but mythological; and Mythology precedes
History and Theology, and has nothing to do with them,
except as a factor that may to a certain extent determine
their form. To understand this book fully, some previous
knowledge of what has already been done on the
field of Comparative Mythology is essential. This is
easily obtained by reference to the various works of Prof.
Max Müller and Rev. G.W. Cox, which are frequently
quoted.[1] Such studies will enable the reader to see
how far Dr. Goldziher is merely treading in the footsteps
.bn 008.png
.pn +1
of others, and how far he has struck out a new
track. Speaking generally, it may be said that he
acknowledges the principles of the science as laid down
by Kuhn and Max Müller, but that the application to
the Semitic nations is his own. This application was,
indeed, first attempted, fifteen years ago, by Professor
H. Steinthal of Berlin with reference to one special
mythological cycle, in Essays which, on p. xxix of his
Introduction, Dr. Goldziher urgently recommends the
reader to study as a suitable preparation for this book,
since they ‘showed for the first time and on a large
scale how the matter of the Hebrew legends yields to
mythological analysis,’ and contain matter which is left
out here precisely because it is to be had there.
Through the obligingness of the publishers I am
enabled to present the English reader with a translation
of these Essays, whereby he is put in a position of
no disadvantage as compared with the German. They
will also serve the purpose of showing that the principles
of Semitic Mythology were asserted in weighty
words by a philosopher of high repute many years ago.
But Dr. Goldziher has in the present work for the first
time extended the application of the principles of Comparative
Mythology to the entire domain of Hebrew
Mythology, and laid down a broad foundation of
theory, on which the elaboration of special points may
be subsequently built up. Both these authors, it will
be seen, regard a systematic working out of the results
of Psychological science as the fundamental pillar of
Mythological studies; and the reader will consequently
find some psychological preparation not less necessary
.bn 009.png
.pn +1
to the full understanding of the book than a knowledge
of what has been written on Comparative Mythology.
.fn 1
Especially Max Müller’s essay on Comparative Mythology (Chips
etc., II. 1), and the ninth in the second series of his Lectures on the
Science of Language; and Cox’s introductions to his Manual of Mythology,
Tales of the Gods and Heroes, and Tales of Thebes and Argos.
.fn-
The translation has received so many additions and
corrections made expressly for it by the author, that it
is far superior to the original German edition; moreover,
it has been thoroughly revised by the author in
proof.
I have added a few notes, where they seemed to
be wanted; they are always distinguished (by ‘Tr.’)
from the author’s own. The Index is also compiled
by me.
References to the Old Testament are made to the
original Hebrew; in the few cases where the chapter
or verse bears a different number in the English and
other modern versions, the reference to the latter is
added in brackets.
I have adopted a few peculiarities of orthography,
which I ought to confess to, the more so as I hope
others may be convinced of their reasonableness.
Nazirite, Hivvite, are corrections of positive blunders
in spelling of the English Bible. Hivite was probably
written in obedience to an unwritten law of English
spelling which forbids the doubling of v; whether there
is now any sense in this precept (which must have
originated when vv would be confounded with w) or
not, at least it ought not to be extended to foreign
names. The tendency of the age to dispense with the
Latin diphthongs æ, œ (which were a few generations
ago used in æra, œconomy, Ægypt, etc.), I have ventured
to anticipate in similar words, such as esthetic,
Phenicia, Phenix. The anomaly of the French spelling
.bn 010.png
.pn +1
of the Greek word programme, alongside of anagram,
diagram, parallelogram, seems to me sufficient
condemnation of the form.
In the Hebrew and Arabic quotations the Latin
alphabet has been used throughout. The transliteration
of the following letters should be noted, as being the
only ones about which there could be any doubt:—ا א
commencing a syllable in the middle of a word
= ʾ.
ע ﻊ = ʿ.
ﻎ = ġ.
ﺝ = j.
ﺡ = ḥ
ה ﺥ = ch.
כ ك = k.
ק ق = ḳ.
ת ت ۃ = t.
ט ط = ṭ.
ظ = ẓ.
ס שׂ س = s.
שׁ ش = sh.
ث = th.
ذ = ḏ.
צ ص = ṣ.
ض = ḍ.
ו as consonant generally = v,
but و = w.
י ى as consonant = y.
The aspirated
תפכב are written bh (to be pronounced v), kh, ph,
th. In Hebrew ă ĕ ŏ denote either the ordinary short
vowels or the châṭêph vowels; and ĕ also the vocal
sheva. In Arabic texts the iʿrâb is omitted in prose,
but preserved in verse on account of the metre. These
principles of transliteration are the same which the
author adopts in the German edition, with a few modifications
which seemed desirable for English readers,
especially the use of the letters j, th and y with their
usual English force.
.ll 64
.rj
RUSSELL MARTINEAU.
.ll
London: January 1877.
.bn 011.png
.pn +1
.h2 id=contents
CONTENTS.
.ta l:60 r:10
Translator’s Preface | #vii#
Introduction | #xiii#
CHAPTER I.
On Hebrew Mythology | #1:chap01#
CHAPTER II.
Sources of Hebrew Mythology | #17:chap02#
CHAPTER III.
The Method of Investigating Hebrew Myths | #35:chap03#
CHAPTER IV.
Nomadism and Agriculture | #49:chap04#
CHAPTER V.
The Most Prominent Figures in Hebrew Mythology | #90:chap05#
CHAPTER VI.
The Myth of Civilisation and the First Shaping of Hebrew Religion | #198:chap06#
.bn 012.png
.pn +1
CHAPTER VII.
Influence of the Awaking National Idea on the Transformation of the Hebrew Myth | #231:chap07#
CHAPTER VIII.
Commencement of Monotheism and the Differentiation of the Myths | #259:chap08#
CHAPTER IX.
Prophetism and the Jahveh Religion | #290:chap09#
CHAPTER X.
The Hebrew Myth in the Babylonian Captivity | #316:chap10#
Excursus | #337:excursus#
APPENDIX.
Two Essays by H. Steinthal.
1. The Original Form of the Legend of Prometheus | #363#
2. The Legend of Samson | #392#
INDEX | #447#
.ta-
.bn 013.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2
INTRODUCTION.
.if h
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.if-
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.hr 25%
.if-
.sp 2
The following sheets make no claim to present a
system of Hebrew Mythology. I have left out much that
would necessarily be included in a system, and confined
myself to a limited portion of what can be proved to be
the matter of the Hebrew myths. Even within the actual
domain of my labours, I was not anxious to subject the
extant narratives in all their minutest features to mythological
analysis. The application of the certain results of
the science of Mythology in general to a domain hitherto
almost ignored with reference to this subject, could only
be accomplished by some self-limitation on the part of the
author; and my immediate task was only to show that
Semitism in general, and Hebrew in particular, could not
be exceptions to the laws of mythological enquiry established
on the basis of psychology and the science of language,
and that it is possible from Semitism itself, on
psychological and philological principles, to construct a
scientific Semitic Mythology.
By blindly tracing out copious matters of detail, the
investigator of myths is very easily and unconsciously
seduced to the slippery ground of improbabilities; and
therefore I preferred, in the first instance, to enlarge only
on subjects on which I was confident of being able to present
what was self-evident, and in these only, so to speak,
to reveal the first cellular formations, from which later
.bn 014.png
.pn +1
growths were produced, and to leave the analysis of the
entire substance, and of the separate elements which complete
the conception of the mythical figures, to a future
time, when the science will have gained a firmer footing
even on the Semitic domain, and will have less distrust
and misunderstanding to contend against. I am myself
responsible for this limitation of the subject, in the service
of which, encouraged by kind friends, I resolved to publish
the following pages. In mythological affairs I acknowledge
myself a pupil of the school established on the
Aryan domain by Ad. Kuhn and Max Müller. Only in
certain points, which, however, occasionally touch upon
first principles, I have been compelled to differ from the
masters of Comparative Mythology. It may be boldly
asserted that, especially through Max Müller’s literary
labours, Comparative Mythology and the Science of
Religion have been added to those chapters of human
knowledge with which certain borderlands of science cannot
dispense, and which can claim to have become an essential
portion of general culture.[2] This conviction must
excuse frequent copiousness of exposition, which I have
adopted knowingly and intentionally. I have had in my
eye not only the small circle of professional mythologists
on the Aryan and other domains, but also the larger circle
.bn 015.png
.pn +1
of educated readers who will be interested in learning
how the results of Comparative Mythology shape themselves
when applied to Semitic nations. But, on the other
hand, I must crave the indulgence of the latter readers,
if I have not always succeeded (especially in the fifth
chapter) in making my meaning as intelligible as I could
wish. For it is a fact that the Semitic still remains
further removed from the mind of educated society than
the Aryan, which, through the study of classical antiquity,
has so ensnared us from our school-days with its
irresistible charms, that it can never cease to determine
the direction of our thought and action. Therefore I
have had resort to foreign examples, sometimes non-Semitic
instances from antiquity, sometimes instances
from modern poets, for illustrations of particular assertions,
which otherwise would appear improbable, but
could thus be brought nearer to the understanding.
From the figures used by poets the wealth and variety of
the mythical apperception of the primeval man is truly
elucidated. Here and there I have also permitted myself
to make reference to Hungarian idioms, which was very
natural, as I originally composed this book in my Hungarian
mother-tongue for the purpose of University lectures,
and then translated it myself into German. Some
parts of these essays have been already published in
Hungarian, in a different connexion and with special
reference to linguistic results, in the first and second
parts of Vol. XII. of the Nyelvtudományi Közlemények
(Philological Essays), edited by Paul Hunfalvy for the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
.fn 2
Both in England and in France the attempt has been made with much
taste to introduce the results of comparative mythology in the instruction of
youth; in England by Rev. G.W. Cox in his Tales of the Gods and Heroes,
Tales of Thebes and Argos, Tales from Greek Mythology, Manual of Mythology
in the form of question and answer, 1867, and Tales of Ancient Greece, 1870,
the last two of which have just been translated into Hungarian, and published
by the Franklin Society; in France by Baudry and Delerot (Paris 1872).
Still more recently the results of comparative mythology have also been summarised
in two excellent books for children by Edward Clodd, The Childhood
of the World: a simple account of Man in Early Times, 1873, and The Childhood
of Religion; embracing a simple account of the birth and growth of Myths
and Legends, 1875.
.fn-
In adducing Aryan parallels, I am very far from
thinking that where the Hebrew exhibits a striking similarity
to something Aryan it has borrowed from the
latter, or that, as a recent scholar tried to make out, the
.bn 016.png
.pn +1
Hebrews themselves were originally Aryans, who afterwards
took a Semitic language and preserved their Aryan
habits of thought. I start from the conviction that the
Myth is something universal, that the faculty of forming
it cannot a priori be denied to any race as such, and that
the coincidence of mythical ideas and modes of expression
is the result of the uniformity of the psychological process
which is the foundation of the creation of myths in all
races; and this very uniformity of mythical ideas may
consequently serve to psychologists as an argument for
the thesis of the psychological uniformity of all races.[3]
‘Where no historical transference of myths can be proved,’
says Bastian very justly,[4] ‘the uniformity must be referred
to the organic law of the growth of the mind, which will
everywhere put forth similar products, corresponding and
alike, but variously modified by surrounding influences.’
The oldest history of paleography exhibits on the ideographic
and figurative stage the most striking similarities
in the modes of apperception belonging to nations of the
most various races. Lenormant says: ‘Nous pourrions
faire voir, si nous voulions nous laisser aller à la tentation
d’entreprendre un petit traité de l’écriture symbolique
chez les différents peuples, comment certaines métaphores
naturelles ont été conçues spontanément par plusieurs
races diverses sans communication les unes avec les autres,
et comment, par suite, le même symbole se retrouve avec
.bn 017.png
.pn +1
le même sens dans plusieurs systèmes d’origine tout-à-fait
indépendante. L’exemple le plus frappant peut-être
de ce genre est celui du symbole de l’abeille, qui, ainsi que
nous venons de le dire, signifie Roi dans les hiéroglyphes
égyptiens, et se reconnaît encore clairement dans le type
le plus ancien de l’idéogramme doué du même sens dans
le cunéiforme anarien.’[5] The same lesson is taught by
Prehistoric Archeology, the comparative study of which
among the various races would present very instructive
examples. In our museums we see identical implements
used by men of the most various races at the same primitive
stage of civilisation,[6] yet in this case the idea of one
having borrowed from another enters no one’s head.
Why should we be surprised at meeting with the very
same phenomenon in Comparative Mythology?
.fn 3
This psychological uniformity of all races of men is independent of the
question of the monogenetic or polygenetic origin of races. The psychological
uniformity of different races is especially conspicuous when we observe and
compare individuals of the separate races in infancy, when the distinctions
produced by history, education, instruction, etc., are not yet present (see
Frohschammer, Das Christenthum und die moderne Naturwissenschaft, Vienna
1868, p. 208.) When we are considering the growth of mankind in general,
the stage when myths are created corresponds to the infancy of the individual.
.fn-
.fn 4
Das Beständige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer Veränderlichkeit,
Berlin 1868, p. 78.
.fn-
The uniformity of the Hebrew myths with those of
nations belonging to other races only becomes an obvious
fact when we apply the method of modern mythological
enquiry to Semitic stories. But, even without the help
of this method, the mere outside of the Hebrew stories
attracted the attention of many enquirers. It occasionally
gave rise to the absurdest aberrations, which even
now shoot out into a fresh crop of mischief. One
answer, of course, was always at hand—that Greek and
Egyptian narratives and ‘theogonies’ were bad translations
or ‘diluted’ versions of the Hebrew; or else, as
it has often been attempted in recent times to prove, the
Egyptian was the original, from which everything else
had flowed. The eighteenth century was especially rich
in literary productions of the first species, following the
.bn 018.png
.pn +1
lead of Gerhard Johann Voss, Huet,[7] Bochart, and others
whose labours had prepared the way. G. Croesius published
at Dort, in 1704, ‘Ὅμηρος Ἑβραῖος, sive Historia
Hebraeorum ab Homero Hebraicis nominibus ac sententiis
conscripta in Odyssea et Iliade,’ and V.G. Herklitz at
Leipzig two years later, 1706, ‘Quod Hercules idem sit ac
Josua.’ At Amsterdam a book was published in 1721 entitled
‘Parallela τῆς χρονολογίας et Historiae Sacrae,’ having
the same object; and in 1730 a book in two volumes,
of similar tendency, by Guillaume de Lavaur, an avocat,
was published at Paris in French, and translated into
German by Johann Daniel Heyden (Leipzig, 1745).[8] But
it was reserved for the end of the century to produce the
most curious specimen, in the work entitled ‘Histoire véritable
des Temps Fabuleux: ouvrage qui, en dévoilant le
vrai que les histoires fabuleuses ont travesti et altéré, sert
à éclaircir les antiquités des peuples et surtout à venger
l’histoire sainte,’ by the Abbé Guérin du Rocher. I have
not seen the original edition of this work, but have consulted
a later edition prepared by the Abbé Chapelle, an
admirer of the author (Paris and Besançon, 1824), in five
volumes, of which the first three contain the original
work, and the fourth and fifth are taken up by the editor
with a recapitulation of principles and a defence against
the attacks of antagonists, who count among their number
such men as Voltaire, De la Harpe, De Guignes, Du Voisin,
Dinouart, and Anquetil du Perron. The author undertook
to prove that the entire ancient history of the Egyptians
and other nations is only a repetition of Biblical
narratives: that thus what is related of Bothyris,
.bn 019.png
.pn +1
Orpheus, Menes, Sesostris, and others, is identical with
the Biblical history of Abraham, Jacob, Lot, Noah, and
others; even the Egyptian Thebes is not a city, but
Noah’s ark. The influence which this sensational book
exercised on the learning of the period is very characteristic
of the times. Dr. Asselini, vicar of the diocese of
Paris, who had to pass judgment on it for the censorship
(1779), regards it as a vindication of the Bible. The
Sorbonne appropriated Guérin’s theorems, and made
them the subject of theses for graduation. The King of
Poland read the work through, and sent his compliments
to the author. The French government accorded the
Abbé an annual pension of 1,200 livres. One reviewer
compares Guérin’s discoveries to those of Columbus and
Newton; and a poetical panegyrist sees in them a French counterpoise to the superiority in science then possessed
by England in virtue of discoveries of the first rank in
physical science. He says—
.pm start_poem
Fière et docte Albion, qui dans un coin des mers
Prétends aux premier rang de la littérature,
Pour avoir à vos yeux dévoilé l’univers
Et le vrai plan de la nature,
De tes discours hautains rabaisse enfin le ton;
La France, ta rivale, va égaler ta gloire.
Ce que pour la physique a fait le grand Newton,
Du Rocher l’a fait pour l’histoire.
.pm end_poem
But even on the very threshold of the second part of
our century, in 1849, a systematic argument was conducted,
to show that Livy had read the Bible, and based his description
of T. Manlius Torquatus’ battle with the Gauls
on that of David and his battle with the Philistine giant;
and twenty-two similarities between the respective stories
had to do duty as demonstrations.[9] The unscientific
.bn 020.png
.pn +1
mode of regarding these subjects prevailing up to the most
recent time has not yet ceased to generate absurdities.
.fn 5
François Lenormant, Essai sur la Propagation de l’Alphabet phénicien
dans l’ancien monde, Vol. I. (2nd ed., Paris 1875), p. 17.
.fn-
.fn 6
Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 6.
.fn-
.fn 7
On these two see Pfleiderer, Die Religion, ihr Wesen und ihre Geschichte,
II. 8.
.fn-
.fn 8
The title is 'Conférence de la Fable avec l’Histoire sainte, où l’on voit
que les grandes fables, le culte et les mystères du paganisme ne sont que des
copies altérées des histoires, des usages et des traditions des Hébreux.'
.fn-
.fn 9
Edward Wilton in the Journal of Sacred Literature, 1849, II. 374 et seq.
.fn-
We see old-fashioned absurdities still finding a way
to the general reading public by means of encyclopedias,
as in a ‘Dictionary of the Mythology of all Nations,’ of
which a third edition was recently published.[10] This work
in its new form comes before the public with a touching
delivery against modern physical science by way of introduction.
Here we read under Abraham, ‘Some scholars
are inclined to make this celebrated Patriarch of the
Jewish nation either the god Brahma himself or a Brahman
who was obliged to leave India in the contest between the
worshippers of Siva and those of Brahma. In truth, there
is much that might lead to such a conjecture. In Sanskrit
the word ‘earth’ is often expressed by Brahm or Abrahm.
Abraham’s wife was named Sarah; Brahma’s wife was
Sara (Sarasvati)’ etc. But sins of a different kind also
are committed up to the present day. The Hebrews are
said to have borrowed their myths from foreign parts. It
is not only by Voltaire and men of his age and spirit that
this assumption is made. It is expressed in a recent
article by a learned German investigator intended for the
widest circulation. Sepp writes, 'No nation has been so
clever as the Hebrews in appropriating to themselves the
property of others, both intellectual and material. What
can we say to the fact that the sun’s standing still at
Joshua’s bidding, with the purpose of enabling the Hebrews
to complete the slaughter of the Amalekites, is directly
borrowed from Homer (Il. ii. 412), where the poetical hyperbole
‘Let not the sun go down, O Zeus,’ etc., is put into
the mouth of Agamemnon?... To be brief, the popular
.bn 021.png
.pn +1
hero Samson has had the Twelve Labours of the Lybian
Herakles transferred to him, and bears the doors, as
Sandon or Melkart the pillars of the world, on his
shoulders.'[11] The reader will agree with me in regarding
it as superfluous at the present day to attempt a serious
refutation of the hypothesis of borrowing, which assails the
originality of the most primitive mythological ideas known
to the nation under review. But it is impossible to evade
the obligation to find an explanation of the manifold coincidences
exhibited in the independently produced myths
of nations belonging to quite different races. Under the
new method of mythological enquiry this obligation is
doubly pressing; for the coincidences appear yet more
surprising, and occupy a more extensive sphere when the
myths are considered analytically by the light of the new
method, and from a linguistic point of view. Only then
does the identity become psychologically important. And
then it can in my view be explained only by the rejection
of the prejudice that there are unmythological races, or
at least one race incapable of forming any myths—the
Semitic. If the Myth is a form of life of the human mind
psychologically necessary at a certain stage of growth,
then the intellectual life of every individual, nation, and
race must pass through it. ‘The tendency of modern enquiry
is more and more toward the conclusion that if law
is anywhere, it is everywhere,’ as Tylor maintains.[12] This
means, applied to the present question, that if the formation
of myths is a natural law of the ψυχή (mind) at a
certain stage, it must necessarily occur everywhere where
there is a beginning of intellectual life, unless we could
speak of whole races or tribes as psychologically pathologic,[13]
.bn 022.png
.pn +1
and make the whole Semitic race thus pathologic
on account of its alleged incapacity to form myths—which
would, after all, be rather a curious proceeding. No doubt
we often read in ethnological works of nations without a
trace of Mythology. But we ought not to forget either
that such informants understand by Mythology only complicated
stories and fables, which in my view represent the
more advanced stage of mythic development, or that they
identify Mythology with heathen religious ideas, and
confound absence of religion or atheism with want of
myths. So, e.g., Sir John Lubbock says, quoting Sibree,[14]
‘Even in Madagascar, according to a good authority,
“there is nothing corresponding to a Mythology, or any
fables of gods or goddesses, amongst the Malagasy;”’
but this want of stories of gods and goddesses is very
far from demonstrating the absence of myths of all and
every sort.
.fn 10
Dr. Vollmer’s Wörterbuch der Mythologie aller Völker, newly revised by
Dr. W. Binder, with an Introduction to Mythological Science by Dr. Johannes
Minckwitz, 3rd ed., Stuttgart 1874.
.fn-
.fn 11
See the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, 1875, no. 169, p. 2657.
.fn-
.fn 12
Primitive Culture, I. 22.
.fn-
It would be worth while in this connexion to pursue a
thought raised by Schelling, with the aid of the present
more advanced ideas on the psychology of nations. According
to Schelling,[15] a nation becomes a nation through community
of consciousness between the individuals; and this
community has its foundation in a common view of the
world, and this again in Mythology. Consequently in Schelling’s
system absence of Mythology can only occur in circles
of men in which nationality is as yet unformed, and the
necessary community undeveloped. But to Schelling ‘it
appears impossible, because inconceivable, that a Nation
.bn 023.png
.pn +1
should be without Mythology.’ However the question may
stand with reference to savage tribes, modern science
cannot possibly support the old thesis concerning the
Semitic Hebrews of their incapacity for Mythology.
.fn 13
See Virchow in the Monatsbericht der königl. preuss. Akademie der
Wissenschaften, January 1875, p. 11.
.fn-
.fn 14
Origin of Civilisation, 3rd ed., p. 330, quoting Sibree’s Madagascar
and its People, p. 396.
.fn-
.fn 15
Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie, pp. 62, 63. This is the
idea to which Max Müller refers in noticing the lectures of the philosopher of
Berlin, in his Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 145.
.fn-
Guided by this conviction, I lay down at starting the
necessity of subjecting the material of the Hebrew myths
to the same psychological and linguistic analysis which
has contributed so much light to the consideration of the
beginnings of intellectual life in the Aryan race.
