CHAPTER X.

_THE HEBREW MYTH IN THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY._

If we limit the term _Myth_ to those old sentences which the ancients used in speaking of physical changes and phenomena, then the period with which we have to do in this chapter lies outside the history of the Hebrew Myth; for the latter ceased to have any further growth to chronicle as the influence of Prophetism extended. Now, in place of the free life, organic development and gradual transformation of the myth, we have it in a final and canonical literary form, which we had to use as the only accessible source for discovering the original, and as a handle to guide us in the analytical treatment of its development. But it is not to be supposed that the parts of the Old Testament which we use as sources of knowledge on the Hebrew Myth contain the entire stock of the mythical treasures of the Hebrews, which these very fragments prove to have been very various. It must rather be assumed that in the period separating the final elaboration of these myths from their ultimate reduction to writing, a large portion of the stock was lost; which seems particularly likely, when it is considered how little importance the new religious school attached to this aspect of the Hebrew mind. Some remnants of unwritten stories have been preserved in Tradition; but the Tradition, again, has come down to us in a form which makes it difficult to discriminate the truly traditional from what belongs only to individuals (see _supra_, pp. 32, 33).

Thus the history of the Hebrew Myth after the rise of the Prophets can only be treated as a portion of the history of literature; _i.e._ it endeavours to discover the influences to which the stories were subjected during their reduction to writing. And at the outset we excluded all such investigations from the circle of our present studies.

But after the cessation of Hebrew independence the cycle of Hebrew stories received from another quarter an addition, which, though neither touching the domain of Mythology proper, nor working with elements already furnished by the Hebrew Myth, nevertheless is attached so closely to those stories which were formed by transformation of the old myths, that it ought not to be passed over in silence when we are considering the cycle of Hebrew stories.

We have already had occasion to observe the receptive tendency of the Hebrew mind, which was manifested in its contact with Canaanitish civilisation. At the first assault made by a mind superior to itself, it willingly opened its gates, and even when struggling for its national character and individuality it did not spurn the intellectual property of its antagonists. In the formation of the thought of Jahveh, and especially of the central idea of that thought, we discovered a productive genius for the first time aroused in the Hebrew people. But Jahveism came upon a nation too far gone in political impotence and dissension to be kindled even by such a spark to spiritual action. It found the nation at the very threshold of that political division which not long afterwards it had to lament beside the streams of Babylon. There the prophetic idea lived on, and indeed reached its zenith in the Babylonian Isaiah. But hieratic influences also continued to operate; and the best that the people could effect was the compromise between Jahveism and the sacerdotal tendencies represented by Ezekiel. This compromise found expression at the restoration of the State, and gave its tone and colour to the larger portion of the Biblical literature.

The receptive tendency of the Hebrews manifested itself again prominently during the Babylonian Captivity. Here first they gained an opportunity of forming for themselves a complete and harmonious conception of the world. The influence of Canaanitish civilisation could not then be particularly powerful on the Hebrews; for that civilisation, the highest point of which was attained by the Phenicians, was quite dwarfed by the mental activity exhibited in the monuments of the Babylonian and Assyrian Empire, which we are now able to admire in all their grandeur. There the Hebrews found more to receive than some few civil, political, and religious institutions. The extensive and manifold literature which they found there could not but act on a receptive mind as a powerful stimulus; for it is not to be imagined that the nation when dragged into captivity lived so long in the Babylonian-Assyrian Empire without gaining any knowledge of its intellectual treasures. Schrader’s latest publications on Assyrian poetry have enabled us to establish a striking similarity between both the course of ideas and the poetical form of a considerable portion of the Old Testament, especially of the Psalms, and those of this newly-discovered Assyrian poetry.[713] It would be a great mistake to account for this similarity by reference to a common Semitic origin in primeval times; for we can only resort to that in cases which do not go beyond the most primitive elements of intellectual life and ideas of the world, or designations of things of the external world. Conceptions of a higher and more complicated kind, as well as esthetic points, can certainly not be carried off into the mists of a prehistoric age. It is much better to keep to more real and tangible ground, and to suppose those points of contact between Hebrew and Assyrian poetry which are revealed by Schrader’s, Lenormant’s, and George Smith’s publications, to form part of the contributions made by the highly civilised Babylonians and Assyrians to the Hebrews in the course of the important period of the Captivity.