I do not conceal from myself that the acknowledgment
of the legitimacy of this method for Semitic things
may be exposed to many attacks. For even on Aryan
ground the results which the school of Kuhn and Max
Müller have brought to light do not enjoy that general
acceptation which ought to reward such sound investigations—investigations,
moreover, the basis of which is being
constantly extended by later writers such as G.W. Cox
and De Gubernatis. Both in Germany and in England
this school has notable adversaries. I do not speak
of Julius Braun, who, in his Naturgeschichte der Sage
(Natural History of Legend), thought to undermine the
solid substratum of Comparative Mythology by extending
to the domain of mythology the consequences of his theory
of the history of art and of Röthe’s assumptions, and by
fetching from Egypt the foundation-stone on which to
construct a Science of Mythology—an attempt which
turned out most unfortunate, especially in etymology.
But some worthy partisans of the study of classical literature
refuse to receive the results of the science of Comparative
Mythology. One of these is K. Lehrs;[16] another
is the latest German editor of Hesiod, who objects to the
.bn 024.png
.pn +1
modern science of Mythology that it ignores historical
and philological criticism and seizes upon every passage
of an author that suits its theory, without regard to its
value and genuineness.[17] Among the English scholars it
is no less a writer than Fergusson who declares, ‘So far as
I am capable of understanding it, it appears to me that
the ancient Solar Myth of Messrs. Max Müller and Cox is
very like mere modern moonshine.’[18] And Mr. George
Smith, the renowned pioneer of the ancient Assyrian literature,
seems not to have much confidence in the latest
method of mythological investigation; for he says in his
latest book,[19] ‘The early poems and stories of almost
every nation are by some writers resolved into elaborate
descriptions of natural phenomena; and in some cases, if
that were true, the myth would have taken to create it a
genius as great as that of the philosophers who explain it.’
So that the so-called ‘Solar theory’ is far from being
generally adopted even on the domain where it was first
brought out and has been most firmly established. But
the adherents of the school of Max Müller may take
comfort from the consideration that the accusations made
against them hit only those who have ridden the theory
too hard, since, as Tylor says, no allegory, no nursery-rhyme,
is safe from the speculations of some fanatical
mythological theoriser. ‘Much abused’ is a correct
epithet used of the Solar theory by a learned English
Assyriologist, himself a friend of it.[20] If, then, on Aryan
ground the legitimacy of the new method is not undisputed,
how will it be on Semitic, and especially on Hebrew
ground, which a prejudice prevalent far and wide has
.bn 025.png
.pn +1
decided to be occupied by a race and a nation with no
mythology at all? Nevertheless, I hope I have kept
myself free from abuse and extravagance in these essays.
I have endeavoured sedulously to avoid whatever, on the
Aryan domain, aroused the distrust of the hesitating, by
showing no anxiety to gain immediate command of the
whole extent of the mythological field. The essential
point at the commencement of these matters is not the
elucidation of all the minute details, but rather the solution
of the general questions that arise, and the accurate laying
down of a sound method of investigation. What I have
brought forward I wish to be regarded as a collection of
examples of the application of the method.
.fn 16
See his Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Alterthum, vorzugsweise zur Ethik und
Religion der Griechen, second edition, Leipzig 1875, especially p. 272 et seq.
.fn-
.fn 17
Flach, Das System der Hesiod. Kosmogonie, Leipzig 1874; see Literar.
Centralblatt, 1875, no. 7.
.fn-
.fn 18
Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, p. 32, note 2.
.fn-
.fn 19
The Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 302.
.fn-
.fn 20
Sayce in the Academy, 1875, p. 586.
.fn-
The reader will observe that I have given to the conception
of the myth a narrower scope than is usually done.
I believe it necessary to separate it strictly from the conception
of religion, and especially to exclude from the
sphere of primitive mythology the questions of Cosmogony
and Ethics (the origin of Evil). The latter point
was of especial importance in reference to the Hebrew
Myth, since, as I show in the last chapter, the solution
of these questions by the Hebrews was produced in the
later period of civilisation and from a foreign impulse.
There is an immense difference between the ancient
mythical view of the origin of nature and that later
cosmogonic system. So long as mythical ideas are still
living in the mind, though under an altered form, when
the times are ripe for cosmogonic speculations, a cosmogony
appears as a stage of development of the ancient
myth. But when the myth has utterly vanished from
consciousness, then the mind is ready to receive foreign
cosmogonic ideas, which can be fitted into the frame of
its religious thought and accommodated to its religious
views. This was the case with the Hebrews; and hence
.bn 026.png
.pn +1
it will be understood why I have not treated as Hebrew
mythical matter the Cosmogony of Genesis, which, moreover,
according to all appearance, is to be regarded rather
as a mere literary creation than as a view of the origin of
things emanating directly from the mind of the people.
It appeared desirable to give a few chapters to show
what I imagined the course of development of the primitive
myths to have been, before they attained the form in
which they are presented to us in literature. The mythological
question is indeed quite distinct from that concerning
the history of literature, and there is only a distant
connexion between the two. The purpose of the
following pages is, strictly speaking, attained where that
of the literary history of the Canon commences; and I
would gladly have kept aloof from the literary question,
which cannot yet be regarded as even nearly settled. But
when I included in my task the description of the further
course of development of the myth, it was obviously impossible
to stand so entirely aloof. I have on many
points deviated from the current views, without being
able either to enter into so complete a justification of the
deviation as is generally reasonably expected, and the importance
and scope of the subject would demand, or to
refer to all the suggestive and original works contributed,
especially by Germany and Holland, to the elucidation of
the problems in question. For this point, which is only
accessory to the real subject of my work, would require to
be treated in a separate monograph, which it was not my
intention to give. On the other hand, it was impossible
to leave these questions quite on one side. On the Pentateuch
question I start from the principles of Graf,
which at first were adopted solely by the learned Professor
Kuenen of Leyden, but have recently found zealous promoters
.bn 027.png
.pn +1
also in England[21] and Germany—in the latter
country especially in the works of Kayser (Strasburg,
1874), and Duhm (Bonn, 1875).[22] Nevertheless, the section
on Jahveism and Prophetism has turned out more lengthy
than considerations of symmetry would sanction. I must
confess that my personal sympathy with and affection for
this portion of the history of religion places me too close
to it to allow me, when once brought face to face with it,
to impose on my pen a reserve which perhaps is desirable
for the sake of equilibrium. All this obliges me to count
on the kind indulgence of my readers for the second portion,
which may be termed the historical.
It remains to say a few words about previous works of
the same character. Some earlier writings there are on
Hebrew Mythology. But it needs not to be specially insisted
on that Nork’s muddle-headed works, such as his
‘Biblical Mythology of the Old and New Testament,’
his ‘Etymological-symbolical-mythological Cyclopedia for
Biblical Students, Archeologists, and Artists,’[23] and other
books of his, and similar attempts by others,[24] which
have tended to discredit the school of Creuzer rather
than to gain lasting adherents to it, do not deserve
to be regarded as anything but passing aberrations.
Braun’s ‘Natural History of Legend: Reference of all
.bn 028.png
.pn +1
Religious Ideas, Legends, and Systems to their Common
Stock and Ultimate Root’[25] maintains a more serious and
dignified tone, but is a kind of anachronism built on an
antiquated theory, and not happier in its etymological
identifications and derivations than Nork’s writings. I
think that no branch of the science of History and Civilisation
can be advanced to satisfactory results when the
following thesis is laid down as an axiom: ‘It is a fundamental
law of the nature of the human mind never to
invent anything as long as it is possible to copy’—which
is the starting-point of Braun's studies. It would be quite
as difficult to rest satisfied at the present day with the
method which Buttmann follows in treating of Hebrew
Mythology.
.fn 21
The Academy, 1875, no. 184, p. 496. The promoters of the Theological
Translation Fund, by whom Kuenen’s Religion of Israel was published, Dr.
J. Muir of Edinburgh, who wrote some letters to the Scotsman on the Dutch
Theology, and to a certain extent Bishop Colenso, besides many others who
have not avowed their views so publicly, indicate the progress of opinion in
England.—Tr.
.fn-
.fn 22
See Literar. Centralblatt, 1875, no. 49, p. 157.
.fn-
.fn 23
Biblische Mythologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments, 2 vols., Stuttgart
1842; Etymologisch-symbolisch-mythologisches Realwörterbuch für Bibelforscher,
Archäologen und bildende Künstler, 4 vols., Stuttgart 1843–5.
.fn-
.fn 24
I have not succeeded in obtaining a sight of Schwenk’s Mythologie der
Semiten, published in 1849; but Bunsen’s condemnation of it in Egypt’s Place
in Universal History, IV. p. 363, made me less anxious to get it.
.fn-
There are many smaller excursus by Biblical expositors
and historians, who set out from the standpoint of the
earlier views on the relation of the Myth to the Legend,
and more frequently from the exegetical point of view.
Among these ought especially to be named Ewald’s
section on the subject in the first volume of his ‘History
of Israel,’ Tuch’s short treatise ‘Legend and Myth’ in the
general introduction to his Commentary on Genesis, as
well as several dissertations by the indefatigable Nöldeke
in his ‘Untersuchungen’ (Investigations) and elsewhere. It
is obvious that these performances, though in every sense
noteworthy and of permanent value, could not draw into
their sphere of observation those preliminary questions
which in the subsequent investigations of Kuhn and Max
Müller removed to a greater distance the goal of mythological
enquiry. Steinthal, who did so much for the
psychological basis of the new tendency of mythological
science, was the first to merit the praise of making Comparative
.bn 029.png
.pn +1
Mythology fruitful on Hebrew ground. His dissertations
on the Story of Prometheus and the Story of
Samson[26] showed for the first time, and on a large scale,
how the matter of the Hebrew legends yields to mythological
analysis. I would on this occasion beg the
reader to have the kindness to read these pioneer-articles
of Steinthal’s, to complete the matter left undiscussed in
my work, as I considered it superfluous repetition to work
up a second time what was sufficiently expounded there.
Steinthal must consequently be regarded as the founder
of mythological science on Hebrew ground. He has
again recently given some suggestive hints on this subject
in a short article, in which he again defends the capacity
of the Semitic race to form myths.[27] It is only to be
regretted that the commencement made by Steinthal in
this science has not been followed up for more than
fifteen years.[28] Steinthal’s two dissertations gave me the
first impulse to the composition of this work; and my
purpose was confirmed by the words of the ingenious
Italian Angelo de Gubernatis, who, in his ‘Zoological
Mythology’ (which appeared at the very time when I was
maturing my purpose of putting together into one work
this series of essays originally written as lectures), eloquently
designates the subject of my researches the next
problem of Comparative Mythology.[29] The words in
which he recommends the study of Hebrew Mythology in
.bn 030.png
.pn +1
the spirit of the new method seem to me very striking.
It is my earnest conviction that not only the interests of
learning, but also preeminently the religious life of the
present age make it important to gain for this subject an
acknowledged position in learned literature. For he who
feels the true meaning of religion must welcome these
studies as a step in advance towards the highest ideal of
religion, towards Monotheism pure and unsullied by anything
coarse or pagan, which is independent of legends
and traditions of race, and has its centre, its exclusive
element of life, and its impulse towards never-resting
enquiry and self-perfection, in aspiration after the single
living Source of all truth and morality. I am convinced
that every step which we take towards a correct appreciation
of the Mythical brings us nearer to that centre.
The confusion of the Mythical with the Religious makes
religious life centrifugal; it is the duty of the progressive
tendency on this domain to confirm a centripetal tendency.[30]
The recognition of this relation between pure
Monotheism and the oldest historical portion of the Biblical
literature does not date from yesterday or to-day;
the most ideal representative of Hebrew Monotheism, in
whom Jahveism as an harmonious conception of the
universe attained its climax, the Prophet of the Captivity
himself, described this relation in clear terms (Is. LXIII.
16; see infra, p. #229#).
.fn 25
Naturgeschichte der Sage. Rückführung aller religiösen Ideen, Sagen,
Systeme auf ihren gemeinsamen Stammbaum und ihre letzte Wurzel, 2 vols.,
Munich 1864–5.
.fn-
.fn 26
In Vol. II. of his Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft,
translated and appended to this volume.
.fn-
.fn 27
Der Semitismus, in Zeitsch. für Völkerpsychologie etc., 1875, VIII.
339–340.
.fn-
.fn 28
It would be unfair not to mention the Dutch Professor Tiele as a worker
on this field. In his Vergelijkende Geschiedenis der oude godsdiensten, Vol. I.:
De egyptische en mesopotamische godsdiensten (Amsterdam 1872) he has occasionally
inserted explanations of Hebrew myths, to which I have referred at
the proper places.
.fn-
.fn 29
II. 421 et seq.; see his Rivista Europea, year VI. II. 587. Cf. his review
of the German edition of this work in the Bollettino italiano degli studj orientali,
1876, I. 169–172.
.fn-
But while, on the one hand, the investigation of
Hebrew myths gives a stimulus to religious thought to
advance in the direction of a Monotheism purified from all
dross; on the other, the employment of the method offered
to the Hebrew stories by Comparative Mythology in its
.bn 031.png
.pn +1
latest stage, paves the way for a more serious treatment
of the old Biblical stories. It cannot be denied that there
is no little frivolity in the idea that those stories were invented
at a certain time, no matter whether bona or mala
fide, by persons guided by some interest, or affected by
some leaning, of their own. It is no more satisfactory
to be told that the stories were not invented, but sprang up
naturally, and then to find that no answer is forthcoming
to the question, How that could be? The modern science
of Comparative Mythology has washed the teachers of the
human race clean of the suspicion of mystification and
deceptive principles. The origination of the stories is, at
the outset, claimed for an antiquity higher than even the
most orthodox apologists could ever exhibit. Now for
the first time we can learn to appreciate them as spontaneous
acts of the human mind; we perceive that they
arose through the same psychological process which gave
us language also; that, like language itself, they were
the very oldest manifestation of activity of the mind, and
burst forth from it φύσει not θέσει, at the very threshold
of its history; and subsequently transformed and developed
themselves again quite spontaneously, on the
attainment of a higher stage of civilisation, by processes
of national psychology, and most certainly not by the
cunning ingenuity and the worldly wisdom of certain leading
classes.
.fn 30
In reference to this I may refer to the eloquent expressions of Steinthal
in his lecture Mythos und Religion, p. 28 (in Virchow and Holtzendorff’s
Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge, Bd. V. Heft 97).
.fn-
Last year Dr. Martin Schultze announced a ‘Mythology
of the Hebrews in its connexion with those of the
Indogermans and of the Egyptians’[31] as about to appear.
The method followed by the author in a preliminary
specimen[32] was not such as to induce me to delay the
.bn 032.png
.pn +1
publication of my work and wait for his, even though he
promised to give a complete system, which was not my
intention.[33] My manuscript was already in the publishers’
hands, when the papers announced the publication of a
learned book by Dr. Grill, ‘The Patriarchs of Mankind:
a contribution towards the establishment of a Science of
Hebrew Archeology;’[34] and more than ten sheets were
printed before I could gather, from a review of it in the
Jenaer Literaturzeitung, in how close a connexion it stood
to the subject of my book; for from the title alone I was
not likely to suspect anything on Mythology. I cannot
pretend to explain in a few lines my opinion of so large
a book as Dr. Grill’s. But as he starts with the assumption
of the impossibility of a Semitic Mythology, and endeavours
to establish the view that the Hebrew Myth is
that of an Indogermanic people, that the Hebrews were
Indogermans, and that the Hebrew mythological proper
names can find an etymology only in Sanskrit, I have
great pleasure in referring him to p. #25# and to Chapter #V:chap05#.
of my book, where he may convince himself that no very
daring etymological leaps nor arbitrary assumptions of
phonological laws of transformation are necessary to explain
the Hebrew mythological figures and their appellations
from the Semitic languages themselves. It must, no
doubt, be admitted that in some cases—but the minority—the
formation of the proper names used in Mythology
is not quite in accordance with grammatical analogy. I
account for this by the peculiar feature of the Semitic
languages, that an appellative on becoming a proper
name often takes a peculiar form, differing in some respect
from that of the original appellative: ‘al-ʿadl li-l-ʿalamîyyâ,’
.bn 033.png
.pn +1
as the Arabian grammarians say.[35] There will
always be cruces. Is it possible to indicate a satisfactory
etymon for every proper name of the Greek mythology?
and if not, ought we on that account to explain the
Greek out of Semitic, whenever a case occurs which
tempts us to do so, as our learned ancestors did?[36] For
transformation is always easy to find; since etymology is
allowed to be a science in which the consonants go for
but little, and the vowels have nothing at all to say for
themselves! It certainly seems a pity to waste ingenuity
in trying to banish out of the Semitic stock names
which sound Semitic and can be recognised as such without
the employment of any law of transformation at all,
like Yiphtâch (Jephthah), Nôach (Noah), and Debhôrâ
(Deborah), and in dissolving by Sanskrit solvents the
Hebrew impress of a word like Yehôshûaʿ (Joshua), produced
by Jahveism out of the original Hôshêaʿ, and not
even mythical at all, in order to make it into a ‘Dog
of Heaven,’ instead of ‘He has holpen’ or ‘enlarged
[the people’s possessions],’ i.e. ‘The Helper.’[37] Pinechas
(Phinehas), no doubt, is a word that might drive the
etymologist to despair. But there is far more intrinsic
probability in Lauth’s Egyptian interpretation[38] than in
Grill’s Sanskrit tour de force, especially considering that
Egyptian proper names cannot be explained away out of
the Old Testament, and have in history a positive reason
.bn 034.png
.pn +1
for existence. Then why hover in the dream-land of a
prehistoric connexion with the Aryans?
.fn 31
Mythologie der Ebräer in ihrem Zusammenhange mit den Mythologien
der Indogermanen und der Ægypter. Nordhausen 1876.
.fn-
.fn 32
Ausland, 1874, p. 961 et seq., 1001 et seq.
.fn-
.fn 33
The above-named work was published immediately after the conclusion
of this Introduction.
.fn-
.fn 34
Die Erzväter der Menschheit: ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung einer hebräischen
Alterthumswissenschaft. Leipzig, Fues 1875.
.fn-
.fn 35
Ibn Yaʿîsh’s Commentary on the Mufaṣṣal, p. 74 (of the edition now
being published by Dr. Jahn of Berlin). See Fables de Loqman le Sage (éd.
Dérenbourg), Introduction, p. 7.
.fn-
.fn 36
I may refer on this point to Von Grutschmid’s excellent critique on
Bunsen’s attempt to explain Athene as Semitic, in the former’s Beiträge zur
Geschichte des alten Orients, Leipzig 1858, p. 46.
.fn-
.fn 37
Stade (Morgenländische Forschungen, p. 232) justly insists on the good
Hebrew character of the names occurring in the Hebrew stories, even against
the false supposition of the original Aramaic character of the Hebrew people.
.fn-
.fn 38
Zeitsch. d. D.M.G., 1871, XXV. 139; see Lepsius, Einleitung zur
Chronologie der alten Ægypten, I. 326.
.fn-
When the Arabian traditionary stories are once subjected
to etymological treatment, it will appear how far
Semitism is from utter deficiency of Mythology. In certain
instances I have taken occasion to demonstrate this
with reference to Arabian tradition in the course of this
work (e.g. p. #182# et seq., p. #334# et seq.). In other cases
no reference to the etymological meaning of the proper
names is required to recognise true Arabian myths. Instances
are found especially in the stories about the
constellations. Al-Meydânî informs us that ‘the old
Arabs say that the star al-Dabarân wooed the Pleiades,
but the latter constellation would have nothing to do
with the suitor, turned obstinately away from him, and
said to the Moon, ‘What must I do with that poor
devil, who has no estate at all?’ Then al-Dabarân
gathered together his Ḳilâṣ (a constellation in the neighbourhood
of al-Dabarân), and thus gained possession of
an estate. And now he is constantly following after the
Pleiades, driving the Ḳilâṣ before him as a wedding-present.’[39]
‘The constellation Capricorn killed the Bear
(naʿsh), and therefore the daughters of the latter (binât
naʿsh) encircle him, seeking vengeance for their slain
father.’ ‘Suheyl gave the female star al-Jauzâ a blow;
the latter returned it and threw him down where he now
lies; but he then took his sword and cut his adversary in
pieces.’ ‘The southern Sirius (al-Shiʿra al-yamânîyyâ)
was walking with her sister the northern Sirius (al-Shiʿra
al-shâmîyyâ); the latter parted company and crossed
.bn 035.png
.pn +1
the Milky Way, whence her name (al-Shiʿra al-ʿabûr).
Her sister, seeing this, began to weep for the separation,
and her eyes dropped tears; therefore she is called the
Wet-eyed (al-ġumeyṣâ).’[40] The existence of similar Hebrew
myths may be inferred from the names of constellations
in the Book of Job (XXXVIII. 31, 32), especially from
the Fool (kesîl, Orion) bound to heaven.[41] Are not these
genuine Nomads’ myths, produced through contemplation
of the constellations and their relations to one another?
.fn 39
See Ibn Yaʿîsh’s Commentary on the Mufaṣṣal of Zamachsharî, p. 47, in
which the name of the constellation al-ʿAyyûḳ (Auriga, ‘The Hinderer’) is
imported into this story, as hindering al-Dabarân from coming up with his
beloved.
.fn-
In conclusion, I must observe that in many passages,
especially of the later chapters, a fuller citation of literary
apparatus would have been desirable. The want of this
is to be ascribed in part to the peculiar design of the
book, and in part to the deficiency of aid from libraries
for the exegetical department in my dwelling-place.
.fn 40
al-Meydânî, Majmaʿ al-amthâl (ed. of Bûlâḳ), II. 209.
.fn-
.fn 41
See Nöldeke in Schenkel’s Bibellexikon, 2nd ed. IV. 370.
.fn-
.bn 036.png
.bn 037.png
.pn 1
.sp 4
.fs 150%
.ce
MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HEBREWS.
.fs 100%
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap01
CHAPTER I. | ON HEBREW MYTHOLOGY.
.sp 2
§ 1. At the very foundation of the investigations to
which this book is devoted, we find ourselves in opposition
to a wide-spread assumption: that in regard to Mythology
nations may be divided into two classes, Mythological and
Unmythological, or in other words, those which have had
a natural gift for creating Myths, and those whose intellectual
capacity never sufficed for this end. It is therefore
desirable to lay down clearly our position in regard
to this assumption, before we advance to the proper subject
of our studies.
The Myth is the result of a purely psychological
operation, and is, together with language, the oldest act
of the human mind. This has been shown conclusively
by the modern school of mythologists who are also
psychologists. Assuming then, what can scarcely be
called in question, that the same psychological laws
rule the intellectual activity of mankind without distinction
of race, we cannot a priori assume that the capacity
for forming myths can be given or withheld according
to ethnological categories. As there is only one physiology,
and every race of mankind under the influence of
certain conditions produces the same physiological functions
in accordance with physiological laws, so it is also
.bn 038.png
.pn +1
with the psychological functions, given the stimulus necessary
to their production. And this stimulus acts upon
mankind everywhere alike. For it is clearly proved that
the Myth tells of the operations of nature, and is the mode
of expressing the perception which man at the earliest
stage of his intellectual life has of these operations and
phenomena. These form the substance of the Myth.
Consequently, wherever they act as attractions to the
youthful human mind, the external conditions of the rise
of Mythology are present. Not unjustly, therefore, it
seems to me, has a recent psychologist spoken of the
‘Universal Presence and the Uniformity’ of myths.[42] Undoubtedly
the direction of the myth will vary with the
relation of natural phenomena to mankind; the myth
will take one direction where man greets the sun as a
friendly element, and another where the sun meets him
as a hostile power; and in the rainless region the rain
cannot act the same part in Mythology which it plays in
the rainy parts of the earth. The manners and usages of
men must also exercise a modifying influence on the
subject and the direction of the Myth. As in the course
of our further inquiries we shall recur to this point, I will
here only refer to one example of the latter. It is well
known that in the Aryan mythology, ‘the milking of cows’
is a frequently recurring expression for the shining of the
sun, or as some say for the rain. In tribes which do not
milk their cows, like some Negro peoples,[43] or the American
natives, this mythical expression can of course not arise.
.sp 2
§ 2. There are two points of view, from which the
Mythical faculty has been denied to certain sections of the
human race—on the one side a linguistic, on the other an
ethnological. As to the first, we must especially name
Bleek, the distinguished investigator of the South
African languages, who, in the introduction to his work
.bn 039.png
.pn +1
on the Story of Reynard the Fox in South Africa, makes
the remark that a mythological genius is peculiar to
nations in whose languages a distinction of gender in
nouns finds expression, whereas those whose languages
possess no formal distinction of gender in nouns, have no
proper mythology, but their religion stands on that
original stage which is the starting-point of all human
religion, namely that of the cultus of their ancestors.[44] It
is obvious that this learned linguist’s distinction involves
a confusion of Myth and Religion, which we shall find in
the course of our subsequent investigations to be untenable.
At present we will disregard this point, and only
refer to the mythologies of the Finnish-Ugrian nations—peoples
whose languages do not indicate any distinction
of gender in their nouns. Or can it be said that the
substance of the epos of Kalevala is not proper mythology?
To be sure, in nations whose mind never evolved
the category of grammatical gender in their languages,
the myth will take such a direction as will give to the
sexual idea, so charming a feature in the Aryan mythology,
much less prominence. For the mode of conception
which is conveyed by the distinction of ‘die Sonne’ and
‘der Mond,’ or ‘hic sol’ and ‘haec luna,’ cannot arise
where this distinction is not made. But the figures of
a mythology not only vary as to sex and genealogy, but
act also; they are busy, they fight and kill, and the story
of these actions and fights is quite independent of the
gender-idea in language. Stories of them, consequently,
which we call Myths, may exist even where the genius
of language has opposed the distinction of gender.
.fn 42
Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 1869, VI.
.fn- 207.
.fn 43
Theodor Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, II. 85.
.fn-
.sp 2
§ 3. The second point of view, from which some have
denied to a section of the human race the faculty and tendency
to form myths, is ethnological. Either the Semites
in general or the Hebrews specially fell a sacrifice to this
.bn 040.png
.pn +1
view. The exclusion of the Semites from the domain of
Mythology is announced most emphatically by the ingenious
member of the French Academy, Ernest Renan, in
the words, ‘Les Sémites n'ont jamais eu de mythologie.’[45]
This arbitrary assertion is deduced from a scheme of
race-psychology invented by Renan himself, which at the
first glance seems so natural and sounds so plausible
when described with all the elegance of style of which he
is master, that it has become an incontestable scientific
dogma to a large proportion of the professional world—for
even the territory of science is sometimes dominated
by mere dogmas—and is treated by learned and cultivated
people not specially engaged in this study as an actual
axiom in the consideration of race-peculiarities.[46] The
foundation of this scheme is the idea that in their views
of the world, the Aryans start from multiplicity, the
Semites from unity; and not only in their conception of
the world, but also in politics and art. On intellectual
ground, therefore, the former create mythology, polytheism,
science, which is only possible through discursive observation
of natural phenomena; the latter create monotheism,
(‘the desert is monotheistic,’ says Renan), and have therefore
.bn 041.png
.pn +1
neither mythology nor science. ‘If it is difficult,’
justly observes Waitz, ‘to estimate the capability of single
individuals well known to us, it is a far more dubious
task to gauge the intellectual gifts of whole nations and
races. It seems scarcely possible to find available standards
for the purpose, and consequently the judgment
is almost always found to be very much founded on personal
impressions. The various nations stand at various
times on very different stages of development, and if only
actual performances permit a safe induction as to the
measure of existing capabilities, then this measure itself
seems not to remain the same in the same nation through
the course of time, but to vary within very wide limits,
especially if we are to assume in all cases that a state of
original savageness preceded civilisation.’[47] In fact, the
words of this cautious psychologist apply admirably to
Renan’s scheme of race-psychology; for history is just
what that scheme disregards. He does not observe that
Polytheism and Monotheism are two stages of development
in the history of religious thought, and that the
latter does not spring up spontaneously,[48] without being
preceded by the former stage, and that Polytheism itself
is preceded by a preliminary stage, that of the mythological
view of the world, which is in itself not yet a religion,
but prepares the way for the rise of religion.
.fn 44
W.H.I. Bleek, Reynard the Fox in South Africa, 1864, pp. xx-xxvi.
See Max Müller’s Introduction to the Science of Religion, London 1873, p. 54.
.fn-
.fn 45
Histoire générale et Système comparé des Langues sémitiques, p. 7.
.fn-
.fn 46
Two instances will suffice to show how Renan’s hypothesis became the
common property of educated people. It is treated as fully made out, both by
Roscher, the German political economist, and by Draper, the American naturalist
and historian of civilisation. The former says: ‘Life in the desert seems
to be an especially favourable soil for Monotheism. It wants that luxuriant
variety of the productive powers of nature by which Polytheism was encouraged
in remarkably fruitful countries, such as India’ (System der Volkswirthschaft,
7th ed., Stuttgart 1873, II. 38). The latter: ‘Polytheistic ideas have always
been held in repute by the southern European races; the Semitic have maintained
the unity of God. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as a recent author
has suggested, that a diversified landscape of mountains and valleys, islands,
rivers, and gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a multitude of divinities.
A vast sandy desert, the illimitable ocean, impresses him with an idea of the
oneness of God’ (History of Conflict between Religion and Science, London 1875,
p. 70). This view has also passed into Peschel’s Völkerkunde, and Bluntschli
also, in his lecture on the ancient oriental ideas of God and world in 1861,
echoed Renan’s hypothesis of 1855.
.fn-
To form some idea of the arbitrariness of schemes
founded upon some universal characteristics, we have only
to glance over the literature which sprang up as soon as
Renan’s dictum was uttered, either to refute it, or to work
his hypothesis still further—a regular host of dissertations
fighting on this side or on that.[49] On reading these,
.bn 042.png
.pn +1
we see clearly how worthless such clever fancies are, that
enable one to embrace with a stroke of the pen a domain
which geographically fills more than half of the inhabited
world, and chronologically stretches from the highest
antiquity down to the most recent time. For even
Renan’s antagonists have fallen into his radical error:
they have taken one-sided schemes and characteristics,
only different ones from Renan’s. How passive and elastic
these schemes are, shall be shown by an example of some
importance, which will convince us that the inferences
drawn from ethnological characteristics are never anything
higher than arbitrary sleight-of-hand, which any investigator
can manipulate to his own purpose. To this end
we will place side by side the inferences which Renan has
tacked on to his hypothesis, and a talented German’s
conclusions, which also essentially take Renan’s basis as
the correct starting-point. We speak of Lange, who also
starts from the principle that the Semites grasp natural
phenomena in combination, the Aryans in multiplicity,
and that therefore the former naturally incline towards
Monotheism, and the latter towards Polytheism. But
let us see to what windings and deductions this dogma
leads on both sides. We hear Renan say: ‘Or la conception
de la multiplicité dans l’univers, c’est le polythéisme
chez les peuples enfants; c’est la science chez
les peuples arrivés à l’âge mûr.’[50] Quite the contrary is
affirmed by the German historian of Materialism, who
says: ‘When the heathen sees gods everywhere, and has
accustomed himself to regard every separate operation
of nature as the domain of a special demonic action, he
throws in the way of a materialistic explanation difficulties
a thousandfold, like the offices in the Divine household....
But Monotheism here stands in a very different
relation to science.’ ‘If a uniform mode of work on a
large scale is attributed to the one God, the mutual
connexion of things in their origin and action becomes
.bn 043.png
.pn +1
not only a possible, but even a necessary consequence
of the assumption. For if I saw a thousand and again
a thousand wheels in motion, and believed them to be
all driven by one agent, then I should have to conclude
that it was a piece of machinery, the minutest portion of
which had its movement absolutely determined by the
plan of the whole.’ [51] ‘The fact that Islâm is the religion
in which that advancement of the study of nature, which
we attribute to the monotheistic principle, shows itself
most clearly, is connected with the peculiar talents of
the Arabs, ... but also undoubtedly with the circumstance
that Mohammed’s monotheism was the severest of
all.’[52] Auguste Comte also draws the same inferences
from the tendency of Monotheism to develop a scientific
conception of the world, and makes Monotheism and
Scientific treatment exert a reciprocal influence on each
other.[53] To which of these opposite deductions from the
same premisses shall we hold? ‘Which is right?’ every
educated man will ask, and immediately infer the inadequacy
of such general characterisations, and the wide
room thereby opened to arbitrariness and error, in case it
should be attempted to erect upon them a history of civilisation
or an ethnology.
.fn 47
Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I. 297.
.fn-
.fn 48
On the other side, Renan says (Hist. gén. 4th ed., p. 497) ‘Cette grande
conquête (the recognition of Monotheism) ne fut pas pour elle (i. e. for the
Semitic race) l’effet du progrès; ce fut une de ces premières aperceptions.’
.fn-
.fn 49
Much of this literature has been unnoticed, as e.g. a late pamphlet by
Léon Hugonnet: La civilisation arabe, défense des peuples sémitiques en réponse
à M. Renan, Geneva 1873.
.fn-
.fn 50
Histoire générale, p.
.fn-
Now this foundation is exactly that on which Renan’s
assumption of the absence of mythology from the Semites
rests—an assumption which can by no means be admitted,
first, because it is unhistorical; and secondly, because it
would necessarily follow from it that race-distinctions
differentiate the psychological bases of intellectual activity.
‘The Semites cannot form a myth,’ is a proposition the
possibility of which could be allowed only if such an assertion
as ‘This or that race has no digestive power, or no
generative power,’ could be treated otherwise than as an
.bn 044.png
.pn +1
a priori absurdity. But it is even more remarkable that
Renan, notwithstanding his conviction of the ‘uniform
psychological constitution of the human race,’ in which
he finds the justification of a common story of the Deluge
springing up everywhere without borrowing,[54] and although
he finds the gaps in the chronology of the antediluvian
period of the Biblical history filled up, ‘par des noms
d’anciens héros, et peut-être de divinités qu'on retrouve
chez les autres peuples sémitiques,’[55] still speaks of the
possibility, indeed of the necessity, that the Semitic race
should be destitute of myths.
.fn 51
Geschichte des Materialismus, 1st ed., 1866, p. 77. See 2nd ed., 1873,
I. 149.
.fn-
.fn 52
Ib. p. 83. See 2nd ed., p. 152.
.fn-
.fn 53
Cours de Philosophie Positive, éd. Littré, Paris 1869, V. 90, 197, 324.
.fn-
Renan’s hypothesis had to encounter many a hard
battle soon after its publication. The theologians were
highly pleased at what was said about the monotheistic
tendency of Semitism, but thought it blasphemy for Renan
to find in Monotheism le minimum de religion and in Polytheism
a higher and more civilised stage of religion.
And philologists, historians and philosophers assailed the
foundations of Renan’s pile. Steinthal subjects the notion
introduced by Renan, of a monotheistic instinct, to acute
psychological criticism. Max Müller does the same, and
points to the history of the Hebrews and the other
Semites, to resolve the dreams of Semitic Monotheism
into their nullity. Abraham Geiger and Salomon Munk
(Renan’s successor in the chair of the Collége de France)
wish to limit to the Hebrew nation the assertion of Semitic
Monotheism. Yet what is said about Mythology is not
much objected to by any of these critics (with the exception
of Steinthal). Indeed, one of the pioneers of modern
Comparative Mythology, while combating the monotheistic
instinct, takes up a position on the mythological question
.bn 045.png
.pn +1
not very far from Renan’s own: ‘What is peculiar to the
Aryan race is their mythological phraseology, superadded
to their polytheism; what is peculiar to the Semitic race
is their belief in a national god—in a god chosen by his
people, as his people had been chosen by him.’[56]
.fn 54
Histoire générale, p. 486: ‘L’unité de constitution psychologique de
l’espèce humaine, au moins des grandes races civilisées, en vertu de laquelle les
mêmes mythes ont dû apparaître parallèlement sur plusieurs points à la fois,
suffirait, d’ailleurs, pour expliquer les analogies qui reposent sur quelque trait
général de la condition de l’humanité, ou sur quelques-uns de ses instincts les
plus profonds.’
.fn-
.fn 55
Ib. p. 27.
.fn-
Mythological science has at the present day ceased to
hold fast to the divisions of race in relation to the formation
of myths. At least it has acted so in relation to that
class of nations which, though not exhibiting a single race
or several closely connected races, has (faute de mieux)
been termed the Turanian—a purely negative designation,
which only asserts its members to be neither Semites nor
Aryans. Max Müller himself wishes to see the Turanian
mythology investigated by the same method which is employed
in the Aryan; and he is not shaken by the result,
which exhibits a striking identity between Aryan and
Turanian myths. He is not shaken even by consideration
of the psychological force, which must be taken into
account in the first instance in the criticism and valuation
of myths. ‘If people cannot bring themselves to believe
in solar and celestial myths among the Hindûs and
Greeks,’ says this leading investigator, ‘let them study
the folk-lore of the Semitic and Turanian races. I know
there is, on the part of some of our most distinguished
scholars, the same objection against comparing Aryan to
non-Aryan myths, as there is against any attempt to
explain the features of Sanskrit or Greek by a reference
to Finnish or Bask. In one sense that objection is well
founded, for nothing would create greater confusion than
to ignore the genealogical principle as the only safe one
in a scientific classification of languages, of myths, and
even of customs. We must first classify our myths and
legends, as we classify our languages and dialects....
But there is in a comparative study of languages and
myths not only a philological, but also a philosophical
.bn 046.png
.pn +1
and more particularly a psychological interest, and
though even in this more general study of mankind the
frontiers of language and race ought never to disappear,
yet they can no longer be allowed to narrow or intercept
our view.’[57] Thus Müller also lays especial stress upon
the psychological point of view, and, whatever he concedes
to race-distinctions, still takes for granted the universality
of the formation of myths as a psychological postulate.
He exhibits, however, the application of his principle to
the Turanian only in concrete examples. The Semitic,
which, as we saw above, cannot be excluded in reference
to the universality of the formation of myths, is left out
altogether. Yet Müller appears in respect of the Semitic
to have passed beyond the position on which he stood in
1860, when writing his essay ‘Semitic Monotheism.’[58]
Advancing in the footsteps of the master, a recent
American mythologist, John Fiske, has drawn the
Turanian into the domain of comparative mythology, and
worked out a portion of the American stories collected by
Brinton,[59] according to the laws of the new method,[60] while
the German Schirren, and also Gerland less completely,
had already subjected the Polynesian myths to a similar
treatment.[61]
.fn 56
Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, I. 370.
.fn-
.fn 57
Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 390 et seq.
.fn-
.fn 58
In Chips, &c., I. p. 341.
.fn-
.fn 59
In The Myths of the New World, New York 1868. See Steinthal’s
criticism of this collection in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie and Sprachwissenschaft,
1871, Bd. VII.
.fn-
.fn 60
Myths and Myth-Makers, Boston 1873, p. 151 et seq.
.fn-
.fn 61
In the sixth vol. of Waitz’s Anthropologie der Naturvölker, where I obtained
information about Schirren’s works.
.fn-
This circumstance, that the stories of the so-called
Turanian humanity lend themselves to the comparative
method of investigation quite as easily as the legendary
treasure of the Aryan nations, is a proof how common to
all mankind is the mythological capacity, how false it is
to follow ethnological categories and assign it to one race
and deny it to another; and on the other hand, how the
.bn 047.png
.pn +1
subject-matter, the perception of which forms the ground-work
of the oldest mythology, is everywhere the same—the
phenomena of nature and the contests of alternating
elements. For very many and various races, incapable as
yet of linguistic classification, endowed with the most
diverse physical constitutions, inhabiting the most differing
climates from the highest northern to the furthest southern
latitudes, and speaking languages the most incongruous,
have taken refuge in the vast unlimited house of Turanism,
until legitimate parents are found for them.
Turanism is therefore the best test of the controverted
universality of mythological capacity. There is then no
tenable reason why, for the sake of fair-sounding but
meaningless distinctions, we should introduce the Semites
into history with the loss of a nose, as it were, and interpret
the history of the intellectual development of that
race by a principle which essentially proclaims that the
Semites were not born into life as infants, and never saw
the sunlight till they were men, or even old men.
.sp 2
§ 4. Such reflections may have determined the French
Assyriologist François Lenormant quite recently, to claim
mythology for the Semitic race also; although in so doing
he does not mention the Hebrews at all.[62] For, notwithstanding
the alluring mythological subject-matter deposited
in the literature of its traditions, the Hebrew nation
has always been a stepchild of mythological inquiry, and
still awaits an investigator to do full justice to it. It is
easy to be understood that a mistaken religious interest,
which identified itself with the Biblical literature and
warned off mythological inquiry with an energetic Noli
me tangere, sharpened, it may be, with a dose of canonical
or uncanonical excommunication, blockaded the passage
of investigation on this path. I call it a mistaken interest,
because the true interests of religion are advanced, not
imperilled, by the results of science. Disregarding men
.bn 048.png
.pn +1
of the calibre of Nork and a few other inferior disciples of
the school of Creuzer, we can affirm that, with the exception
of a few essays, even the freest and most earnest interpreters
of the Bible have examined, and do still examine,
the Biblical books only as products of literature, bringing
to light valuable results as to the times and tendencies of
the original composition and subsequent editing of the
several parts of the Canon. But on the origin and significance
of the persons themselves who figure in the Biblical
stories, even the freest interpreters are silent, as if
the Hebrews were a people quite apart, and not to be
measured by the measure of History and Psychology.
.fn 62
Les premières civilisations, Paris 1874, II. 113 et seq.
.fn-
Even those who are willing to know something of Semitic
myths in general resist the assumption of Hebrew
myths. No one has defined his position on this point so
unambiguously as Baron Bunsen, who has thought so much
and so profoundly on religious matters. It is really extraordinary
that this immortal man, who exerted so stimulating
an influence on the studies of his young friend Max
Müller, and who welcomed the latter’s pioneer-essay
‘Comparative Mythology’ with ‘especial pleasure’ at the
‘pure popular poetry of the feeling for nature,’ exhibited
so little comprehension of the aims of the new direction
given to mythological studies by Müller. His view of the
connexion of the Aryan mass of mythology is consequently
very confused. This is especially to be regretted,
because the displacement of the true point of view in
mythical speculation, and the continual concessions to
Creuzer and Schelling, hindered him from making permanently
useful the philosophical labour expended on the
understanding of the Egyptian theology. Bunsen did
not separate Religion from Myths, and consequently he
sees what he calls Consciousness of a God in a genealogised
and systematised Mythology. It is therefore not
surprising that he advanced no further than his predecessors
in relation to the Hebrew myths. He speaks of
the ‘spirit of the Jewish people, historically penetrated
.bn 049.png
.pn +1
through and through with aversion to mythology,’[63] and
concentrates his thoughts on this theme in the sixth,
seventh, and eighth of the theses in which he exhibits the
relation of the Egyptian mythology to the Asiatic. According
to these, ‘the Bible has no Mythology; it is the
grand, momentous, and fortunate self-denial of Judaism
to possess none.’ As if a myth—which Bunsen himself
had called ‘pure popular poetry of the feeling for nature’—were
an abomination, a defilement of the human mind,
a sinful act voluntarily performed, which the Elect can
deny themselves! On the other hand, ‘the national sentiment
mirrored in Abraham, Moses, and the primeval
history generally from the Creation to the Deluge, and
the expression of it, are rooted in the mythological life
of the East in the earliest times,’ and ‘in the long period
from Joseph to Moses, there have been interwoven with
the life and actions of this greatest and most influential
of all the men of the first age [Abraham] and the history
of his son and grandson, many ancient traditions from the
mythology of those tribes from whose savage natural life
the Hebrews were extracted, to their own good and that of
mankind and for higher ends.’[64] According to this there are
Myths belonging to the Hebrews, but not Hebrew Myths—only
borrowed ones, obtained from ‘Primeval Asia.’
I have exhibited Bunsen’s position at some length,
because, with all his advanced ideas on the essence and
significance of Mythology, he still to this day dominates
the minds of those who, while admitting the possibility of
Semitic Mythology, are up in arms against the existence
of Hebrew myths.
.sp 2
§ 5. Nevertheless, I hope it is clear from the above
that Hebrew mythology is a priori possible. The following
.bn 050.png
.pn +1
chapters will give occasion to prove in what this existence
consists. It will then appear that the Hebrew myths,
necessarily owing their existence to the same psychological
operation as the Aryan or the so-called Turanian, must
consequently have the same original signification as these.
Hence the figures of Hebrew mythology denote the very
natural phenomena whose appellations lie before us in those
figures’ names. These names, however, are not symbolic,[65]
but are antiquated appellatives of the natural phenomena
denoted by them, just as the words, Sun, Moon, Rain, &c.
This must be distinctly proclaimed, as some who misunderstand
the modern method of Mythology pervert it in a
false and antiquated way by the introduction of symbolism.
.fn 63
Gott in der Geschichte, I. 353; a passage which, with a large part of the
volume, is omitted in the greatly abridged English translation.
.fn-
.fn 64
Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, V. ii. 18–19 (English tr. IV. 28–29).
.fn-
We must also beware of confounding the original
Myth with Religion or, still worse, with the Consciousness
of God. This confusion is the source of most of the
erroneous estimates and notions of Mythology, which even
the latest methods of investigating myths has not entirely
removed. The very earliest activity of the human intellect
can only work upon what falls immediately under the
cognisance of the senses, and upon what through its frequency
and the regularity of its return prompts men most
readily to speech. Such things are the daily natural
phenomena, the change of light and darkness, of rain and
sunshine, and all that accompanies these changes. What
primitive man spoke on these things, is the Myth. It is
psychologically impossible that the earliest activity of the
human mind should have been anything else but this.
We cannot speak of a consciousness of God, a sensus
numinis, as existing in the earliest Mythological period.
Not till later, when some process in the history of language
.bn 051.png
.pn +1
gives the ancient myths a new direction, do they turn
into either History or Religion. The latter always arises
out of the materials of Mythology, and then finds its
historical task to be to work itself upwards into independence.