We see from this that the intellect of Babylon and Assyria exerted a more than passing influence on that of the Hebrews, not merely touching it, but entering deep into it and leaving its own impress upon it. The Assyrian poetry of the kind just mentioned stands in the same relation to that of the Hebrews as does the plain narrative of King Mesha’s Inscription and of some Phenician votive tablets to the narrative texts of the Hebrews, and as does the sacrificial Tablet of Marseilles to the Hebrews’ beginnings of a sacerdotal constitution. The Babylonian and Assyrian influence is of course much more extensive, pregnant and noteworthy.

The most prominent monument of this important influence is presented to us in the Biblical story of the Deluge. It was attempted long ago to discover points of contact between the respective narratives of the universal flood by the guidance of Berosus; but the only possible result of these endeavours was to encourage the old theory of an idea common to all mankind, which expressed itself in the story of a great general flood. To be sure, no obvious reason appears why this idea should force itself unbidden upon the reflexion of ancient humanity. For, with all that we know of the oldest subjects of the thought of mankind from the unquestioned results of Comparative Mythology, we must ask why the idea of an all-destroying flood, or even of a partial one confined to a limited territory, should necessarily occupy the foreground in the oldest picture of the world? In point of fact, a great number of nations are found destitute of any story of a flood. For instance, the oldest Greek mythology has no such idea; it cannot be proved to have been known to the Greeks earlier than the sixth century B.C. Whether it is indigenous and of high antiquity in India has also been doubted by distinguished scholars.[714]

On the other hand, the Cuneiform original of the Assyrian story of the Deluge, discovered by George Smith, has so much similarity, or we may rather say congruity, with the form of the story preserved in the Bible, even with respect to the raven and the dove,[715] that we are entitled to express an opinion _a priori_ on these two narratives, to the effect that they point to a greater community of formation than would be the case if the community dated from the primeval Semitic age. For in that case, supposing the elements of the Deluge-story to have been so fully developed in the earliest Semitic age as we find them in the Bible and the Cuneiform Inscriptions, we must find something similar in all other Semitic nations also. It would be almost unaccountable why nothing can be traced among the Phenicians that could be placed side by side with this Deluge-story, and would be the more extraordinary if the conception of such a story took place in the age when the North-Semitic tribes were still living together.

The conclusion is accordingly almost irresistible, that the Hebrews borrowed this whole story of the Deluge from the Babylonians, and propagated it in a form resembling the Babylonian original, even in its details and mode of expression. Moreover, Babylon is the district most of all suited to the working-out of a story of Deluge; for it is certain from Von Bohlen’s and Tuch’s demonstrations, that such fully developed stories of floods can only occur in nations which have in their territory rivers liable to great overflows. Consequently the region of the great twin streams of Mesopotamia is the most likely cradle for an elaborate Deluge story.[716] A.H. Sayce, one of the most eminent English Assyriologists, in the _Theological Review_ of July 1873, propounds the view that the Biblical account of the Deluge consists of two narratives: the older being Elohistic and based on a Hebrew Deluge-story, the other being placed by its side by a Jahveistic narrator in the Babylonian Captivity, and being identical with the Babylonian story preserved in the document consulted by George Smith.[717] Now, independently of the doubt as to the existence of an exclusively Hebrew Deluge-story, and of the fact that identity with the Babylonian stories has been proved of the Elohistic account also,[718] even Sayce’s conception of the matter quite suffices to establish the view that the Hebrews in Babylonia at least amplified, if they did not actually construct, the Biblical story of the Deluge. It cannot be true, as Max Duncker[719] lately wrote, ‘that these stories present to us an _ancient_ and _common_ possession of the Semitic tribes of the Euphrates and Tigris country.’ We cannot assume that in those primeval, prehistoric times when the Semitic tribes, or at least the Northern group of that race, lived all together before the separation, it matters not where, they formed in common stories which presuppose a high and advanced view of the world, like the Cosmogonies and the story of the Deluge connected therewith. At that earliest stage of human life, man labours with far simpler apperceptions than those which are requisite to form such stories. The myth in its very earliest mould, in which it is connected with the formation of language, occupies him first. But at all events, the Babylonian story received in its Hebrew transformation a purification in a monotheistic sense; or as Duncker himself appropriately adds, ‘the account of the Deluge lies before us in a purer and more dignified shape in the writings of the Hebrews.’