Then, while the mythology out of which it
sprang is growing less and less intelligible, and therefore
also less and less expressive, Religion must in the progress
of its development sever its connexion with Mythology,
and unite itself with the scientific consciousness, which now
occupies the place of the mythological.
.fn 65
Even old Plutarch observed in reference to the then favourite explanation
of the myths ex ratione physica: Δεῖ δὲ μὴ νομίζειν ἁπλῶς εἰκόνας ἐκείνων
(i.e. of the sun and moon) τούτους (Zeus and Hera), ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐν ὕλη Δία τὸν
ἥλιον καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν Ἥραν ἐν ὕλῃ τὴν σελήνην (Quaestiones Romanae, 77). See
Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, III. 24: Longe aliter rem se habere, atque hominum
opinio sit: eos enim, qui dii appellantur, rerum naturas esse, non figuras
deorum.
.fn-
How Mythology becomes Religion is shown most
clearly by Dualism. Nothing can be less correct than the
belief that the dualistic system of religion had from its
very origin an ethical meaning. This, as well as the
limitation of Dualism to Irân and Babylon,[66] is refuted by
the frequent occurrence of the dualistic conception of the
world among the most various savage peoples.[67] The
ethical significance of Dualism is decidedly secondary; it
is the form of development of the main theme of all
mythology, the relation of light to darkness, proper to a
higher stage of culture. Many mythological fancies, and
especially the Sun’s voyage by ship in the nether world,
became religious eschatological ideas when the mythical
meaning itself was lost from the mind, and gave rise to
new ideas of life in the nether world, resurrection, ascent
to heaven, &c.; this was first established in reference to
the old Egyptian mythology.[68] So also Dualism as it appears
in Irân is a myth that has taken an ethical sense. This is
best seen in the facts that the northern Algonquins, with
whom Dualism is almost as fixed a principle as in Irân, call
the good and evil principles respectively Sun and Moon,
.bn 052.png
.pn +1
and that among the Hurons the Evil principle is the grand-mother
of the Good:[69] the Night is the mother or grand-mother,
or, in general, the ancestress of the Day. Here
religious dualism has not quite put off the character of its
origin in Mythology. On the other hand, the Iranic
system at a very early age (that of the Avesta) elevated
Dualism into the region of pure morals, and yet at a later
(the epic period) formed out of the original myth the
localised story of the war of Zohak against Ferîdûn.[70]
.fn 66
Spiegel still does this up to a recent date in his Eranische Alterthumskunde,
II. 19.
.fn-
.fn 67
See Tylor, Primitive Culture, II. 287 et seq.
.fn-
.fn 68
The story of Osiris and Typhon e.g. originally personified the vegetative
life of nature and the struggles incident to it, but was afterwards transferred
to the destinies of the human soul. See Ebers, Durch Gosen zum Sinai,
Leipzig 1872, p. 477.
.fn-
That Dualism as a religious conception is a further
development of the myth, and not first excited by the
moral problem of the strife of the good against the evil,
becomes evident also from the consideration of a peculiar
form of dualistic religion which we find in many Semitic
nations. We here frequently find a deity regarded as
male, who has a corresponding female to represent, as it
were, the reverse side of the same natural force, and then
the two forces unite to produce a natural phenomenon.
So, for instance, Sun and Earth, Baal and Mylitta, the
factors of procreation. This likewise is a dualistic tendency,
in which however the two deities are not represented
as mutually hostile. We are justified in placing
this phenomenon in the chapter on Dualism, because two
such deities in the course of history are often joined
together into one.[71] Now this side of dualistic religion
can be traced back only to Mythology as its source and
point of departure. The Hebrew myth of Judah and
Tamar, which we shall consider further on (Chap. V.,
#§ 14:sec5_14#), exhibits a mythical prototype of such dualistic
views of religion.
.fn 69
Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, III. 183.
.fn-
.fn 70
See Roth in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft,
1848, II. 217; Albrecht Weber, Akademische Vorlesungen über indische Literaturgeschichte,
Berlin 1852, p. 35.
.fn-
.fn 71
See Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, London 1874, I. 226.
.fn-
.fm rend=t lz=t
.fm rend t
.bn 053.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap02
CHAPTER II. | SOURCES OF HEBREW MYTHOLOGY.
.sp 2
§ 1. If it is now established that we are justified in
speaking of a Hebrew Mythology, in the same sense as of
the mythologies of Indians, Hellenes, Germans, &c., then
the question naturally arises, Can we come upon the track
of those forms of expression and those figures which
generally make up the elements of the Hebrew Myth; and
Are these elements when found recognisable as elements
of myths, i.e. Are they expressions and stories in which
the ancient Hebrew, standing on the myth-creating stage
of his intellectual development, spoke of the operations
and changes of Nature? That in the abstract he was
as capable as the Aryan on the same stage of development
of speaking myths, we have admitted in assuming the
universality of the formation of myths; and of what those
expressions exactly consist, and what are the mythical
figures which he formed, it will be the business of a subsequent
chapter to exhibit.
In this chapter our task will be limited to the discovery
of the sources which we have to estimate by the method of
Comparative Mythology, in order to discern the various
expressions and figures of the Hebrew myth. Now both
the incitement to the formation of myths and the course of
development through which they pass before they are noted
down in a literary age and then stiffen and undergo no
further change, are based on psychological operations, the
laws of which are not governed by categories of race and
ethnology. It is therefore obvious, that for the understanding
.bn 054.png
.pn +1
of the Hebrew myths we must betake ourselves
to the very same class of sources which the mythologist
finds fruitful on Aryan territory. Fortunately such sources
are open to us on Hebrew ground also. They have,
indeed, a less copious stream than those of Aryan
mythology, but yet suffice to give us a picture of what the
ancient Hebrew on the mythic stage thought and felt, and
how he found expression in language for these thoughts
and feelings. It is true, this investigation cannot be
separated from another closely connected with it—what
method we must employ to arrive at the germ of the myth
hidden in these sources. But for the present we must
still put off this second question, and content ourselves
with the search for the sources of mythical matter. It
will, however, not be always possible to avoid an indication
of the method; and this is the case now with the
first of the sources which we have to bring forward.
.sp 2
§ 2. a.) We shall have to speak again further on of
the question, What factors in the minds of the Hebrew
people produced the conception of those Patriarchs, whose
destinies form the most illustrious portion of their national
historic writing? It will then become clear that this
Patriarchal character represents only a later historical
stratum of mythical development, produced by those very
factors. Originally the names of the Patriarchs and the
actions which are told of them signified nothing historical,
but only something on the domain of Nature. The names
are appellations of physical phenomena, and the actions are
actions of Nature. For surely we must at the outset come
to a clear understanding on the question, What is the
origin of persons like Abram, Sarah, Jacob and the rest,
who fill the Hebrew Patriarchal history? whence, how,
and by what psychological law did they enter into the
mind of the primitive Hebrews? The facile assumption
that these persons and the actions with which they are
concerned are mere Fiction with no external foundation,
.bn 055.png
.pn +1
is so cheap and meaningless a way of getting over the
difficulties which their existence in poetry presents to the
investigator, that it as impossible to adopt it as to admit
the opposite equally arbitrary opinion, which makes them
historical in the same sense as Goethe or Frederick the
Great. Certainly they are fictions, if by that we mean
that no historical persons correspond to them as human
individuals; but by no means in the sense that their
origin, or rather the conception of them, has no other
foundation but the fancy of the poet or writer. In this
sense they have actual realities corresponding to them—the
events and operations of Nature, which are the main-springs
of mythical language. And it is not conceivable
that the oldest utterances of the human mind should have
begun from anything else but from the sensations which
the operations of Nature aroused in their breasts. As
soon as they perceived these, occasion for myths was
present; and the myths show how they became fully
conscious of the operations of Nature.
The Patriarchal stories are therefore an important
source for the knowledge of myths. If we loosen stratum
after stratum which has been formed through the agency
of psychological and historical factors over the primitive
form of the myth, and have at length penetrated back to
the stage at which many of the mythical appellations,
through the disuse of multifarious synonymous terms, were
individualised and personified, then it is easy to pick the
primitive germ, the original mythic elements, out of the shell
in which they had been encased. Hence it appears that
the most fruitful field for mythological investigation on
Hebrew territory is the Book of Genesis, the greater part
of which brings together the stories which the Hebrew
people connected with the names of the Patriarchs.
.sp 2
§ 3. b.) The Patriarchal legends, in such fulness and
artistic finish as the remains of old Hebrew literature
have preserved for us, are a distinguishing characteristic
.bn 056.png
.pn +1
of this literature. Other nations have failed to transform
their myths into such a wealth of reports about their first
progenitors. What meagre accounts the Hellenes give
of their national ancestors, in comparison with this rich
and varied Patriarchal history! A special peculiarity of
the historical development of the Hebrew people was
active here, bringing the national idea into the foreground,
and exerting its influence in this direction on the transformation
of the primitive mythological materials.[72] But
instead of this, other nations, among whom our above-named
example, the richly endowed Hellenes, are to be
reckoned, have chosen rather to transform the figures of
their myths into Gods and godborn Heroes.
The figures of Gods, which were developed out of
Hebrew myths, very early retired into the background.
It was partly the Canaanite influence to which the Hebrew
people very early succumbed, and partly the progressing
monotheistic tendency, that allowed no theology consistently
developed out of mythology to maintain itself for
any length of time. Of Heroes, however, there is no want
in the memory of the Hebrews. In that region as well
as elsewhere, the Heroes had originally borne a different
meaning and belonged to mythology; and their heroic
character is, on the Hebrew as well as on the Aryan
domain, secondary, produced by the psychological and
linguistic process which caused the natural meaning of
mythological figures to vanish from the mind.
Now although these Heroes are originally gigantic
persons bound to no definite place or time, yet they are
gradually condensed into individuals and regarded as
more and more concrete and definite. What is told of
them puts off its generality and indefiniteness. They are
conceived as belonging to certain places where their
heroic deeds were performed—in other words, the legends
of Heroes are localised. Their activity is assigned to a
definite time, they are inserted in a chronological frame,
.bn 057.png
.pn +1
in which they take up a definite position as to time.
What more natural localisation of the activity of the
Heroes could there be than to imagine them living in the
same geographical districts as those who tell of them?
The localisation of heroic legends is always enlisted in
the service of patriotic feeling. Herakles and Theseus
are Greek patriots, heroic benefactors of the Grecian
people. The determination of the time when they lived
was influenced mainly by the endeavour, natural to every
civilised nation, to gain a clear, comprehensive, and continuous
picture of its own history. But truly historical
memory does not generally go far enough back to explain
with proper fulness the entire past doings of a nation.
The historical beginnings of a people are lost in the mist
of indefiniteness and uncertainty. What is easier than to
fill up this obscure period of history by telling of the doings
of the Heroes? Why, the human temper in its pessimistic
mood is always inclined to fancy the very oldest age
peopled with men of gigantic proportions of both body
and mind, in comparison with whom the enervate present
generation is a mere shadow. So we find the stories of
Heroes always at the head of the national history. The
history of the Greek people begins with their heroic age;
and the obscure period of Hebrew history between the
first entrance into Canaan and the creation of the Monarchy,
the so-called time of the Judges, is likewise the frame
which must hold the Hebrew heroic legends. The stories
of the Hebrew Heroes group themselves round the history
of this period. The second important source of knowledge
of the materials of the Hebrew mythology is accordingly
the cycle of stories to be found in the canonical Book of
Judges. This is the mine of mythology, whose treasures
Professor Steinthal has brought to light with such critical
acuteness in his dissertation on the story of Samson,[73]
which breaks up entirely new ground. Here for the first
.fn 72
We shall treat of this in the Third Section of Chapter VIII.
.fn-
.fn 73
Translated and given as an Appendix to this volume.—Tr.
.fn-
.bn 058.png
.pn +1
time the method and results of the modern science of
mythology were independently applied to the domain of
Hebrew antiquity. It must be called a happy accident
that the mythical character of the Hebrew heroes could be
proved by so convincing an example as Shimshôn (Samson);
for even the wildest scepticism cannot doubt that this
name is equivalent to shemesh, ‘sun,’ and that this fact
gives us an undeniable right to maintain the solar significance
of the hero, and to see in his battles the contest of
the Sun against darkness and storms.
.sp 2
§ 4. c.) But the Old Testament stories do not cease
to be a source for mythological investigation exactly
where the traditions of Genesis and the Book of Judges
are succeeded by really historical accounts. For it is an
admitted fact that, as soon as ever the myths have lost
their original meaning by the personification of their
figures, mythical characteristics are not limited to their
proper domain, but often actually attach themselves to
historical persons and historical actions. Alexander the
Great, for example, is a phenomenon whose historical
character could not be shaken by the very boldest criticism.
Yet the story even of Alexander’s acts and fortunes
has been forced to bear some characteristics of the Solar
myth, traits which were originally peculiar to the Sun-hero,
as especially the journey into the realm of darkness.[74]
Accordingly, not every phenomenon in the traditional
characteristics of which we discover solar features is
mythical, even though, strictly speaking, it can scarcely be
classed with history (as e.g. William Tell). It is highly
erroneous to speak, as is often done, of myth and history
as two opposites which exclude any third possibility.
.fn 74
How readily Alexander’s history was combined with the Solar myth is
best proved by the fact that Arabian tradition gives Alexander a Sun-name,
the variously interpreted Ḏû-l-karnein = the Horned, i.e. the Beaming.
.fn-
However, there are two points to which we ought to
attend when considering the attachment of mythic elements
.bn 059.png
.pn +1
to historical phenomena. First, it is usual, as we
have just mentioned, to find one or another mythical
characteristic attached to historical phenomena, as we
may observe (to keep on specifically Hebrew ground) in the
portraiture of the character of David or of Elijah (see
Chap. V. #§ 8:sec5_8#). The residence of the Hebrews in Egypt,
and their exodus thence under the guidance and training
of an enthusiast for the freedom of his tribe, form a series
of strictly historical facts, which find confirmation even
in the documents of ancient Egypt. But the traditional
narrative of these events, elaborated by the Hebrew
people, was involuntarily associated with characteristics
of that Solar myth which forms the oldest mental
activity of mankind in general. Thus, for example, the
passage through the sea by night is to be compared with
the myth of the setting sun, which travels all night
through the sea, and rises again in the morning on the
opposite side. Similarly, we find attached to the picture
of the life of Moses, which the Biblical narrative presents
with a theocratic colouring, solar characteristics, indeed
more specifically features of the myth of Prometheus.
These have been clearly exhibited by Steinthal in his fine
Treatise on the Prometheus-story, to which I will here
only refer without reproducing its contents.[75] Secondly,
we must consider the converse relation—that historical
facts, the names of the agents of which have not been
preserved in the popular mind, may be attached to mythical
names. We can go back to the time of the Judges
for an example of this. It is evidently real history that
we read of the embittered contests waged by the Hebrews
in that age against the Philistines and other tribes of
Canaan. Remembrance of these contests, in the absence
of historical names, helped itself out by the mythical
appellations which, after the individualising of mythical
figures, had obtained significance as personal names. In
the first case the bearers of the names are historical persons,
.bn 060.png
.pn +1
and the features of the story belong to mythology;
in the second, history is wedded to mythical names. In
both directions, accordingly, the Hebrew history treated
critically is a source for mythological investigation.
.fn 75
Translated and given as an Appendix to this volume.—Tr.
.fn-
.sp 2
§ 5. d.) One of the most reliable, but at the same
time most hazardous, sources of Hebrew, as of Aryan,
mythological investigation is the language itself, and
above all, the appellations to which the myth is attached.
These appellations, which in the process of transformation
of the original meaning of the myth became personal
names, are in their proper original sense appellatives;
and we have to find the appellative signification in order
to establish the mythological character. In this investigation
it is best to follow the method, the use of which
in Aryan mythology has brought such brilliant results to
light. In many appellations the appellative sense can be
found without much difficulty, being explicable from the
language itself, in our case from the known treasures
of the Hebrew tongue. In others the known material of
the Hebrew language refuses its aid, and we must then
take refuge in a cautious employment of the group of
allied languages, i.e. the Semitic stock. In this connexion
we must never leave out of sight the fact that the
treasury of Hebrew words which is contained in the books
of the Old Testament does not even approximately embrace
the wealth of the ancient Hebrew vocabulary which
we are enabled to infer from this fraction. In the proper
names much ancient linguistic property is preserved which
occurs nowhere else. The discovery of the appellative
signification of mythological proper names consequently
does an important service to mythological investigation,
by finding a tangible starting-point for the determination
of the mythical sense of the root-word in question. But
it does more: it also fills up gaps in the Hebrew lexicon,
and rescues many an old component part of that important
language, which otherwise would remain utterly unknown.
.bn 061.png
.pn +1
An example will make this clear, and show that linguistic
investigation and mythology have an equal share
in the instruction to be derived from such inquiries.
We often meet in Hebrew with the verb hishkîm, denoting
‘to perform some occupation early in the morning’
(the occupation itself being determined by a dependent
verb), ὀρθρεύειν. It represents the so-called Hiphʿîl-stem,
which has regularly the sense of a factitive, but is not unfrequently
used to express the entrance into a certain time
or place, the doing of an act in certain conditions of time
or place. In this case the Hiphʿîl verb is always derived
from the noun which describes this place or time. Here the
conditions of time concern us most. We say, for instance,
heʿerîbh with the sense ‘to enter on the evening,’ ‘to do
something in the evening;’ e.g. ‘the Philistine came near
morning and evening,’ hashkêm we-haʿarêbh (I Sam. XVII.
16). The last word is derived from the noun ʿerebh,
‘evening.’ From the word shachar, which denotes ‘the
dawn,’ is formed at a late stage of the language hishchîr,
‘to do something at that time;’ and this Hiphʿîl form of
shachar can then appear beside that from ʿerebh exactly
like hishkîm in an earlier age.[76] Now of course this verb
hishkîm must have a noun for its basis, which would
denote ‘morning.’ But no such is found in the known
Hebrew thesaurus, for the nominal form belonging to
this root, shekhem, means ‘neck,’ and etymologists have
given themselves much useless labour in trying to find
any tolerable connexion between the meaning of this noun
and hishkîm. The most bearable which they could give is
that one who rises early to go after his business loads his
neck with labour.[77] But any one may reply, Does one who
does his work after dinner or in the evening load his neck
with no labour? Considering the relation in which these
Hiphʿîl-forms stand to the nouns from which they are derived,
we might almost a priori assert that in the ancient language
.bn 062.png
.pn +1
shekhem must have denoted ‘morning’ also. And in this
instance mythological inquiry offers us the safest clue.
The name Shekhem [Shechem] figures in the Hebrew myth
as the ravisher of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter. Without
anticipating the analysis of this myth, which fits into the
context of one of the next chapters, we immediately recognise
in the mythic name Shekhem the noun from which
the verb hishkîm is derived. Thus the mythical appellation
refers to the early morning, the red glow, as the
ravisher of the sun; and the same amorous connexion is
expressed in various ways in the Aryan mythology also.
.fn 76
Wayyiḳrâ rabbâ, sect. XIX.: hishchîr we-heʿerîbh.
.fn-
.fn 77
See Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 1406. b.
.fn-
No one can deny that the consideration of the myth
has here enriched the knowledge of the old Hebrew vocabulary;
and thus, even on Hebrew ground, mythology and
linguistic studies go hand in hand. This makes the investigation
of language one of the richest sources for the
discovery of the mythical ideas of early humanity.
.sp 2
§ 6. e.) While the circle of thoughts which guide the
prose style moves on the level of the general principles
current at the time of the writer, poetical language and
style, on the other hand, have a tendency to adopt modes
of expression produced in a long past age in accordance
with the ideas then prevalent. These modes of expression,
when they arose, corresponded accurately with the
general ideas of the time, and had the signification which
the literal sense yields; they were used whenever occasion
offered for their employment, and everyone understood
what was meant by them, for the thought would in that age
never be expressed otherwise. The poetical language of
a later time preserves such modes of expression even when
their significance in the general conception of things is
lost, and the occurrences thereby indicated are imagined
in a different way altogether; the language then becomes
figurative, as it is called.[78] Thus the language of the
.bn 063.png
.pn +1
Hebrew poetry and of those writers who speak in a lofty
style bordering on that of poetry, and are called Prophets,
preserves many of the modes of expression derived from
the ancient mythological ideas of the world. Mythical
material may consequently be found now and then here
also.
.fn 78
See Hermann Cohen’s dissertation, Die dichterische Phantasie und der
Mechanismus des Bewusstseins, in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, &c.
1869, VI. 239 et seq.
.fn-
When e.g. Isaiah says (XIV. 28), ‘I will sweep it with
the besom of destruction,’ this is what we call a poetic
figure—destruction being pictured as a broom that sweeps
away from the surface of the earth those who are to be
destroyed. But from another side it is seen to be something
more and different from a mere poetical figure,
since its origin is due, not to an artistic idea of the
speaker, but to an old-world mythical conception here
employed figuratively, a conception which occurs in many
cycles of mythology. For instance, the Maidens of the
Plague are represented with brooms in their hands, with
which they sweep before house-doors and bring death into
the village.[79] But Isaiah says again (XXVII. 1) that ‘Jahveh
with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish
Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that
crooked serpent, and he shall slay the dragon (tannîn) that
is in the sea;’ and Job (XXVI. 13), in his grand picture
of the contest which Jahveh wages against the tempest,
and the defeat of the latter by the omnipotence of Jahveh,
says ‘By his breath the heavens are brightened; his hand
has pierced the flying serpent (nâchâsh bârîach)’; and the
prophet living in the Babylonian captivity addresses Jahveh
in the following words (Is. LI. 9): ‘Awake, awake, put on
strength, O arm of Jahveh! awake, as in the ancient
days, in the generations of old! Art thou not it that
didst kill the monster (rahabh), and wound the dragon
(tannîn?)’ &c.[80] In these expressions we observe that
.bn 064.png
.pn +1
prophets and poets employ the long outgrown and
obsolete notions of the myth of the battle of the Sun
against the flying serpent (Lightning) and against the
recumbent or curved serpent (Rain)—the monsters which
want to devour the Sun, but which the Sun shoots down
with his arrows (Rays) or wounds with a volley of stones;
or else of the myth of the battle of the Sun already set
against the monster that lies in wait at the bottom of
the sea to devour him (a myth which is also preserved
in the story of Jonah), only that the monotheistic mind
substituted Jahveh for the Sun. Many prophets frequently
speak in a perfectly general way, without reference
to a definite historical event, of a passage through
the sea. This is by no means a reminiscence of the Passage
of the Red Sea, as an event in the primeval history of
the Hebrew people, unless a pointed reference is made to
that; it is another application of an old mythical notion
of the course taken by the Sun-hero after sunset through
the sea, so as to shine again on the following morning on
the opposite shore. Indeed, that Hebrew story of the
Exodus itself, as we have indicated, is only a myth transformed
into history by a process which we can follow, step
by step, in the history of the evolution of Mythology.
This becomes very clear when we examine the sequel of
the above-quoted words of the anonymous Prophet of the
Captivity (Is. LI. 10): ‘Art not thou it which dryeth the
sea, the waters of the great deep; that maketh the depths
of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?’ What
is pictured in this verse is in the mind of the speaker an
event of the same character as that referred to in the preceding
verse—the killing of the Rahabh and the wounding
of the Tannîn. The description of Canaan, too, as a land
‘flowing with milk and honey,’ points back to the myth of
a sun-land; for the myths call the rays of the sun and
moon ‘milk and honey,’ regarding the moon as a bee[81]
.bn 065.png
.pn +1
and the sun as a cow. In #Excursus E:excursus_e# we shall speak of
the mythological conception of rays of light as fluids.
Palestine, which the writer wished to pourtray as possessed
of every blessing, thus receives attributes which
the myth gave to a place above the earth, whence the
blessings of light streamed down to it. It is noteworthy
that in the Çatapatha Brâhmaṇa the same mythic conception
which is employed poetically in Hebrew meets
us tinged already with an eschatological colour. This
work (XI. 5. 6. 4) makes milk and honey flow in the
abodes of the Blest.[82] We also see from this that the
notion of a ‘poetical figure’ requires frequent limitation.
Many apparently poetical figures have their origin in an
ancient mythical conception. Not everything that has
the look of a poetical or rhetorical figure is one. Who
would doubt, for instance, on a superficial glance, that
such a phrase as nâr al-ḥarb, ‘the fire of war,’ was a
figure of poetry or rhetoric? Yet it is not; it is not
derived from what only exists in the fancy of the speaker,
but from something which has a concrete, objective
existence. We learn this from the Arabic commentary
on the proverb Nâr al-ḥarb asʿaru, ‘the fire of war is
burning.’ The scholiast[83] says ‘When the ancient Arabs
began a war, they used to light a fire, to serve as a beacon
for those eager for the fight.’ It is also said (of the
Jews): ‘As often as they light a fire for war, Allâh extinguishes
it.’[84] Thus the fire of war of which the ancient
Arabs spoke was only a material or natural one.
.fn 79
On the German legends in which this idea occurs see Henne-Am-Rhyn,
Die deutsche Volkssage, Leipzig 1874, p. 268 et seq.
.fn-
.fn 80
See Ps. LXXIV. 13–14; LXXXIV. 11. There is nothing to justify those
interpreters who, caring nothing for the remains of ancient myths, always
wish to understand by Rahabh and Tannîn the kingdom of Egypt.
.fn-
.fn 81
Angelo de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, II. 217. On the meaning of
milk and honey in the Hebrew myth, Steinthal has written exhaustively in his
Treatise on the Story of Samson, given in the Appendix.
.fn-
.sp 2
§ 7. f.) The Hebrew mythic tradition is not contained
exclusively in the Old Testament. This canon, indeed,
was very far from receiving all the remains of the old
myths that were current among the people in an historical
transformation. Much of it is contained in the tradition
.bn 066.png
.pn +1
which was not incorporated with the canon, especially in
the so-called Rabbinical Agâdâ, which contains many a
treasure of as high an antiquity as the mythological
sources which we have named within the canon. In the
discovery of such elements in the Agâdâ circumspection
and cautious criticism are necessary, because the valuable
portion is only an excessively small fraction of the whole,
and has to be picked out of a preponderating mass of
very different character. Still we must acknowledge the
Agâdâ as a source for the discovery of the old Hebrew
myths. It has indeed already been employed for this
purpose, though not always wisely. The learned Professor
F.L.W. Schwartz has referred to this source,[85] and Julius
Braun goes even too far in his mythological estimate of the
Agâdâ, when he says without limitation,[86] ‘The Rabbinical
stories are anything but arbitrary inventions; they are
echoes of primeval memories only refused entrance into the
Bible by the compilers of the canon. If Rabbinical erudition
sometimes makes unfortunate attempts to confirm
extrabiblical tradition by a Biblical quotation, and to
prove its existence in Biblical times by imagined allusions,
this is no proof that the whole tradition is only a speculation
derived from misunderstood Bible-words.’ But
Braun makes a very bad use of the Rabbinical tradition,
and vies with the foolish writer Nork in taking from right
and left without selection or judgment whatever he can
find, not caring whether it is Veda or Bible, Homer or
the Fathers, cuneiform inscriptions or some obscure allegorical
writer.
.fn 82
See Weber in the Zeitschrift der D. M. G., 1855, IX. 238.
.fn-
.fn 83
Al-Meydânî, Majmaʿ al-amthâl, II. 203.
.fn-
.fn 84
Korân, Sûr. V. v. 69.
.fn-
.fn 85
Sonne, Mond und Sterne [i.e. Bd. I. of Die poetischen Naturanschauungen,
&c.], p. 4.
.fn-
.fn 86
Die Naturgeschichte der Sage, I. 127.
.fn-
.fn 87
See #Excursus A:excursus_a#.
.fn-
The Agâdâ in many places gives names to persons
who are mentioned in the Bible without name; and these
names have frequently so antique a stamp, that we cannot
suppose them to be due to the capricious invention of the
Agadists.[87] I believe that when these names appear justified
.bn 067.png
.pn +1
by internal evidence (i.e. when they show themselves
quite fitting to the nature of the myth), they may be
ancient and important for mythological inquiry. Of
course we must not be ruled by excessive optimism, nor
ever forget the freedom with which the Agadic fancy
rules in its own sphere.[88] The same may be said also of
the identifications, of which the Agadists are very fond,
and of the genealogical statements, which, though deserving
little attention from the historical point of view, may
have their origin in an old myth. So e.g. the Targûm on
I Sam. XVII. 4 calls Samson the father of Goliath.[89] Now
Goliath is the giant whom ‘the reddish hero with fine
face’ overcomes by throwing stones; in other words, the
Sun-hero throws stones at the monster of the storm.
Thus the myth may very well say that the Sun (Samson)
is the father of this hostile giant of the night, just as the
Sun in various forms frequently appears in the character
of father or mother of the Night.
It is easily intelligible how difficult it must be to determine
the mythological value of every such statement;
and we have consequently made very scanty use of
this source. It might be relatively safer to use them
when they speak not merely of names and genealogies,
but of actual stories. The Abram-story especially has
preserved in its Agadic form much matter from ancient
myths, the valuation of which by B. Beer, in a lucid compilation
on this very portion of the Agâdâ,[90] is easily
accessible. So e.g. the battle of Abram against Nimrod,
which the myth-investigator must take as the contest
between the Nightly heaven and the Sun, is known only
.bn 068.png
.pn +1
from the Agâdâ; the Scripture says not a word of it.
For the solar character of Nimrod, which is however independently
clear from the Biblical statements, the Agâdâ
has again preserved a valuable datum, viz. that 365 kings
(equal to the days of the solar year) appear ministering to
him.[91] This is the same conception of the myth as that
Enoch, of whom again the solar event of the Ascension
is preserved only in tradition, lived 365 years; or that
Helios had herds of 350 cattle (7 herds of 50 each); and
that in the Veda the Sun-god is blessed with 720 twin
children, i.e. 360 days and nights,[92] and that his chariot is
drawn by seven horses, i.e. the seven days of the week.[93]
.fn 88
Such names have often planted themselves firmly in popular tradition,
and are accordingly mentioned in various quarters with perfect uniformity.
So e.g. Ιαννῆς and Ιαμβρῆς, who appear both in Rabbinical writings and in
2 Tim. III. 8 (see Jablonski, Opuscula, ed. Te Water, II. 23).
.fn-
.fn 89
See Wilhelm Bacher’s treatise, Kritische Untersuchungen zum Prophetentargûm
(Zeitschrift der D. M. G. 1874, XXVIII. 7).
.fn-
.fn 90
Leben Abraham’s nach Auffassung der jüdischen Sage, Leipzig 1859.
Another good compilation is that of Hamburger, Geist der Hagada, Leipzig
1857, I. 39–50.
.fn-
The Agâdâ, again, has preserved the following mythical
expression, which Professor Schwartz interprets in
this sense:[94] ‘Abraham was in possession of a precious
stone which he wore round his neck all his life; when he
died, God took the stone and hung it on the Sun.’[95] As
has been fully proved with regard to Aryan mythology,
especially by Schwartz and Kuhn, the myth calls the sunshine
and other luminous bodies stones in general, or
more specifically precious stones.[96] By night, as long as
Abraham (the nightly heaven) lives, he bears the precious
stone himself; when the night dies, God takes this stone
(the moonlight) and hangs it on the sun.
How cautiously we must proceed in the mythological
application of the Agâdâ, is obvious to all who know the
nature and origin of the Agâdâ and the Agadic collections.
I will adduce one other example to show how easily one
might be led astray by yielding too trustingly and unconditionally
to the temptation to employ this source in the
interpretation of myths.
.fn 91
Bêth ham-midrâsh: Sammlung kleiner Midrashim und vermischter Abhandlungen
aus der jüdischen Literatur, ed. Ad. Jellinck, Vienna 1873, V. 40.
.fn-
.fn 92
Max Müller, Essays [German translation of Chips], II. 147; not in the
English.
.fn-
.fn 93
Rigveda, L. 8; CCCXCIX. 9.
.fn-
.fn 94
Sonne, Mond und Sterne, p. 4.
.fn-
.fn 95
Bab. Bâbhâ bathrâ, fol. 16. b.
.fn-
.fn 96
See Kuhn, Ueber Entwickelungsstufen der Mythenbildeng (Abhandl. der
kön. Akad. d. W. 1873, Berlin 1874), p. 144.
.fn-
.bn 069.png
.pn +1
In the course of our investigations, it will become
certain that Jacob belongs to the series of mythical figures
which are connected with the nightly heaven. How
easily would this conception be disturbed, if we were to
accord to all the Agâdâ an absolute voice among the
sources of Hebrew mythical investigation! For there it
is said in reference to Gen. XXVIII. 11: ‘He (Jacob)
reached that place and passed the night there, for the sun
was come (kî bhâ hash-shemesh), i.e. had set.’ On this
the Agadist Chaggî of Sephoris remarks, 'This sentence
indicates that Jacob, when he was in Bethel, heard the
welcoming voices of the angels: "The Sun is come, the
Sun is come," i.e. Jacob himself. Many years later, when
Jacob’s son Joseph told his father the dream in which an
allusion is made to Jacob as if he were the Sun (XXXVII. 9,
10), Jacob thought to himself, ‘Who has informed my son
that my name is Sun?’[97]
I must point out one other peculiarity in this part of
the subject. Sometimes the Agadists utilise mythological
elements, by supplementing the old mythic tradition with
something added by themselves, based on some one of their
hermeneutic principles, but which could not possibly be
also a portion of the old myth. An example will elucidate
this. We will not lay down dogmatically, nor on the
other hand dispute the possibility, that the name Bileʿâm
Balaam is mythical. It signifies ‘the Devourer,’ and
has consequently been identified for centuries with the
Arabic Loḳmân, which has the same meaning.[98] Accordingly
Balaam would originally have been a name of
the monster which devours the sun. It is not uncommon
in mythology to find wisdom, cunning and prudence attributed
to the powers hostile to the sun. Hence the
serpent appears in the myth endowed with wisdom. This
justifies Balaam’s character as sage and prophet; the
serpent delivers oracles, or is οἰωνός.[99] Balaam is son of
.bn 070.png
.pn +1
Beʿôr, or ‘the Shining’—a mythical expression which
often occurs when the darkness is described as springing
from the daylight; and the Agâdâ may be using mythic
elements in identifying this Beʿôr with Lâbhân ‘the White.’[100]
So this myth, like many others, would then have been
nationalised by the influence of factors, which will be fully
described in the Seventh Chapter. The Devourer of the
Sun became a Devourer of the Hebrew people, just as the
Sun-hero became the Hebrew national hero. Personations
of the storms are often exhibited in mythology as lame
and limping.[101] This feature, which is not ascribed to
Balaam in the Bible, is found in the Agâdâ, which says,
Bileʿâm chiggêr beraglô achath hâyâ, ‘Balaam was lame
of one foot.’ So far all is regular. But then follows,
Shimshôn chiggêr bishtê raglâw hâyâ, ‘Samson was lame of
both feet’[102]—a feature which does not suit the Sun-hero.
We must consider that this latter is an inference drawn
by the Agâdâ in virtue of one of its hermeneutic principles,
thus: Balaam’s lameness is attached to the word
shephî, ‘hill, high place,’ Num. XXIII. 3; the word shephîphôn,
‘serpent,’ Gen. XLIX. 17 (in the declaration concerning
Dan, which the Agadists take as referring to
Samson the Danite), must according to the Agadists’ hermeneutics
express by its form a doubling of the notion
conveyed by shephî.[103]
.fn 97
Berêshîth rabbâ, sect. 68.
.fn-
.fn 98
See on the other side Ewald, History of Israel (2nd or 3rd ed.), II. 214.
.fn-
.fn 99
Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, Gottingen 1857, I. 66.
.fn-
Thus only what is said about Balaam could possibly
belong to the old myth; what is said about Samson is
late Agadic induction, which has no importance whatever
for mythology.
.fn 100
I find this identification, it is true, only in later books, Tânâ de-bhê Elîyâ,
c. 27; Sêder ʿôlâm, c. 21; see Halâkhôth gedôlôth (hilkhôth haspêd). In the
Sêder had-dôrôth, under the year 2189, Beor is called son of Laban. On
Laban see Chap. V. #§ 11:sec5_11#. Besides the name Loḳmân, which in signification
corresponds with Bileʿâm (Balaam), we find in the Preislamite genealogy of the
Arabs, which in my opinion is largely mixed up with mythical names, the chief
Balʿâʾu, who is said to have been a leper (Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ, p. 106.
8). It should be observed that this is a man’s name with the grammatical form
of a feminine adjective.
.fn-
.fn 101
See Chap V. #§ 10:sec5_10# end.
.fn-
.fn 102
Sôṭâ, fol. 10. a.
.fn-
.fn 103
See #Excursus B:excursus_b#.
.fn-
.fm rend=t lz=t
.fm rend t
.bn 071.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap03
CHAPTER III. | THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATING HEBREW MYTHS.
.sp 2
§ 1. The method of investigation is intended to discover—how
the original myth is to be reached through the
sources described in the preceding chapter, how the
primitive germ of the myth is to be freed from the husk
which in the course of its growth has been formed around
it, and further how the progress and lapse of this growth
itself are to be recognised. Then we shall be enabled to
determine how stratum upon stratum has fastened itself
round the original myth until it reached that configuration
which is the concrete material of our investigation.
The development of the myth in any nation is mainly
determined by two factors, which give to this development
the direction actually taken. One group of these factors
is psychological, the other belongs to the history of civilisation.[104]
The psychological factors in the development of all
myths are the same, not changing with the special
character of the people whose myths form the subject of
our consideration. For the same general laws everywhere
determine the life of the soul; no difference in them is
introduced by the ethnological life and the peculiarity
of race of the people in question. There is a psychology
of mankind, or as it was called when Lazarus introduced
the science, a Psychology of Nations (Völkerpsychologie).
.bn 072.png
.pn +1
This is not a contemplation of the modes in which the
intellectual life of various nations exhibits itself as acting
in opposite directions, but of the modes in which the
same laws find their expression and validity in the intellectual
life of the most various nations. But there is
no special psychology of races. On the other hand, the
factors belonging to the history of civilisation are not
everywhere alike, but are as various as the historical fates
of the nations among themselves are various. We shall subsequently
come back to the subject to show more fully that
myths share in the historical vicissitudes of their nation,
that they are always transformed in accordance with the
stages of civilisation which the nation itself passes through
in its historical development, and that accordingly the
configuration of the myth is a faithful mirror of the stage
of civilisation at which it has taken this particular configuration.
Obviously therefore, we can duly estimate the
myth through all its stages of development only in
connexion with a comprehensive view over the historical
development of the civilisation of the nation itself. And
to gain this view we must especially attend to those
phenomena which might produce an altered direction of
the mind, and thus impress a new form on the myth also.
But as in the methodical observation of the intellectual
development of a nation in the course of its history
psychological points of view must again occupy the foreground,
we may assert that psychological observation
must take up a prominent position in the method of
mythological investigation; for the question will always
be, What transformation does this or that historical
vicissitude produce in that which makes up the sum of
the human mind? The answer will however evidently
turn out different according to the nature of these
historical vicissitudes. But there is one special step of
transformation which stands earlier than and in no connexion
with the separate history of the nation, and is produced
by a purely psychological operation. This transformation
.bn 073.png
.pn +1
is therefore common to all myths—so much so that most
inquirers, and especially Max Müller, make the life of the
myth to begin only at this stage.
.fn 104
‘Die andere culturhistorisch.’ I am obliged to render this convenient
adjective by a circumlocution, as ‘civilisation-historical’ would be too cumbrous
and hardly intelligible.—Tr.
.fn-
It is the stage of mental development which is signalised
by a remarkable fact in the history of language: viz.,
that an endless multitude of names, bestowed upon the
phenomena and processes of nature, in virtue of various
features of which there is a preponderating consciousness
at the moment of perception, gradually lose their meaning;
while some few features of the total phenomenon are retained,
to represent all those particular factors and supply
comprehensive general terms for their sum total. For
example, the Sun has at first a countless number of designations.
It is not merely that, in its various aspects, the
Sun is treated as the subject of detached observation
unrelated in thought to that of other aspects of the same
Sun; but the very same aspect, on repeated notice, is
regarded as something different every time, and is accordingly
denoted by other names. In other words, borrowed
from the terminology of modern psychology, no fusion
(Verflechtung) has yet been effected. Long-continued
observation of the same aspects gives consciousness of
their identity under repetition, and makes possible the
fusion of their ideas. Next, by a further advance in
development, the psychological change emerges, through
which the various features of the same phenomenon cease
to be essential difference-marks in the idea, and, dropping
into the background, give place to a general conception
gained by their fusion, an aggregate of fusion (Verflechtungsmasse),
the product of often-repeated fusion.[105] The effect
on language of this psychological change is that, through
its gradual operation, the meaning is lost from the great
majority of those expressions which arose merely because
the particular observations of the same aspect of a phenomenon,
.bn 074.png
.pn +1
or the various features of the same phenomenal
aggregate had not yet been brought into unity by the
process of fusion or blending.
.fn 105
I must refer those readers who are not sufficiently familiar with the
terminology to Steinthal’s Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin 1871, vol. I.,
where all this is fully discussed in the section Elementare psychische Processe.
.fn-
By the abandonment of the difference-marks, the sum
total of all the aspects, now regarded as forming one unity, is
given over to one single word, and a vast number of old designations,
which stood in connexion with one particular
aspect or one particular condition of observation, lose in the
mind of the speaker all connexion with the physical phenomenon
in question. The multiplicity of names becomes objectless,
loses all psychological basis, and vanishes.[106] What
vanishes, however, is only the consciousness of the connexion
of the multifarious names with the physical phenomenon; in
other words, the names cease in great part to be designations
of the phenomena, yet remain in existence. But they
have a very different value to the mind from their original
one. They become Proper Names; and what the sentences
in which these names figured as subjects and objects
originally predicated of physical phenomena, they now say
of persons and individuals. The transition is facilitated
by the fact that the physical phenomena themselves,
whose names they were in an earlier stage of intelligence,
are conceived under the figure of human actions,
as loving, fighting, persecuting, &c. We must here
observe emphatically that from this process in the history
of language the Semitic area was not excluded. In the
course of the following expositions we shall have occasion
to convince ourselves that mythological appellatives forfeited
their appellative character just like those of the
Aryan myths. The Hebrew said ‘he laughs,’ ‘he hides,’
‘he trips up,’ ‘he increases,’ &c. in a strictly mythical
sense; in later times the meaning of these assertions was
forgotten, and a proper name took the place of each.
.bn 075.png
.pn +1
What Max Müller says of Semitic speech, that ‘those
who used the word were unable to forget its predicative
meaning, and retained in most cases a distinct consciousness
of its appellative power,’[107] is not true, at least of this
portion of Semitism.
.fn 106
But it is to be observed that some of the expressions produced by Polyonymy
[multitude of names] survive the process of fusion and remain with the
original signification; thus e.g. several names for Moon in Hebrew. On such
names Synonymy, a secondary function of conscious speech, then performs its
work.
.fn-
Now this is the very earliest step in the transformation
of the myth. As we have seen, this transformation is
conditioned only by a psychological operation, and is
therefore common to every mythology. Some scholars are
inclined to draw nothing that precedes this transformation
into the domain of myths at all, and to say that these
begin only when, as Max Müller says, the language (i.e.
the living consciousness of the original signification of the
multifarious names) dies. But we hold that there is every
reason to regard the stage at which those expressions
lived in the human mind with their original appellative
sense, as one of the proper mythic stages. That event
which Max Müller treats as the commencement of the
development of the myth, indicates the first link in the long
chain of transformations which make up the history of the
myth. It is not a characteristic of the myth, that the
speaker is no longer conscious of speaking of physical
phenomena. As soon as ever he perceives physical phenomena
as events in human life, he has at once made a
myth; and every name by which he designates a physical
phenomenon forms a myth. For if unintelligibility or obsoleteness
of language were a condition of a myth’s existence,
then there could be no myth when the Greek calls
Hêlios the brother of Selênê, since both these names have
been retained in their original sense, and the Greek knew
that the former name meant Sun and the latter Moon,
though of Hêraklês and Helenê he had no similar consciousness
left. Similarly, it could not be a myth when the
Roman said that Aurora opens the gates of the Sun and
strews roses on his way, since every Roman knew that
the name Aurora denoted the Dawn.
.fn 107
Chips, First Series, pp. 356, 361.
.fn-
.bn 076.png
.pn +1
.sp 2
§ 2. It is easy to see that the first step in the formation
of myths could not be a short and quickly passing
stage. If it were so, the appellations of physical phenomena
could not have become so firmly established as to
prolong their existence even after a great majority of them
had become linguistically meaningless, and to become
objects of mythical transformation. The psychological
process which brought about the identification of an
object with itself must therefore have taken place late in
the development of the human mind. Men had already
expressed most various notions of the phenomena of nature
and observed them in many phases, long before they
attained to the power of identifying one such repeatedly
occurring phenomenon with itself, notwithstanding the
regularity of its appearance.
One other psychological consideration, however, demands
our attention here—one among many; for a
systematic presentation of all the psychological forces
with which we have to reckon in investigating myths and
the history of their growth belongs to a Philosophy of
Mythology, which it is not our intention to give here.
Among the various categories, that of Space is the
earliest to become an object of consciousness to the human
soul, both in the genetic development of the individual
mind and in that of the human race. The attachment of
a notion to space is the earliest developed; indeed the
notion of a thing without the notion of space is impossible.
Even beasts distinguish things by their space.