I showed in a previous section that Noah is one of those Solar figures of which the Biblical source has still preserved some mythical features. There is no intrinsic reason why the story of the Deluge should be particularly tacked on to the person of Noah; the Assyrian tablets give Hasisadra as the name of the man saved from the flood. If the connexion of Noah with the Deluge were to be maintained at all hazards, it would be best to argue that ancient mythical traditions called him (as well as Adam) the progenitor of the human race; the other Solar figures generally assume a position hostile to the nation. The harmonising tendency, which I have already had occasion to notice, might then easily make use of Noah as hero for the story of the Deluge learned at Babylon, since here was an excellent opportunity to establish his title as ancestor of the human race. But it may be taken for granted that this use was made of Noah’s name, not only at the later period when the Deluge-story was inserted in the great mass of traditional stories, but as soon as ever the Babylonian story was borrowed by the Hebrews. This is guaranteed by the Prophet of the Captivity, who calls the Deluge mê Nôach ‘the water of Noah.’ ‘For like the water of Noah is this (thy distress) unto me, of which (water) I swore against the water of Noah coming again over the earth [Gen. VIII. 21 _et seq._]: so do I swear against being wroth with thee and rebuking thee’ (Is. LIV. 9). In Babylon, also, the Hebrews appear to have received an impulse to work out such a history of Creation, intricate and plastically jointed, as is contained in the opening passages of Genesis. I do not mean that the cosmogony of the Babylonians was the original from which that of the Bible was copied, for in this particular matter of cosmogonies the construction of the Biblical account exhibits great individuality. But the tendency of the mind to inquire after the first beginning of both the physical and the moral order of the world was first fully roused during the residence at Babylon, so far advanced in speculations of this nature. I am confirmed in this assumption by the Babylonian story of Creation, lately discovered and edited by George Smith, which, as presented by that learned pioneer, shows great accordance with the corresponding account in Genesis.[720] It is at all events an element of the subject in hand which cannot be left unnoticed, that the notion of the bôrê and yôṣêr ‘Creator’ (the terms used in the cosmogony in Genesis), as an integral part of the idea of God, are first brought into common usage by the Prophets of the Captivity, especially the Babylonian Isaiah, who is particularly fond of the expression bôrê.[721] The older Prophets also know Jahveh as Creator of the world; but it is self-evident that they do not so strongly emphasise the idea, or refer to it so frequently, as for instance the Isaiah of the Captivity. Amos IV. 13, for example, says, ‘For lo, he that formeth mountains and createth wind, and declareth to man what is his meditation, that maketh the dawn winged and walketh on the high places of the earth—his name is Jahveh the God of Hosts.’ This passage stands in no relation whatever to the cosmogony of Genesis; indeed, in speaking of the dawn as gifted with wings (see _supra_, p. 116), it refers rather to the mythical conceptions of antiquity, as also the older Isaiah frequently does. The Prophet of the Captivity, on the other hand, refers to the ideas of the cosmogony in Genesis, as is clear in Is. XL. 26, XLV. 7 (where he speaks of the Creator of light and darkness), XLII. 5, XLV. 18, especially this last passage, which refers to the banishment of the tôhû through the act of creation. By the story of creation the celebration of the Sabbath was established on entirely new grounds. Whilst in the older conception (which finds expression in the Decalogue in Deuteronomy V. 15) the Sabbath has a purely theocratic significance, and is intended to remind the Hebrews of their miraculous deliverance from Egyptian slavery after long servitude, the later version of the Decalogue (Ex. XX. 11) justifies it by referring to the history of the Creation, in which after six days of work the Creator took rest.