Hence L. Geiger correctly said that Language, the origin
of which also marks the first phase of the power of
thought, ‘springs from’ the organ of the discrimination
of space, ‘the Eye and Light.’ With the category of Time
it is otherwise. The discrimination of things in time is
unfolded relatively later; it postulates a more delicate
degree of observation. The notion of Space emanates
from that sense, the use of which man acquires the earliest
and the most easily of all except that of touch—the sense
.bn 077.png
.pn +1
of Sight; the excitement of which also gives the first
impulse to the formation of language. But the notion of
Time demands more than a mere sensuous perception. We
need not therefore be surprised if the notion of Space,
both in the individual and in history, is older than that of
Time, nor that, as language teaches, all the finer distinctions
of opposite terms emanate from the notion of
Space,[108] and the very distinctions of Time itself were
originally conceived from the point of view of Space. To
verify this, we only need to observe the expressions still
in daily use, which can be applied to time, such as, before,
after, thereafter, space of time, short or long time. The
Semitic is very instructive on this point. The Hebrew
shâm, originally used of place (there) is found applied to
time (then); in Arabic these two significations are divided
between thumma ‘then’ and thamma ‘there.’ Hebrew words,
such as liphenê ‘before’ and acharê ‘after,’ ḳedem,
ḳadmôn, ‘old, olden time,’ bring before our eyes a very
clear view of the transition from local to temporal distinctions,
when we take into consideration their original significations.
The Arabic beyna yedeyy, or beyna eydî, is also
especially instructive. This phrase signifies ‘between the
hands,’ and is used very commonly for ‘before,’ of space.
But even in early classical texts (e.g. in the Ḳorân)
it passes over into the ‘before’ of time. ‘Between
the hands of the Prophet,’ thus means either standing
before him as to place, or preceding him in time. Now
that which we meet thus at every step in the Semitic and
Aryan, is found also in the third great stock of languages.
The time-particles of the Anaric languages often go back
to relations of space; and what the German Zeitraum
‘space of time,’ and the Arabic muddâ (properly ‘extension,’
but generally in the sense of a ‘period of time’)
exemplify to us, we see also e.g. in the Finnish kausi,
.bn 078.png
.pn +1
which is used to express a piece of time. It properly
signifies a direction or way, in a local sense; and the
related Esthonian word kaude is still used exclusively to
denote local relations.[109]
.fn 108
On the Pronoun Wilhelm von Humboldt’s essay, Ueber die Verwandtschaft
der Ortsadverbien mit dem Pronomen, Berlin 1830, still deserves study. See
also what is said below (Chap. V. #§ 6:sec5_6#) on Âshêr.
.fn-
In myths also we find the conception of Space and of
motion in space predominant. A large group of names of
the Dawn in the Aryan mythology is formed by composition
of adjectives with εὐρυ and its etymological relatives,
and yields variations on the notion ‘shining afar,’[110] always
bearing witness to local extension and motion. And in
the Hebrew myths a number of solar names designate the
solar figures, as going, moving, &c.[111] Even in cases where
rapid motion is spoken of, a great result of such motion
is not treated as attained in a short time; but described
rather by the space that has been passed through.
On the other hand, when we consider the notion of
Time, and the question how far it is acknowledged in
myths, we observe that at the earliest mythical stage the
distinction of Time is only very feebly presented. We
must demonstrate this at this place while treating of the
method of mythology. The myth makes a distinction
between the bright radiant sunny heaven and the dark
heaven. Now as to this darkness, it is indifferent whether
it is the darkness of night or that of the overclouded
heaven by day. The myth notices only the phenomenon
of the dark sky, darkness as a physical fact or state, considers
only What is there? but does not distinguish the
When?—the time in which this darkness occurs. Hence
in the myth the nightly heaven and the stormy or cloudy
heaven are synonymous, since it does not distinguish day
and night as alternate periods of time, but only brightness
and darkness as phenomena. Hence it comes that even
in later poetry and language the notions of Rain and Night
are so closely connected, that rain is more naturally
.bn 079.png
.pn +1
thought of in union with night than with day; therefore
it is said in Arabic, ‘more liberal than the rainy night’
(anda min al-leylâ al-mâṭirâ).[112] Not only the rain, but the
Wind also, in contrast to the merry laughing sunshine, is
conceived as closely connected with the night.[113] In the
Mohammedan cosmogonic legend it is said that the rough
Wind lives on the curtain of the Darkness.[114] Hence also
we see that the myth does not distinguish between the
Morning Glow and the Evening Glow, but denotes the
phenomenon by itself, without caring whether it precedes
or follows the night. In connexion with this stands the
fact that, as Steinthal has recently briefly noted,[115] mythic
thought did not attain to the category of Causality; for
this category presupposes a clear consciousness of succession,
or of one event following another in time. Only
thus can we explain myths which speak of the Dawn now
as the daughter, now as the mother of the Day. On the
domain of language some phenomena in the semasiology
of Arabic words can be explained from this fact of
the development of conceptions, as e.g. when the lexicographers
translate the verb safar II. IV. to ‘pasture early
or late’: IV. V. ‘to come at the morning or evening glow’.[116]
Except by the operation of the above-named psychological
fact, the express combination of these two definitions of
time in one word would seem to be impossible.
.fn 109
Budenz, in the Hungarian review Magyar Nyelvőr (‘Guardian of the
Hungarian Language’), 1875, IV. 57.
.fn-
.fn 110
Max Müller, Chips, II. pp. 93–106.
.fn-
.fn 111
See Chap. V #§ 5:sec5_5#, #6:sec5_6#.
.fn-
But the very fact just mentioned, that it is characteristic
of mythical ideas to put one phenomenon into a
family relation towards another, and to speak of mother,
brother, son, daughter, &c., furnishes the first elements of
and impulses towards the discrimination of Succession in
.bn 080.png
.pn +1
time, though the discrimination itself may at the mythic
stage not yet break forth into life. Phenomena occurring
one after another or simultaneously are conceived in the
light of the most primitive relations of the family; and
when the myth-forming man speaks of father and child,
the very use of these terms rouses and encourages in his
mind a new category, that of Succession in time, or more
definitely Causality.
.fn 112
Kitâb al-aġânî, I. 133. 19. Compare al-Meydânî, ed. Bûlâḳ, II. 262. 4.
.fn-
.fn 113
Both wind and rain are placed in connexion with the night in the Dîvân
of the Huḏailites, ed. Kosegarten, p. 125, v.5: taʿtâduhu rîḥu-sh-shimâli
biḳurrihâ * fî kulli leylatin dâjinin wa-hutûni, ‘the Northwind blows over it
with his coldness every cloudy rainy night.’
.fn-
.fn 114
Yâḳût’s Geogr. Dictionary, I. 24. 2.
.fn-
.fn 115
Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, &c. 1874, VIII. 179.
.fn-
.fn 116
See Böttcher’s article on this group of roots in Höfer’s Zeitschrift für die
Wissenschaft der Sprache (Greifswald 1851), III. 16.
.fn-
Another point follows naturally from this, enabling
us to fix the chronological position occupied by certain
myths in relation to others. If in a myth we find the
fact of the temporal succession of a phenomenon treated
as important, or see that a following event is in its very
name described as such in relation to what preceded it,
then we can justly draw the conclusion that a myth of this
form belongs to an advanced stage of development, and
that in determining the time of its origin we must choose
a later period than we should for myths in which no conscious
notion of time is visible. We shall have occasion
to insist on this inference when we come into the presence
of such mythic expressions as Yiphtâch Jephthah, i.e. the
‘Opener,’ and Yaʿaḳobh Jacob, i.e. the ‘Follower.’
.sp 2
§ 3. What has to be said on the historical aspect of
the method of mythical investigation follows from the
mode in which the myth grows under the influence of
historical factors. If, after the first transformation of the
myth occasioned by a purely psychological process, there
are factors which immediately cause its further development,
it is of course the business of mythic investigation
to find out those transformative forces which have fastened
themselves on a previous stage of development. Beginning
therefore from the latest aspect of the myth, we have
to follow it further and further up, to arrive by help of the
thread of historical research at a knowledge of the process
of historical development which operated on the myth and
caused the transformation. Thus we ascend step by step
.bn 081.png
.pn +1
to the point at which the above-described psychological
process caused the individualising of the mythic figures.
From this point it is only a step to the original formation
of the myth, at which the appellations proper to the
mythic figures are not proper names but appellative
nouns. It is easy to see that, while investigation takes a retrograde
course, beginning with the latest form of the myth
and going back to arrive at its original form, exposition
will take the contrary direction and pourtray its historical
transformation in the natural order of growth, beginning
with the primitive form discovered by analysis, and demonstrating
successive transformations by the aid of history.
It is advisable, before we proceed to the materials of
Hebrew mythic investigation, to elucidate the course of
this historical method by a well-known example.
Let us take the story which is presented in Genesis,
chap. XXII. Abraham, the forefather of the Hebrew
people, at the behest of Elôhîm, is about to offer his only
son Isaac as a sacrifice, but is prevented by an angel of
Jahveh, who shows him a ram entangled in the thicket,
which he may offer as a sacrifice to Jahveh instead of his
son. The various religious tendencies connected with the
two Divine names, Elôhîm and Jahveh are scarcely so
prominent in any part of the Pentateuch as in the small
passage under consideration. We see here the divergence
of the religious ideas on both sides in reference to the
value of human sacrifice. Not yet fully released from the
Canaanitish system, the early Elohistic religious tendency
as yet regards it as an unobjectionable performance. Jahveism
abominates it, and is satisfied with the temper which
is ready to sacrifice—the intentio; though this may very
well be brought to express itself in the substituted sacrifice
of a beast or something else. Hence our story makes
Elôhîm demand the human offering, and Jahveh recommend
the substitution.[117] The present form of the legend
.bn 082.png
.pn +1
is accordingly the product of the religious polemic waged
by the Prophets against the popular view of religion which
still clung to the Canaanitish system; and the apologists
of the Jahveistic idea intend to show by it the advance
which their own religious views had taken beyond those
of earlier times.[118] The divergent ideas held by these two
Hebrew religious parties on human sacrifice are also to
be seen in the legislative portions of the Bible. In these
we can distinguish passages in which the sacrifice of the
first-born of beasts is not clearly discriminated from the
sanctification of the first-born child, from others in which
the latter has already gained a merely theocratic meaning
and is put in connexion with the deliverance of the
people out of Egypt. Therefore, what is deeply impressed
on these passages of legislation, viz. the battle between the
Canaanitish religious tendency and the national Hebrew
idea of Jahveh according to the Prophets, finds a memento
in the conformation of the existing very late myth of
the sacrifice of Isaac. It has the same purpose as the
passage of Deuteronomy (XII. 31), in which the polemic
against human sacrifice as a religious institution of the
Canaanites comes most prominently forward: ‘Thou shalt
not do so unto Jahveh thy God; for every abomination to
Jahveh which he hateth have they done unto their Elôhîm;
for even their sons and their daughters they have burned
in the fire to their Elôhîm.’ This polemic tendency in
the service of the Jahveh-idea, and the religious views
attached to it, gave the myth in question the form in
which it is known to us. But that cannot be the original
form. Stripped of its Jahveistic coating, the myth remains
in the following form: ‘Elôhîm demanded from
Abraham the sacrifice of his only son, and Abraham was
willing to sacrifice Isaac for Elôhîm.’ But again, the
.bn 083.png
.pn +1
myth could take this form only in a time when the religious
idea of Elôhîm had already gained such full life in
the Hebrew people as to impel them to sacrifice what
was dearest to them. When the myth had this form,
accordingly, there was in Canaan already a monotheistic
religion, the centre of which was Elôhîm the object of
adoration, while the ancestors of the Hebrew people were
his pious servants and favourites. This coating also must
be stripped off, if we wish to trace the myth analytically
to its primitive form. When we have stripped off the
religious coating, we have still not yet penetrated to the
central germ; for, independently of any religious tendency,
Abraham remains as Patriarch, as a national
figure; and this brings us into the historical epoch
when the Hebrew people, attaining to a consciousness of
national peculiarity and opposition to the surrounding
Canaanitish peoples, constructed their own early history.
Accordingly, the national coating has now to be thrown
off; and then Abraham meets us as a (so to say) cosmopolitan
figure—not yet transformed into the likeness
of one nation, but still as a person, an individual.
This stage of mythic development brings us to the psychological
process which caused the mythological persons to
come forth at the beginning; and behind this stage we
find the original form of the myth: ‘Abram kills his son
Isaac’ At that primitive stage these expressions naturally
signified no more than the words imply.
.pm tr he ‘ אַבְרָם ʾabrām ' Abh Râm,'
the Lofty Father, kills his son
.pm tr he '' יִצְחָק yiṣḥāq ' Yiṣchâḳ,'
the
Laugher.’ The Nightly Heaven and the Sun, or the Sunset,
child of the Night,[119] fell into a strife in the evening, the
result of which is that the Lofty Father kills his child;
the day must give way to night.
.fn 117
See especially the lucid exposition of Dr. Abr. Geiger, in his Das Judenthum
und seine Geschichte (2nd edit.), I. 51.
.fn-
.fn 118
In other countries also human sacrifices have been abolished by a reform
of religion, and sacrifices limited to beasts and vegetables; e.g. in Mexico,
where the reform is attributed to Quetzalcoatl. See Waitz, Anthropologie der
Naturvölker, IV. 141.
.fn-
.fn 119
The Sunset is child of Night only if we keep before our eyes the mythical
identity of the Morning and Evening Glow, according to #§ 2:sec3_2# of this chapter.
.fn-
In the above example we have endeavoured to give a
short sketch, less of the progress of development of the
Hebrew myth, than of the method by which, observing
.bn 084.png
.pn +1
the most prominent forces in the historical development
of the intellectual life of the Hebrews, we can rise by
analysis from the latest form of the myths to the original.
Having reached this, we must confide ourselves to the
guidance of the Science of Language; for that particular
source for mythic inquiry which was treated in #§ 5:sec2_5# of the
preceding chapter has chiefly to do with the primitive
form of the myth. The myth is accompanied through
all its stages of development by the same constant terms
of language: these are, accordingly, the oldest matter
for investigation on the mythological field.
Thus, taking it all together, the Method of mythic
investigation turns on three hinges: 1. Psychology,
2. History, 3. Science of Language.
.fm rend=t lz=t
.fm rend t
.bn 085.png
.pn +1
.sp 4
.h2 id=chap04
CHAPTER IV. | NOMADISM AND AGRICULTURE.
.sp 2
The basis of all modern Comparative Mythology, and
the principle from which we start on the present studies,
is that the Myth is only the expression in language of the
impression made on the men of ancient time by the physical
events and changes under the immediate influence
of which they lived. If this is true, it cannot be questioned
that the tendency and quality of the Myth must
change, independently of the matter and contents which
remain the same, in obedience to the advancing civilisation
of men. For all progress in civilisation is marked, speaking
generally, by continual development of the relation in
which man stands to external nature. When a nation
emerges from the stage of Nomadism and advances to an
agricultural life, its relation to external nature is changed.
The same thing happens when a people that lived exclusively
by the chase and fishing advances to Nomadism.
Since a new epoch in the development of human civilisation
has commenced in our own times through the progress
made in physical science, our relation to nature has
again entered on a new phase. The spirit of modern
civilisation has been characterised by the common-place,
that reason has subdued nature.
The Myth accompanied mankind from the first germ
to the highest stage of mental culture, always adapting
itself to man’s intellectual field of view and changing
with the measure of this field of view. It is therefore
a faithful mirror of the ideas of the world held by the
men of each age; and these ideas are nowhere so clearly
.bn 086.png
.pn +1
reflected as in myths. The configuration and tendency
of the myths is always dependent on the ideas of men
at that particular stage of civilisation which gave the
myth its form and guided it to its special tendency. The
traces of these historical transformations of the myths
are scarcely distinguishable for small chronological divisions;
but when the larger epochs of civilisation are
under consideration, they cannot fail to be noted by the
explorer’s eye. And the discovery and demonstration of
these transformations of the tendency of the myths in
their relation to the great epochs of civilisation is one of
the special problems of Comparative Mythology.
The solution of this problem has an intimate connexion
with the answer to the question, ‘When does the life of
the Myth begin, and when does it end? what is its terminus
a quo, and what its terminus ad quem?’ This question
is obviously closely bound up with the results of the psychological
inquiry into the essence and conditions of production
of the myth. The myth lives from the moment
that man begins to interpret physical phenomena through
processes brought before his eyes by his own every-day
life and action; and as soon as the human mind uses
in the interpretation of the phenomena of nature utterly
different means from those prevalent in all myths, i.e. as
soon as the phenomena of nature are not interpreted from
human conditions, the myth has ended its life, and yields
up its elements for other combinations. It is self-evident
that the commencing point of the creation of myths cannot
be later than the first beginnings of language; for
Myth and Language are two modes of utterance of the
same intellectual activity, and the oldest declarations of
the human mind. Even in the Miocene age we find man—the
so-called fossil man—in possession of fire: so that
even then the conditions were already present for the first
growth of the elements of a Prometheus-myth. In the
Postpliocene age we find him already endowed with the
first breath of religious feeling, if, as is generally done, we
.bn 087.png
.pn +1
can allow the careful graveyards found at Aurillac, Cro-Magnon
and Menton, to pass as historical data.[120] The
end of the life of the myth coincides with the moment at
which is formed out of the elements of the myth a religious
conception of the world peopled with gods. The living
and conscious existence of the myth is finished when the
mythical figures become gods. Theology hurls the myth
from its throne. But this is the end only of the living
existence of the primitive myth; the myth transfigured
and newly interpreted in a religious sense lives on, and
only now begins to pass through a rich and various series
of stages of development, each marked by a corresponding
stage of the religion and civilisation of the men who
possess it. There then spring from mythic elements,
sagas, fables, tales, legends. And as religion in its primal
origin appears in history not in opposition to myths, but
as a higher development of them, the life of religion does
not absolutely exclude that of myths. There remain,
beside the myth which has been transformed into religion,
other portions of the mythic matter which religion
has not yet touched, and these live on as myths, so long
as the process of religious transformation has not drawn
them into its domain. Pure and free Monotheism in its
highest development is the first force that comes forward
as a denial of the mythic elements in religion. The religious
history of the Hebrews reached this stage when
Jahveism was fully developed.
.fn 120
See Sir Ch. Lyell, The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man (4th
ed. 1873), pp. 122 et seq. and 228. See also F. Lenormant’s essay, ‘L’Homme
Fossile,’ in his Les premiéres Civilisations, I. 42.
.fn-
We will for the present not trouble ourselves with
these scions of the transformed myth. We will first
study it only at the early stages when it still lives an unclouded,
young, fresh life, untroubled by misunderstanding—the
life that precedes the origin of religion from mythic
elements. There are two successive stages in the historical
development of mankind, which have to be considered
.bn 088.png
.pn +1
in the course of the expositions to which this
chapter is devoted, the Nomadic and the Agricultural. In
the former commences the chain of development, which is
closed by the formation of perfect, true Society. First
are formed communities which, though still standing only
on the base of the Family, yet represent a broadening of
this base insofar as the notion of the family is first enlarged
into the institution of a Tribe, and then this institution
cannot always refuse to take in foreign elements
(prisoners of war, or clients claiming protection). The
nomadic stage is in its element in constant wandering
from pasture to pasture, in unceasing change of residence;
and is accordingly completed, whether with regard to its
intrinsic character or to the experience of history, by passing
over to the stage of the stationary agriculturist. The
gathering of wild fruits, by which huntsmen and primitive
nomads find some vegetable nourishment, forms the
first impulse to pass over to an agricultural life, as Waitz
observes.[121] It must be noticed that a pastoral life is frequently
combined with tillage. The Nomad’s relation to
nature is a very different one from the Agriculturist’s.
But the consciousness of union among men—of their belonging
to one another—was first excited at the nomadic
stage; and it is therefore not surprising if a large proportion
of the names of nations point back to that age.
A nation calls itself by a common name when the
consciousness of the union of its members first arises.
Names in which the nation confesses itself to be a wandering,
restless society, point back to the nomadic stage
of civilisation. That the contemplation of their own
wandering mode of life, is with the nomadic peoples one
motive for the national appellation, is shown in many instances
which Bergmann has correctly explained in this
sense.[122] The Kurdic nomadic tribes still call themselves
.bn 089.png
.pn +1
Kötsher, i.e. ‘wandering,’ and despise and persecute their
settled brethren.[123] The national appellation of the Zulus
denotes the ‘homeless,’ ‘roaming.’[124] According to the
etymological explanation given by an old Hebraist,
Clericus, the name of one of the peoples which are mentioned
as aborigines of Canaan, the Zûzîm, is to be referred
to this notion; it is so if we can cite for its explanation
the late Hebrew zûz, ‘to move from place to place.’[125]
Another Canaanite national name, Perizzî, also according
to many expositors points to nomadic life.[126] The name
Pûṭ, by which the Egyptians called many nomadic tribes
that came into their country, and which is also given in the
list of nations in Gen. X. as the name of a son of Ham,
likewise belongs to the same class. From their wandering
life they were called by the Egyptians the ‘Runners,’
and the graphical power of the name is shown in the
hieroglyphs by the picture of the quickfooted hare.[127] The
name of the Hebrews also, ʿIbhrîm, belongs to the same
series; it denotes ‘those who wander here and there,’ the
Nomads. For the word ʿâbhar, from which the national
name ʿIbhrîm or Hebrews is derived, denotes not merely
transire, ‘to pass through a land, or to cross a river,’ but
rather ‘to wander about’ in general; for which sense
many Hebrew texts might be quoted. The Assyrian is
instructive on the point; there the phonetically corresponding
verb is used of the sun, which i-bar-ru-u kib-ra-a-ti
‘marches, wanders through the lands.’[128] A similar wandering
through various lands is the foundation of the appellation
.bn 090.png
.pn +1
ʿIbhrîm ‘Hebrews,’ so that it denotes ‘the Wanderers
here and there,’ the Nomad-people.[129] In opposition to
these national names others are formed, which speak of
the sedentary mode of life; a name of this kind is that
of the South Arabian people Joḳṭân, which, as Freytag
conjectured,[130] comes from ḳaṭana ‘to take up a fixed abode.’[131]
.fn 121
Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I. 407. Compare Hehn, Culturpflanzen
und Hausthiere, 2nd edit., p. 103.
.fn-
.fn 122
Bergmann, Les peuples primitifs de la race de Jafète, Colmar 1853,
pp. 42, 45, 52, 53 apud Renan, Hist. gén. d. langues sém., p. 39. It is interesting
that the ancients explained the hard-bested name of the Pelasgians from
this point of view, making Πελασγοί equivalent to πελαργοί = storks (Strabo,
V. 313; Falconer, ed. Kramer, V. 2, § 4). Compare Pott, Etymologische Forschungen,
1836, II. 527.
.fn-
.fn 123
Blau in the Zeitschrift d. D. M. G., 1858, II. 589.
.fn-
.fn 124
Waitz, ibid. II. 349.
.fn-
.fn 125
Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 410. a.
.fn-
.fn 126
Munk, Palästina, Germ. transl. by Levy, Leipzig 1871, p. 190.
.fn-
.fn 127
Ebers, Aegypten und die Bücher Moses, I. 70.
.fn-
.fn 128
See the passage in Schrader, Keilinschriften und das A. T., p. 64. 20.
.fn-
We must not overlook the fact that such national
names as these, derived from and referring to a certain
stage of life and civilisation, are preserved by the same
nation, even when that stage has been long passed. We
see this most clearly in the case of the Philistines, who lived
chiefly in towns, and preserved not even a tradition to
remind them of a former nomadic life. Yet their name
Pelishtim is itself a reminiscence of this kind. Whether
the name is to be combined with the Semitic (Ethiopic)
palasha ‘to wander,’ as most of the Semitic philologists
say,[132] or is to be explained from the Aryan, as others say;
in either case it is a living witness and reminiscence of
the nomadic stage of the Philistine people, at which they
gave themselves this name. Similarly the Accadians still
called themselves by that name, which means ‘Highlanders,’
long after they had chosen a new habitation in the plains.[133]
The herdsman finds his happiness in the well-being of
his herds; his wealth depends on the quality of the pasture
which he can get for them; to seek this is the constant
object of his endless wanderings. Good, fresh, sound
pasture is the sum of his modest wishes: ‘green pastures
beside still waters,’ as a Hebrew Psalmist (Ps. XXIII. 2)
expresses it. The cloudy heaven, which sends rain to
his fields, is in his eyes a most friendly element, to which
he gladly gives the victory over the scorching glow of the
.bn 091.png
.pn +1
sun, which dries up his pastures. The nomad calls himself
‘Son of the water of heaven,’ i.e. the rain. ‘By banû
mâ al-samâ (Sons of Rain),’ says an Arabic commentator
on Muslim’s collection of traditions, ‘the Arabs are to
be understood.... For as the greater part of them are
owners of herds, they supported themselves mainly by
the goodness of the pastures.’[134] Thus this appellation
‘Sons of the water of heaven’ could then come to have
the general meaning ‘rich people,’ as e.g. in a sensible
verse of ʿAnbar b. Samâk:[135]
.pm start_poem
falâ tathiḳan min-an-nauka bishayʾin
walau kânû banî mâʿi-s-samâʿi:
‘Confide thou not in anything in fools,
E'en were they sons of water of the heaven,’
.pm end_poem
i.e. however rich they might be. The Bedawî of
Somali, Isa, call their Ogas, i.e. chief, by the name
Roblai, which, according to Burton, denotes Prince of
the Rain.[136]
.fn 129
See Böttcher, Ausführl. Lehrb. d. hebräischen Sprache, edited by Mühlau,
p. 7, note.
.fn-
.fn 130
Einleitung in das Studium der arab. Sprache, p. 19.
.fn-
.fn 131
Compare the Hottentot national name Saan, from sâ ‘to rest,’ i.e. ‘the
Settlers’ (F. Müller, Allgemeine Ethnographie, p. 75).
.fn-
.fn 132
J.S. Müller, Semiten, Chamiten und Japheiten, &c, p. 257.
.fn-
.fn 133
Lenormant, Études Accadiennes, pt. 3, I. 72.
.fn-
The nomad must be constantly wandering and seeking
good pasture, if he is to gain a comfortable position. The
glowing heat of the sun is in this respect his terrible
enemy and continual adversary.
The starry heaven by night and the moon he recognises
as his friends and protectors; and he gladly welcomes
the moment when these guardians overcome the enemy,
and drive off the beaming sun, when noon is followed by
afternoon, and the evening comes on with its cool breeze,
on the track of the departed solar heat. Then he is delivered
from the tiresome ḳail, ‘midday sleep,’ which the
noon-day heat had brought on. He therefore likes best
to begin his journey in the afternoon, and continues it
till night or during the night.[137] ‘In their journeys and
.pn +1
expeditions with caravans or for plunder,’ says Sprenger
of the Arabs, ‘they generally travel during the night.
When one rides on a camel at a slow pace through the
monotonous desert, the nights seem very long. But the
heart is filled with quiet delight by the stillness of the night
and the enjoyment of the fresh air, and the eye involuntarily
looks upwards. Hence we find even in the Ḳorân
and in the poetry of the Bedawî frequent allusion to the
starry heaven and its motion.’[138] The caravan-songs (ḥidâh)
accordingly refer mainly to night-travelling, as e.g. one
quoted by Wetzstein:
.pm start_poem
O how journey we, while dew is scattered out
And desert-dust bedecks the lips of sumpter beasts.
O how journey we, while townsmen sleep
With limbs involved in coverlets;[139]
.pm end_poem
and when he travels by day he follows the course of the
clouds, seeking coolness and shade. The Arabic poet
Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, who, like all the later writers of
ḳaṣîdâs,[140] makes the horizon of Beduin life the background
of his poetry, says somewhere of his beloved,
.pm start_poem
As though the cloud were her lover, she always turns her saddle
To the quarter where the cloud is moving;
.pm end_poem
and the scholiast observes on the passage, ‘that is, she
is a Beduin, and the Bedawî always follow the rain and
the places where raindrops fall from heaven.’[141] The old
Arabian poet wishes for rain also on the grave of his
friend; he cannot bear to see it scorched by the sun’s
heat. ‘Drench, O clouds, the earth of that grave!’ is a
frequently recurring formula in the old Arabic poetry;
and the later poetry, with its imitation of old forms, has
.bn 093.png
.pn +1
received this phrase into its inventory.[142] It is connected
with this preference of the nomads for the heavens by
night, that Hind, daughter of ʿOtbâ, says on the day of
the battle of Oḥod to the Koreyshites, the opponents of
Islâm: ‘We are the daughters of the Star,’ (naḥnu
binât Ṭâriḳ),[143] thereby claiming descent for herself also
from the nightly heaven. We put this exclamation of
the brave Arab woman in the same category with the
above-mentioned reference of the origin of the Arabs to
the Rain, and consider ourselves justified in rejecting the
explanation given by al-Jauharî, who finds in it a simile,
with the sense, ‘Our father excels others in nobility of
birth, as that brilliant star excels the other stars.’[144] It
is then quite indifferent which star Ṭâriḳ is, whether the
morning star, according to most lexicographers, or Zoḥal,
(Saturn, or another of the five Chunnas-stars),[145] as al-Baiḍâwî
explains it.[146] The point lies only in the fact that
the Arab woman calls herself ‘Star’s daughter;’ and
this designation falls into the same category with Banû
Badr ‘Sons of the Full Moon,’ Banû Hilâl ‘Sons of the
New Moon,’ adopted by some Arabian tribes, and compared
even by Bochart[147] with the name of the people
Jerah.[148] Thus also several clans of Arabian tribes, especially
the Banû Temîm, Banû Ḍabbâ, and Banû Azd
called themselves ‘Sons of Night,’ (Banû Ṣarîm).[149] On
the other hand, the townsman of Mecca called himself
‘Child of the Sun,’—a name which has survived to the
present time, as is to be seen from an interesting communication
of Kremer.[150]
.fn 134
Al-Nawawî (the Cairo edition of Muslim’s collection, with Commentary),
V. 169.
.fn-
.fn 135
Kitâb al-aġânî, XVI. 82 penult.
.fn-
.fn 136
Burton’s First Footsteps in East Africa, London 1856, p. 174.
.fn-
.fn 137
See al-Nâbiġâ, XXXI. v. 4 (Derenbourg).
.fn-
.bn 092.png
.fn 138
On the Calendar of the Arabs before Moḥammed (in Zeitschrift der
D. M. G., 1859, XIII. 161).
.fn-
.fn 139
Sprachliches aus den Zeltlagern der syrischen Wüste, p. 32, note 21 (a
reprint from Zeitschrift der D. M. G., 1868, XXII.).
.fn-
.fn 140
A species of lyric poem or elegy.—Tr.
.fn-
.fn 141
Saḳt al-zand (Bûlâḳ edition of 1286), II. 34. Yet Aġânî, I. 147. 20, in a
poem of Nuṣeyb: wa lam ara matbûʿan aḍarra min-al-maṭari.
.fn-
.fn 142
See an example in Zeitschrift der D. M. G., 1857, V. p. 100, l. 14.
.fn-
.fn 143
Kitâb al-aġânî, XI. 126.
.fn-
.fn 144
Ṣaḥâḥ, s.r. ṭrḳ.
.fn-
.fn 145
Chunnas, ‘planet,’ i.e. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, or Mercury.—Tr.
.fn-
.fn 146
Commentary on the Ḳorân (Fleischer’s edition), II. 397. 6.
.fn-
.fn 147
Phaleg (ed. Frankfort), II. 124.
.fn-
.fn 148
Yerach (pausal yârach), Gen. X. 26, 1 Chr. I. 20; elsewhere yerach denotes
‘month’ and yârêach ‘moon.’—Tr.
.fn-
.fn 149
Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ, p. 99. 9.
.fn-
.fn 150
Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete des Islams, Leipzig 1873,
p. viii.
.fn-
.bn 094.png
.pn +1
The relation of the Agriculturist to the two warring
elements of the sky is very different. Storm, wind, and
excessive rain are the declared enemies of his life, whereas
the warm sun’s rays, which heat and bring to perfection
the fruits of the field, are gladly welcomed by him, and
their victory over the dark gloomy sky gives him joy.
An old Hellenic name of the sun is Zeus Talaios, or Tallaios,
or simply Talos, which denotes ‘encouraging growth,’ as
has been proved long ago.[151] It is Zeus who watches the
cornfields and sends bountiful harvests;[152] and even clouds
and rain are connected with him, insofar as their powers
are beneficial to the agriculturist. For this reason Zeus
himself becomes the νεφεληγερέτα, the Thunderer and Rain-giver.[153]
This variety of relation to nature will be found
reflected in the myths formed at these two stages respectively.
The altered relation to external nature works a
change even in the old and already fully formed myths,
and lays down for them a new tendency in accordance
with the altered conception of nature. Thus the myth
which was already formed at an earlier stage of civilisation
frequently still possesses enough power of resistance to
preserve, in spite of adaptation to new views, much of the
character formerly impressed on it by a past stage of
civilisation. But the new myth must bear only the impress
of the new stage at which its existence begins.
For as the capacity for creating language does not exhaust
all its force at once, but still continues to form new
modes of speech whenever an alteration of circumstances
demands them, so it is with myths. As the agriculturist
.bn 095.png
.pn +1
creates new words for his new circumstances and ideas, so
also he creates new myths.
.fn 151
See Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, 3rd ed., I. 38.
.fn-
.fn 152
Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, I. 169.
.fn-
.fn 153
As the myth grows more and more into a religion, and the conception of
a mighty god who excels all others becomes fixed, the production of thunder
and rain, &c., is gradually transferred to this originally solar god (see also
Max Müller, Chips, &c., I. 357 et seq.). The sharp division made above is
therefore absolutely true only of the purely mythological stage. Conversely
Indra and Varuṇa, originally figures belonging to the gloomy cloudy and rainy
sky, which take the highest places in the Indian religion, are in the Vedic
Hymns endowed with solar traits.
.fn-
.sp 2
§ 2. What therefore especially distinguishes the
Nomad’s myth from the Agriculturist’s is mainly referable
to the different position occupied at these two stages
by the dark night-sky on the one hand and the brilliant,
warm, sunny sky on the other. The myth is not a merely
objective[154] expression for the phenomena of nature. For
what is ordinarily and in common life called purely objective
description, is almost an impossibility, seeing that no
one with all possible exertion, restraint and self-abnegation
can put off all his individuality; and this is true,
in a much higher degree, of the myth. It is incorrect
to speak of objective reporters or historians. For how
would it be possible for me, giving a report on an event,
whether as eye-witness or as critical sifter of the statements
of others, to speak of it without being myself the
Speaker? And the single fact that I am the speaker,
impresses on my report a different stamp from that which
the report of another would have borne. Compare
so-called objective historical narratives from different
decads—not to speak of hundreds or thousands of years.
How much more must the subjectivity of the myth-creators
be impressed on the myths of different periods
of civilisation! Now it is undoubtedly true that the
special, sharply characteristic intellectual individuality
of persons is only developed in direct proportion with the
advance of the culture of the mind. The more education
a man has, the more can he give expression to his inner
self and make its influence felt; and with the advance of
education, the just claims of Individuality will also receive
more and more attention, both in society and in law.
.bn 096.png
.pn +1
This process can be traced upwards from animals of low
organisation to man, and within the human race can be
confirmed through its various stages of development,
geographical and historical. At the myth-creating stage,
intellectual uniformity prevails almost universally, in all
individuals. Consequently here only the sum total of
the men who are creating language and myth has any
power; the individual could not effect anything of his
own, different from the work of others. There is no such
thing as either language or myth of a single individual;[155]
and what Steinthal says in reference to national songs,
is equally true of both of them, that the mind which
produces them, ‘is the mind of a multitude of persons
without individuality, held together by physical and
mental relationship; and whatever is mentally produced
by this multitude is a creation of the common mind, i.e.
of the nation.’[156] And just for this reason the common
mind in each of the various epochs of civilisation has its
own characteristic impress, a tendency and fundamental
conception, which distinguish it from those of the preceding
epoch.
.fn 154
Those to whom the philosophical terms objective and subjective are not
familiar must understand them respectively as impersonal or impartial, and
personal or partial; the former being that which is outside the thinker’s personality,
the latter that which is within him, and therefore often the reflected
image of external things on his own mind.—Tr.
.fn-
Among the Nomads, then, the dark, cloudy heaven
of night is the sympathetic mythical figure; they imagine
it conquering, or if it is overcome, give to its fall a tragic
character, so that it falls lamented and worthy rather of
victory than of ruin; and the Nomad’s grief for the defeated
power is propagated from age to age far beyond the
mythical period. The sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter is
still lamented from time to time by the daughters of
Israel. It is just the reverse with the myth of the Agriculturist.
He makes the brilliant heaven of day-time
conquer, and the gloomy cloudy heaven or the dark night
.bn 097.png
.pn +1
fall; he accompanies the victory of the warm heaven of
the day with cries of triumph and applause, and his hymns
immortalise what he felt and thought on this victory.
Here it is the defeat of the sunny heaven that attunes him
to lamentation. The fallen Samson is a tragical figure.
Every reader will be able himself to supply the application
of these general propositions to the myth of the
Hebrews, if he pays attention to the chapter in which the
chief figures of the Hebrew mythology were brought forward,
with the chief traits by which they are accompanied
in Mythology. I should deem it superfluous to prosecute
this application further, as it is to be found in every case
in the nature of the myth itself.
.fn 155
On the disappearance of individuality in direct proportion to antiquity,
see Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues,
Berlin 1836, p. 4. Lazarus appears to concede to the individual too
much influence on the origin of speech; see Leben der Seele II. 115.
.fn-
.fn 156
See the article ‘Das Epos’ in Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, &c. 1868,
V. 8, 10.
.fn-
But it is not only from a feeling of sympathy towards
the heaven of night and clouds that the Nomad puts it in
the foreground. This aspect of heaven is to him also the
datum, the prius, the natural, which the heaven of day
afterwards opposes as foe and persecutor. With the
nature of Nomadism, and especially of the night-wanderings,
is also connected the Reckoning of time by Nights.
This has been best preserved by the Arabs, who count by
nights, instead of days, as we do. It is especially marked
in the determination of the distance between two places
and of the length of a journey: e.g. ‘His face perspires
with desire for the payment held back for long nights (i.e.
for a long time);’[157] ‘Between Damascus and the place
where Walîd b. Yazîd lived in the desert are four nights;’[158]
‘I will give him five hundred dînârs and a camel, on
which he can travel for twelve nights;’[159] in a poem of Abû
Zeyd al-ʿAbshamî, ‘When the tribe travels for sixteen
nights’ (iḏa-l-ḳaumu sârat sittat ʿashrata leylatan).[160] This
Arabic idiom is so firmly established that in the opposite
case, when a period is for once to be expressed in days,
the equivalent expressed in nights is added as a more
.bn 098.png
.pn +1
exact definition; e.g. ‘So that there lay between them
and their home a distance of two days or three nights.’[161]
With the reckoning of time by nights two other practices
are connected. First, the Night has priority before the
Day; therefore among the Arabs and the Hebrews (as
also among the later Jews), the two peoples which, as we
shall see, preserved the feeling of nomadism longer than
the Aryans, the day begins with the evening. ‘There was
evening, there was morning—one day.’ A residuum of
the old nomadic conception is found in the Egyptian myth
that Thum, the form of the sun’s nocturnal existence, was
born before Ra, the sun’s form by day. Secondly, chronology
is thereby connected chiefly with the nocturnal
heaven and the moon. It is to be observed on this subject
that in nations which begin to count the day from the
evening, the moon is the central figure and the starting
point in the chronology of greater periods.[162] Seyffarth,
in an essay entitled, ‘Did the Hebrews before the Destruction
of Jerusalem reckon by lunar months?’ (published
in 1848 in the Zeitschrift der D.M.G., II. 347 sqq.),
endeavoured to defend the thesis that the Hebrew chronology
was originally founded on solar months, which were
not supplanted by lunar months till between the second
and fourth century after Christ; but he supports this
theory by arguments which cannot stand against profounder
criticism. It must rather be assumed that the
original lunar year at the beginning of agricultural life
was united with the observation of the solar periods (see
Knobel, Commentary on Exodus, p.95), so as to produce
very early compensation of the difference between them;
but that in the various attempts at compensation, which
.bn 099.png
.pn +1
ended with the fixing of the calendar and the arrangement
of the intercalary month, the reckoning by moons
remained in the foreground, as is evident in the mode of
compensation. In reference to the Arabs also, Sprenger
has fully proved in the essay to which we have already
referred in this chapter, that the solar element of chronology
was subordinate, and that in the old times before
Moḥammed the lunar reckoning was in force.
.fn 157
Nöldeke, Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber, p. 185. 12.
.fn-
.fn 158
Kitâb al-aġânî, VI. 137. 17.
.fn-
.fn 159
Durrat al-ġauwâs (ed. Thorbecke), p. 178. 4.
.fn-
.fn 160
Yâḳût, I. 934. 2.
.fn-
.fn 161
Romance of ʿAntar, IV. 97. 2.
.fn-
.fn 162
This connexion is found among the Polynesians: ‘The time-reckoning in
all Polynesia conformed to the moon. They reckoned by nights,’ &c., Gerland,
Anthropologie der Naturvölker. 71. Only the nights had names, the days
had none, ibid., pp. 72. Both the chronology according to moons and the counting
of days by nights are linguistically demonstrated of the Melanesian group.
See the comparison in Gerland, ibid., pp. 616–619.
.fn-
As on another occasion we shall recur to the fact that
among the Aryans the Indians retained a certain degree
of nomadic sentiment more distinctly than any other
Aryans, and that this is impressed on their literature and
on many of their institutions, so here we may observe the
same in reference to their chronology. In the Vedas, the
oldest literature of the Sanskrit people, we find the lunar
year of twelve months, with the occasional addition of a
thirteenth or intercalary month.[163] It is remarkable that
on this subject we find still more reminiscences of the
nomadic life among the Persians. In the whole book of
Avesta, in passages where the shining heavenly bodies are
enumerated, they appear in this invariable order: Stars,
Moon, and Sun, the sun always occupying the last place.
And we even find also the reckoning of time by nights
exactly as it is among the Arabs; which enables Spiegel
to draw the just inference that the ancient Persians
reckoned by lunar years.[164] According to Bunsen[165] the
Delphic myth of the purification of Apollo likewise points
to the conclusion that the Hellenes in later times substituted
the solar for the old lunar chronology.
The Solar chronology belongs to the Agriculturist, in
opposition to the Nomad. As the night and the nocturnal
sky forms the foreground to the nomad, so the agricultural
stage of civilisation leads the sun to victory, and the sun
.bn 100.png
.pn +1
becomes the measure and the starting point of its
chronology. With the advance to agriculture the lunar
year is superseded by the Magnus Annus, or ἡλιακόν,
which was also called ὁ θεοῦ ἐνιαυτός. Yet very curiously,
as the remains of nomadism in general may be long
visible and be unconsciously perpetuated in the ideas of
the agriculturist, it is the mode of calculating time that
echoes the nomadic ideas the longest, and even survives
in ages of more advanced culture. Of the Gauls, e.g.,
Julius Caesar reports that they counted by nights, not by
days.[166] Tacitus says the same of the ancient Germans.[167]
In one case, namely in the English word ‘fortnight,’[168] which
is a speaking proof that the ancestors of those who now
use the word reckoned time by nights, one of the most
advanced nations of the present time has not yet left off
counting by nights. Other languages also, spoken by
nations which have long accepted the solar reckoning,
preserve memorials of the old nomadic lunar reckoning.
In Hungarian and other languages of the Ugric stock the
expression ‘hopping year’ (szökő év) for leap-year,[169] in
connexion with other similar phenomena, points to a
chronology of lunar years, as the Hungarian Academician
Paul Hunfalvy has very fully demonstrated, with important
documents.[170] The residuum of the lunar chronology which
has stood the longest, and which, despite the generally
preponderating solar character of our reckoning of time,
and despite the love of a decimal system inherent in the
.bn 101.png
.pn +1
first French Revolution, is now fixed firmly for a long
future period, is the Week—a notion specifically connected
with the Moon. Yet it has long been made evident that
even this division of the month into four weeks was in
antiquity sometimes exchanged for a solar division into
three decads. This was due to the influence of the
agricultural stage of civilisation giving prominence to the
Sun. We know this, e.g., of the Egyptians, and it was
therefore long doubted whether they knew the division
into weeks at all. But Sir Gardner Wilkinson collected a
series of proofs that among the Egyptians the later system
of decads was historically preceded by the division of the
months into four weeks of seven days each.[171] It is also
tolerably certain of the Mexicans, that of their two methods
of reckoning time, which in later times were in force side
by side, the Tonulpohualli or ‘solar reckoning’ and the
Metzlapohualli or ‘lunar reckoning,’ the latter was historically
the earlier, but was retained in the time of the solar
chronology, as is so frequently the case in computations
of time.[172] We ought, moreover, also to consider the computation
of longer periods of time by Masika, i.e. rainy seasons,
which prevails among the Unyamwesi in Africa.[173] How
powerful is the posthumous influence even on later times
of the nomadic lunar division into weeks,—an influence
which again and again obtained validity, even after it had
been once supplanted by the solar reckoning by decads, we
see best among the Romans. They had originally a consistent
lunar computation; even their year consisted of
ten months, the sun’s cycle of twelve months being
ignored; and they divided the month into four weeks.[174]
Later, this fourfold division gave way to a threefold
division into three decads, nonae, kalendae, idus; but yet
.bn 102.png
.pn +1
they returned at last to the week again, and called its
seven days by the names of the sun, the moon and the five
planets. However, the division of the month into three
decads is not always connected with solar chronology; it
is also found in combination with lunar reckoning, when
three phases of the moon are acknowledged (as in the three-headed
forms of the moon in the Greek mythology).[175]
.fn 163
Laz. Geiger, Ursprung und Entwicklung der menschlichen Sprache und
Vernunft, II. 270.
.fn-
.fn 164
Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen, in German, II. xcviii. and III. xx.
.fn-
.fn 165
God in History, II. 433–5.
.fn-
.fn 166
De Bello Gallico, VI. 18: ‘Spatia omnis temporis non numero dierum, sed
noctium finiunt; dies natales et mensium et annorum initia sic observant, ut
noctem dies subsequatur.’
.fn-
.fn 167
Germania, XI: ‘Nec dierum numerum, ut nos, sed noctium computant.