We cannot here enter into the question of the geographical position of the ʿÊden of the Bible, nor even inquire whether the original of the idea of Eden is found in the corresponding feature of Iranian tradition; but it may be assumed that the Biblical account of Eden also arose at Babylon. It may indeed be generally presumed that the Biblical accounts of the Cosmogony and the origin of all things had not, like the matter of the old mythology, lived a long life of perhaps many thousand years in the mouths of successive generations, before the first beginnings of literary record were reached. On the contrary, we find in these parts of the Bible so artistic a perfection of description, such a harmonious roundness of narrative, that we are justified in presuming that they were not preceded by the oral concatenations of a long life of tradition, but are rather sublime imaginations which were written down soon after they were conceived in the educated circles of the nation, so as to become the common property of the whole people. There was in this a double stimulus received from the Babylonians: first, to meditate on the earliest things—the origin of the world, man, and other things of a general nature—and secondly, to produce writings on these things. The Prophets of the Hebrews at Babylon unquestionably exercised a great influence on the production of these narratives, and gladly admitted whatever tended to promote the deepening of the idea of Jahveh, as elements in their religions conception of the world. For the Prophet did not occupy a position towards the masses like the member of a corporation which opposes the people; he grew up out of the people, and raised himself above them by his individual power of thought. Yet it is easily intelligible that the Prophet, while gladly appropriating the idea of Jahveh as bôrê ‘Creator,’ would not set much store by the petty details of the cosmogonic imagination. The second Isaiah, the Prophet of Babylon _par excellence_, goes so far as to exhort his people, ‘Record ye not beginnings, and antiquities contemplate ye not’ (Is. XLIII. 18); still he does not go into open opposition to this mental tendency, and sees nothing dangerous in it—the less so, as he has himself unconsciously adopted its conclusions and often employed them in his masterly addresses.

Thus also the story of the Garden of Eden, as a supplement to the history of the Creation, was written down at Babylon, and therefore not long after the previous stories. A reference to the passage in Gen. II. 14, where the first three of the four rivers of the garden of Eden have their geographical position accurately defined, but the fourth is only mentioned by the words, ‘And the fourth river is Perâth (Euphrates),’ is of itself sufficient to show that those for whom the story was written must have known the Euphrates as their own river, requiring no further designation, and consequently that this must have been written on its banks. Now, although the expression ‘Garden of Eden’ occurs also before the Captivity (Joel II. 3), yet the Prophets of the Captivity make the first reference to that character and quality of Eden which is conspicuous in Genesis. In Joel’s words only the general idea of a ‘pleasure-garden’ appears to be connected with the name Eden. But in Ezekiel (especially frequently in Chap. XXXI.) we find the appellation ‘Garden of God’ used to designate Eden more fully; and in the parallelism of the members of the verse the Babylonian Isaiah (LI. 3) puts the ‘Garden of Jahveh’ in the succeeding member to correspond to ‘Eden’ in the preceding:

He makes her desert like _Eden_, And her dry land like the _Garden of Jahveh_.