Sic constituunt, sic condicunt: nox ducere diem videtur,’ in connexion with the
public assemblies at the changes of the moon. The fact must not be overlooked
that, according to Caesar, ibid. 22, the Germans ‘agriculturae non student,
majorque pars victus eorum in lacte, caseo, carne consistit.’ See also, on this
subject, Pictet, Les origines Indo-Européennes et les Aryas primitifs, II. 588.
.fn-
.fn 168
And in ‘Se'nnight.’—Tr.
.fn-
.fn 169
The identical English term ‘Leap year’ is another apposite example.—Tr.
.fn-
.fn 170
See the Hungarian review, Magyar Nyelvőr, I. 26–28.
.fn-
.fn 171
In Rawlinson’s History of Herodotus, App. to Book II. chap. VII. § 16–20
(ed. of 1862, vol. II. p. 282 et seq.).
.fn-
.fn 172
Waitz, l. c. IV. 174.
.fn-
.fn 173
See Karl Andree, Forschungsreisen, &c., II. 205.
.fn-
.fn 174
Mommsen, History of Rome, I. 217 (ed. 1862), 230 (ed. 1868).
.fn-
A five-days’ period has been proved to exist in many
nations as the equivalent of our week (among the Chinese,
Mongol tribes, Azteks, and Mexicans.)[176] But this division
into pentads must be connected with an original quinary
system of numeration, to the linguistic importance of
which Pott has devoted a special treatise.[177] In Old Calabar
on the west coast of Africa a week of eight days occurs;
most curiously, as the people cannot count beyond five.[178]
A priori this would seem impossible; but it is vouched for
by an observer so accurate as Bastian.
.sp 2
§ 3. As the Nomadic stage of civilisation of necessity
historically precedes the Agricultural, so also that stage
of the myths at which the nocturnal, dark or cloudy
heaven has precedence of the bright heaven of day comes
before the stage at which the latter occupies the foreground
and plays the part of a beloved figure or favourite. Moreover,
it cannot be assumed that this second stage of the
formation of myths has grown up without being preceded
by the first stage; for it is simply impossible that any
portion of mankind should have lived through the stage
of Nomadism, which perhaps lasted for thousands of years,
without having thrown its conceptions of the world into
mythic forms. Everyone knows, and no one now doubts,
that the most prominent figure in the mythology of
.bn 103.png
.pn +1
the Aryans, which later at the theological stage took the
rank of a supreme god, was the brilliant sunny heaven, Dyu
(Dyaus, nom.), Θεός, Zeus, on whom the powerful sympathy
of the Aryan was concentrated, and to whom he turned
with admiring devotion as soon as he began to pray and
compose hymns. On the other hand, it could not escape the
notice of the inquirer on the domain of Aryan mythology
and history of religion, that the very oldest and most
genuine representative of the Aryan mind seems itself
to form a sort of exception to this universal idea. The
Indians, namely, among whom Dyu certainly was elevated
to theological importance,[179] do not make him their
supreme god, but Indra, who, as his very name shows,
(indu = ‘a drop’) is identical with the rainy sky (Jupiter
pluvius),[180] and Varuṇa, who, in contrast to the shining
Mitra, was the gloomy night-sky (from var = ‘to cover’).[181]
Max Müller, whose merit it mainly is to have raised the
Aryan Dyu to the high throne which he now occupies
in the history of Aryan religion, explains this strange fact
by supposing that Indra drove Dyu, the oldest of the gods,
from the place which he had formerly held even among
the Indians. ‘If in India,’ he thinks, ‘Dyu did not grow
to the same proportions as Zeus in Greece, the reason
is simply that dyu retained throughout too much of its
appellative power,[182] and that Indra, the new name and
the new god, absorbed all the channels that could have
supported the life of Dyu,’[183] so that he died away.
.fn 175
Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, I. 555.
.fn-
.fn 176
Sir Gardner Wilkinson, in Rawlinson’s Herodotus, ed. 1862, vol. II. p. 283,
§ 17.
.fn-
.fn 177
Die quinäre und vigesimale Zählmethode, Halle 1867.
.fn-
.fn 178
Waitz, l. c. II. p. 224, compared with Bastian, Geographische und ethnologische
Bilder, Jena 1874, pp. 144, 155.
.fn-
From what has been explained above, it is evident
that the subject might present itself in a different light.
It is well known that the people of India represents, both
.bn 104.png
.pn +1
in its language and in its mythology, the oldest stage of
the Aryan mind attainable by us, and after it follows the
people of Iran. The ancient literature of these two
nations, but that of the Indians more than that of the
Persians, stands much nearer in its ideas to the nomadic
life than any other documents of the Aryan mind which
have been preserved to us. It is then no wonder if (it
being a rule in all physical as well as intellectual development,
that at a later stage of progress residua of a previous
one remain behind unnoticed) these nations, which
at the time of their oldest known intellectual productions
were not far removed from nomadism, exhibit more traces
of nomadism than others, even if they be found to have
then fully passed out of the nomadic stage. We have
already referred to this in treating of the nomadic elements
in chronology, and now return again to the same point.
In some things the Iranians preserved the traditions of
nomadism more firmly and persistently than the Indians,
who generally stood nearer to the original forms. This is
to be explained from the fact that in Persia nomadism
itself lived longer as an actual stage of civilisation, and
was more fostered, than in India; for indeed it even now
maintains its position there. For just as in the time of
Herodotus (I. 125) the Persians were partly migratory
nomads (νομάδες), partly settled agriculturists (ἀροτῆρες),
so now a proportion, varying from a quarter to a half, of
the population of modern Persia still leads a nomadic life.[184]
One characteristic of the nomadic period is a social and
political division into tribes, which in many civilised
nations is retained into the time of fixed dwellings as
a residuum of nomadism. Without pausing over the
Thracians, who according to the account of Herodotus,[185]
found it impossible to throw off all reference to tribe-differences
and bring their power to bear through national
.bn 105.png
.pn +1
unity, we will refer to the Ionians as an example, whose
divisions into φρατρίαι, γένη, and γεννῆται, have been accurately
traced.[186] Now among the Indians we find no trace
of tribal divisions worth mentioning, but very soon come
across the Caste—an hereditary division according to
modes of occupation, which cannot be formed at any
earlier stage than that of fixed dwellings, since this gave
the first impulse to the practice of arts and trades, which
is not conceivable at the nomadic stage. Among the
Iranians, on the other hand, the tribal division maintained
itself for a long time parallel with that according to occupation,
which was better suited to the time of transition
to a fixed life.[187] Even on the Caste system of the Parsees
the tribal division still exerts a definite influence. The
sacerdotal caste is a distinct tribe, a family, just like the
Levites among the Hebrews;[188] and in ancient times many
sacerdotal functions, ‘the smaller and less important religious
duties, were assigned to the heads of the various
subdivisions of the tribe.’ The name of the priests,
môbed (which Spiegel explains as umâna-païti = ‘chief
head of the tribe or family,’ perhaps equivalent to the
Hebrew rôsh bêth âbh), in itself indicates the original
universality of the bestowal of the sacerdotal functions on
the head of the tribe.[189]
.fn 179
See on this J. Muir, Contributions to a Knowledge of the Vedic Theogon
and Mythology (Journal of Royal Asiatic Society, N.S., 1864, I. pp. 54–58).
.fn-
.fn 180
Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language, Second Series, p. 430.
.fn-
.fn 181
Max Müller, Chips, &c., II. p. 65. Muir, l. c. p. 77 et seq.
.fn-
.fn 182
This is connected with Müller’s view that ‘language must die before it
can enter into a new stage of mythological life’ (Lectures on the Science of
Language, Second Series, p. 426).
.fn-
.fn 183
Lectures, &c., Second Series, p. 432.
.fn-
.fn 184
Rawlinson, History of Herodotus, I. 211.
.fn-
.fn 185
V. 3: ἀλλὰ γὰρ τοῦτο ἄπορόν σφι καὶ ἀμήχανον μή κοτε ἐγγένηται· εἰσὶ δὴ
κατὰ τοῦτο ἀσθενέες.
.fn-
.fn 186
The literature is clearly and concisely enumerated in G. Rawlinson’s
essay On the Early History of the Athenians, §8-11 (Hist. of Herod., Bk. II.
Essay II.). But it must be added that the idea of the learned author—‘The
Attic castes, if they existed, belong to the very infancy of the nation, and had
certainly passed into tribes long before the reign of Codrus’—does not agree
with the historical sequence demanded by the connexion of the tribes with
nomadic life and that of the caste with fixed tenure. In the very nature of the
case the division into tribes is proper to nomadism, which knows of no systematic
occupation with arts and trades, whereas the division into castes presupposes
such an occupation with trades and arts as only a sedentary life
renders possible. Therefore, between tribes and castes the priority will always
have to be assigned to the former.
.fn-
.fn 187
Spiegel, Ueber die eranische Stammesverfassung (Abhandlungen der kön.
bair. Akad. d. W., 1855, Bd. VII.); Kasten und Stände in der arischen Vorzeit
(Ausland, 1874, No. 36).
.fn-
.fn 188
Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen, in German, III. vi.
.fn-
.fn 189
Ibid. II. xiv.-xv.
.fn-
.bn 106.png
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As in Iran a fundamental social institution, so among
the Sanskrit people a prominent mythological fact is the
notable residuum of nomadism: viz. the fact that by them
the first seat and highest rank among the figures of the
myth and subsequently among the gods is assigned not to
Dyu, but to Varuṇa and Indra. It is not to the field-guarding,
harvest-sending, shining sunny heaven, but to
Varuṇa the coverer and Indra the rain-sender, that the
nomad directs his admiration and sympathy, his veneration
and devotion. This relation towards Indra was preserved
by the Indian from the nomadic period—from a
time before that remarkable people had chosen a permanent
abode on the banks of the Ganges and Indus.
With this agrees very well the idea which Roth worked
out in an essay on ‘the highest gods of the Aryan peoples,’
that Varuṇa is as old as the Aryan period, and is the
common property of all members of the race; even the
conception of Indra being later than that of Varuṇa, and
specially Indian.[190] But it is not only among the Indians
that we find this memory of nomadic life impressed on
the mythology; its traces may be found also in the Hellenic
mythology, not however as a positive, actual existence,
as in India, but still as an historical reminiscence.
According to Hesiod’s Theogony, the dominion of Zeus
was preceded by that of Uranus; i.e. before the Hellenic
people, choosing a settled agricultural life, brought
Zeus, the bright sunny heaven, into the foreground, the
centre of their world was Uranus (Varuṇa), the gloomy
overclouded sky. There is scarcely any serious reason for
regarding, as Bunsen[191] and some writers on the history of
religion do, the kingdom of Zeus alone as an original intellectual
product of the Hellenic people, and putting aside
Uranus as merely a result of Theogonic speculation, or
for even seeing in Uranus a figure borrowed from a
Semitic source. The succession—Uranus, Zeus—rather
.bn 107.png
.pn +1
corresponds perfectly with the successive stages of civilisation,
nomadism and agriculture, and all that Hesiod
did was to clothe an historical, natural and true tradition
of the Hellenic people in the form of a theogonic story.
With this, other points of the Theogony seem to be
clearly and unmistakably connected, namely those in
which we perceive the idea of the priority of the Night.
Among the powers preceding the rule of Zeus in Hesiod’s
Theogony, Chaos is named—a word signifying according
to its original sense ‘darkness’—and Tartarus. We well
know the theological meaning of the latter word—the
subterranean place to which the souls of the dead go;
but there is no doubt that it originally denoted ‘a gloomy
pit, never lighted by the sun,’ or ‘darkness’ in general.
Therefore Tartarus figures in Mythology as father of
Typhon and Echidna, and therefore Nyx is his daughter.
Then it agrees well with nomadic ideas that Tartarus is
called ‘father of waters and springs,’ and that he bears the
epithet ‘the first born’ (πρωτόγονος). On Hebrew ground
also we meet a similar transition. In Job XXXVI. 20, the
word laylâ ‘night’ is used quite in the sense of ‘nether
world;’ which is true also of ṣalmâweth, denoting ‘darkness’
in general, and used only secondarily with special
reference to Orcus.
.fn 190
Zeitschrift d. D. M. G. 1852, VI. 67 et seq.
.fn-
.fn 191
God in History, II. 8.
.fn-
.sp 2
§ 4. We have above just touched the confines of religious
history, though it was strictly speaking, only a
border territory of Mythology, which ought not to be confounded
with religious history. But we must here allow
ourselves an excursion into the neighbouring territory.
For it ought not to pass unnoticed that, as the myth
which has the night-sky in its foreground always precedes
that which has the bright sky of day in its centre, the
former corresponding to the nomadic, the latter to the
settled agricultural life, the same sequence can also be
observed in the history of religion. There are nations,
which, when already standing at the nomadic stage, work
.bn 108.png
.pn +1
out for themselves a theistic religion. As theistic religion
always grows up out of the elements of myths, the religion
of Nomadism must be essentially a worship of the night-heaven.
Then, when the progress to the agricultural
stage works the revolution in man’s ideas of the world,
and in the relation of his mind to external nature, of
which I spoke above, when he cleaves more to the Sun
and pays his reverence to him, then the worship of the
nocturnal starry or overclouded rainy heaven is naturally
supplanted by one of the diurnal heaven and the sun, and
only residua of the ancient ideas and the ancient objects
of worship are propagated into the new epoch, sometimes
continuing and remaining in force unmodified, and sometimes
interpreted anew in the sense of the new system.
The religion and the worship of the nomad stand to those
of the agriculturist in the same relation of historical succession
as the two similar stages of mythology to each
other. At the later stage, the elements of solar religion
can undoubtedly stand peacefully side by side with the
residua of the earlier stage of religion. Similarly, when
nomads have relations with townsmen who have a solar
religion already powerfully developed, many elements of
the solar worship may find their way into the nomadic religion;
of which the well-known accounts of the religion
of some Arabic Beduin tribes furnish plenty of examples.
To this an outside observer may probably reduce the report
brought by William Gifford Palgrave, the daring explorer
of Central Arabia, of the adoration of the Sun among the
Bedawî.[192] But in the order of genesis the worship of the
night-sky, inclusive of that of the moon, precedes that of
the day-sky and the sun. It was observed long ago that
wherever sun-worship exists, moon-worship also is always
to be found, being a residuum of the earlier stage of religion;
but not in the reverse order.[193] We shall have to revert in
a subsequent chapter to this fact, in speaking of the
.bn 109.png
.pn +1
religion of the nomadic Hebrews, and will therefore only
refer to a few points in the ancient Arabic religion. If
Blau is right in interpreting the old Arabic proper name
ʿAbd Duhmân as ‘Servant of the Darkness of Night,’[194]
the theological importance of the night-sky to the
ancient Arabs in general is proved; for it is well
known that in Arabic proper names compounded with
ʿAbd ‘servant’ the second member of the compound is a
god’s name, or at least a name of theological meaning.[195]
To the same class belongs the Moon-worship of the
ancient Arabs, which is sufficiently attested.[196] The
clearest evidence of a worship of the rainy sky and the
storm among the Arabs is furnished by the name
Ḳuzaḥ, to which storms and rainbows were attributed
(see the following chapter #§ 12:sec5_12#). Arabian etymologists,
among whom may be mentioned the author of the Ḳâmûs
and the author of the Supercommentary on that dictionary,
publishing at Bûlâḳ, have tried many combinations
in order to find a suitable explanation of this
Ḳuzaḥ, with especial reference to the meaning ‘rainbow;’
all the derivative significations of the root ḳzḥ, embellishment,
variety of colour, lifting oneself, are brought
forward to yield a sufficient ground for the appellation.
This proves how little the Mohammedan now knows of
his heathen antiquity; the use of the name Ḳuzaḥ
must have been interdicted. Al-Damîrî, in his work
Almasâ ʾil al-manthûrâ, finds a deep-seated error in the
word itself, instead of which he wishes to read kazaʿ
.bn 110.png
.pn +1
with ʿayn, with the meaning ‘cloud.’[197] But it is probable
that this name Ḳuzaḥ is derived from the signification
‘mingere,’ which belongs to the corresponding verb (used
specially of beasts), and that it is due to a mythological
conception of the Rain. This circumstance tempts us
to connect the Hebrew word bûl ‘rain, rainy month’
with the Arabic bâla, yabûlu ‘mingere.’ If so, the
combination of this word with the name of the God
Baʿal, which certainly does occur in Himyaric in the form
Bûl, must have been made later, from a misunderstanding
of the mythological relations.[198] The theological power
of Ḳuzaḥ among the ancient Arabs is evident as well
from its being explained by Moslem interpreters as the
name of a devil or angel, as also from the fact that geographical
appellations which are in force in the ritual of
the old religion are connected with it.[199] These elements
of the worship of the night and the cloudy and stormy
sky must have priority before those of the solar worship
which are found subsisting beside them. F. Spiegel
states this succession to be a law in the history of religion.
‘It is not the sun,’ he says,[200] ‘that first attracted the attention
of the savage by its light.... On the other hand,
the night-sky, whose lights form a contrast to the darkness
of the earth, is much more calculated to attract the
gaze of the savage to itself. And among the heavenly
lights it is the moon that first absorbs the sight, as well
from its size as from its readily discernible changes; and
after it a group of particularly brilliant stars.... We find
moon-worship among almost utterly savage tribes in Africa
and America; and it is noteworthy that there the moon
is always treated as a man, the sun as a woman; not till
.bn 111.png
.pn +1
later are these relations inverted. From this we may infer
that the lunar worship is older than the solar.’ We cannot,
however, agree with Spiegel when he gives as the reason
why darkness attracted the special attention of man, that
the sun was to him a matter of course. We see the same
story of the lunar religion repeat itself again in the history
of the Babylonian-Assyrian religion. Hur-ki (Assyrian
Sin) is historically the older and earliest prominent object
of worship of the ancient Accadian kingdom; and the
further we advance towards the beginnings of the history,
the more does the worship of the moon preponderate. The
monarchs of the first dynasties regard her as their protector,
and the name of the moon often enters into composition
to form their proper names.[201] In the later empire, that of
Assyria, this prevailing pre-eminence of the moon gradually
ceases. She is supplanted by the sun, under whom
she descends to be a deity of the second rank, the ‘Lord
of the thirty days of the month,’ and ‘Illuminator of the
earth.’[202] That Samas, the sun, is called in the Assyrian
epic of Istar the son of Sin, the moon-god (IV. 2), ‘points,’
as the learned German interpreter of the cuneiform inscriptions
observes, ‘to a veneration of the moon-god in
Babylonia earlier than that of the sun-god,’[203] or else to the
conception of the night preceding the day. Among the
Egyptians, too, it is a later period at which the dominion
of the sun is recognised. The older historical epoch—whether
permeated, as Bunsen expresses it somewhat
obscurely,[204] by a ‘cosmogonic-astral’ idea, or, as Lenormant
describes it in a few bold strokes,[205] possessing very little positive
religion at all—knows as yet nothing of solar worship.
The solar worship of the Egyptians is undoubtedly the
product of a later development of high culture.
.fn 192
Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, I. 8.
.fn-
.fn 193
See Welcker. Griechische Götterlehre, I. 551.
.fn-
.fn 194
Zur hauranischen Alterthumskunde (Zeitschrift der D. M. G., 1861, XV.
444).
.fn-
.fn 195
It should be noted that from Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ, p. 96. II, it
is evidently possible that in such compounds the word ʿabd itself may belong
to the idol; he writes wa-ʿabdu shams^{in} zaʿamû ṣanam^{un} wa-ḳâla ḳaum^{un} bal
ʿaynu mâ^{in} maʿrufat^{un} wa-hua ism^{un} ḳadîm^{un}: ‘ʿAbd Shams is in the opinion
of some an idol, others say it is the name of a well-known spring of water: it
is an old name.’
.fn-
.fn 196
Tuch, Sinaitische Inschriften (Zeitschr. der D. M. G., 1849, III. 202).—Osiander,
Vorislam. Religion der Araber (Zeitschr. der D. M. G., 1853. VII.
483).
.fn-
.fn 197
Tâj-al-ʿarûs, II. 209.
.fn-
.fn 198
Schlottmann, Die Inschrift Eshmunazar’s, Halle 1868, p. 84.
.fn-
.fn 199
Yâḳût, IV. 85. See al-Jawâlîḳî’s Livre des locutions vicieuses (ed. Derenbourg
in Morgenländ. Forschungen), p. 153.
.fn-
.fn 200
Zur vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte, 1 Art. (Ausland 1872), p. 4. See
also 1871, p. 1159.
.fn-
.fn 201
Compare also the Himyaric proper name Ben Sîn (Halévy, Études
sabéennes [Journal Asiat. 1874, II. 543]).
.fn-
.fn 202
Lenormant, Les premières civilisations, II. 158.
.fn-
.fn 203
Schrader, Die Höllenfahrt der Istar, p. 45.
.fn-
.fn 204
Egypt’s Place in Universal History, IV. 342.
.fn-
.fn 205
In his essay on the Egyptian antiquities at the Great Exhibition of 1867
at Paris.
.fn-
.bn 112.png
.pn +1
This phenomenon, the priority of the lunar to the solar
worship, is asserted also by the adherents of a theory of
the history of civilisation usually called the Gynaecocratic,
which was founded and worked out by the Swiss savant
Bachofen in a large book entitled ‘The Gynaecocracy of
Antiquity.’ To the adherents of this theory, who suppose
the lordship of man to have been preceded by a long period
in which the female sex bore rule, the lunar worship is
closely allied to the importance of woman, while the solar
worship is connected with the rule of man. I do not, of
course, deem it a part of my present task to criticise the
Gynaecocratic theory, which has certainly had but small
success in the learned world, or to take up a position
either for or against it. Yet it is satisfactory that the
phenomenon in the history of religion which we have
brought into prominence may find confirmation in another
quarter, where the premisses are utterly different.
.sp 2
§ 5. The first founder of Comparative Mythology,
Professor A. Kuhn, starting from the truth ‘that every
stage of social and political growth has a more or less
peculiar mythological character of its own, and that the
fact of these, so to speak, mythological strata lying side
by side or crossing one another often renders the solution
of mythological enigmas more difficult,’ insisted, primarily
with reference to Aryan mythology, that the mythological
products of each of the great epochs of civilisation ought
to be sifted with reference to the cycles of myths peculiar
to each epoch.[206] He himself ventured on the first
beginnings or elements of such a sifting in a very interesting
and instructive academical treatise ‘On stages of
development in the formation of Myths.’[207] Kuhn finds the
criterion of a myth’s belonging to one or another period
.bn 113.png
.pn +1
of civilisation mainly in the notions and objects with
which the myth has to do. Sun’s hunts were spoken of
in the hunting period, the sun’s cattle in the nomadic, &c.;
and the formation of myths which employed these notions
commenced ‘as soon as the following period had lost the
understanding of the language of the preceding’ (p. 137).
.fn 206
I must explain that the preceding four sections were already written
down, before I could get a sight of Kuhn’s essay, which appeared later.
.fn-
.fn 207
Ueber Entwickelungsstufen der Mythenbildung, Berlin 1874; from the