It is also evident from the same Prophet’s words (Is. XLIII. 27), ‘Thy first father sinned,’ that he connected the story of the Fall with Eden, or at least that he knew the story. The mention of the doctrine of the Fall takes us to a domain which has a close connexion with the subject of this chapter. I refer to the ideas of dogmatic religion pervading the stories formed during the Captivity, which subsequently, while the canon of Scripture was being drawn up, were admitted even into those parts of Scripture whose matter dated from an earlier period, came into full life in the second Hebrew commonwealth, and continued to live in the later Jewish Synagogue. Through the growth of Persian power and Persian influence in Western Asia, where there existed many states in a condition of vassalage to Babylon, the Iranian views of religion could not but exert a great influence on the parent-state also, even before Babylon was quite overwhelmed by them through its conquest by Cyrus at the end of the Captivity of the Hebrews. Opportunity was therefore not wanting to the Hebrews to become well acquainted with the main ideas of Iranian theology; and desire was also present, as their minds were then intent upon obtaining clear views on the origin of the physical and moral order of the world, and on the chief questions concerning the ‘Origins.’ This influence of the Iranians on the Hebrews was exhibited not only in relation to matter, but also to forms. For there is great probability in favour of the idea, that the first suggestion to codify the sacerdotal laws of sacrifice, purification and others, came to the Hebrews from the example of the Persians.[722] One portion of these ideas has found a place in the Babylonian sections of Genesis—that which belonged to the cosmogony; others were not expressed in the Canon at all, but lived in tradition, until tradition itself was fixed in writing. This question, which would at last shed light on the details of Iranian influence on the narratives of the Pentateuch, is perversely enough not grappled with at its starting-point by many persons who labour with nervous eagerness to discover in the Iranian writings every letter of the Jewish Agâdâ, even in cases in which such a proceeding is utterly unjustifiable, and borrowing can only be suggested through the wildest guesswork. Equally perverse is the unhistorical assumption, which point-blank denies the very possibility of the Hebrews having borrowed anything from the Persians, ‘among whom they never lived.’[723] Professor Spiegel, by referring to an acquaintance of Abraham with Zarathustra, has spirited the question off into the atmosphere of so distant a time that it is impossible with any regard for critical history to build upon his foundation,[724] and preferable even to adopt Volney’s forgotten theory,[725] which makes the influence of Magism on the Hebrews begin with the destruction of the Northern kingdom. Others, by assuming an influence exerted by the Semites on the Iranians, and by a mistaken reverence for Hebrew antiquity, have cut away the ground from any scientific investigation of the question.[726] It is a mistaken, and anything but the right sort of reverence, when we would rather leave unknown or misunderstood a region of literature which we all love and venerate, and to which we owe most of our moral and religious ideals, than trace its elements and analyse their psychological and literary history, so as to understand the object of our love. Has Homer lost his attractiveness since we have subjected him to critical analysis, or the divine Plato forfeited any of his divinity since we have discovered some of the sources of his ideas? For the fact of Originality is not the only criterion of the admirable. Not only that which is cast in one piece from top to toe, is one whole: an alien substance which becomes a civilising agent to that in which it rests, and a patchwork which has turned out a harmonious whole, are not less admirable or perfect. Julius Braun says very justly,[727] ‘There is another and indeed the highest kind of originality, which is not the beginning but the result of historical growth—the originality of mature age. We have this, when an individual or a nation has gathered up all existing means of culture, and then still possesses power to pass on beyond them and deal freely with all elements received from the past.’

Thus, then, it was quite possible for many Iranian elements to be received into the system of the literature and cosmic conceptions of the Hebrews; and we do nothing towards saving the honour of the Hebrew nationality by using force to make the Iranians pupils of the Hebrews. Karl Twesten saw the truth as to their mutual relation; and I quote his words, to show the impression made by the coincidences of Iranian and Hebrew antiquity on a sober-minded historian who considers the question free from any previous pledges to either side. ‘It cannot be pleaded that the Iranians may have borrowed from the Hebrews or drawn from the same source. For, on the one hand, these things are there an essential part of a system, whereas the Pentateuch makes no further use of them; and, on the other, they existed in times and places where, even if the possibility of a very early formation of these stories be conceded, the Hebrew theology could not possibly have any influence. The Israelites were so little known, and so rarely in contact with other nations, and the priesthoods of antiquity so exclusive, and oriental Îrân so distant, that no early influence of Mosaic doctrines on the theories of the Zend books is even conceivable. But Iranian influences on the nations of Western Asia are probable and inevitable, from the time when the Medes and Persians became the dominant powers.’[728]

Such, in general terms, were the causes which yielded an increase of matter to the Hebrew store of legends during the Captivity. Through the revision and literary elaboration of the old legends in the period of the Captivity also, many Babylonian features naturally entered into the picture. I may mention Nöldeke’s plausible idea (in his _Untersuchungen_), that the years and cycles of years in the Patriarchal history point to Babylon and are connected with astronomical systems. The last systematic revision of the Table of Nations (Gen. X.) may also be referred to the same time and influence. The preparation of such a survey of all known nations of the earth seems to have been possible in that ancient time only in an empire which through its wide-spread dominion had an extensive circle of view open to it in relation to geography and ethnology, and would be almost impossible within the limits of the kingdom of Judah. Although we have at the present day good reasons for treating as a mere fable the more extravagant ideas that were long current, and gave rise to many lamentable prejudices, of the utter seclusion of the Hebrews in Canaan, yet their view can hardly have reached to such a distance, and, if it did, cannot have taken in such special points, as are met with in the Table of Nations. But we should exaggerate the possible influence of the connexion with the Phenicians, if with Tuch[729] we were to derive from it the ethnographical information requisite to produce that Table. And we should be applying the measure of modern expeditions to David’s and Solomon’s navigation—to which Mauch attributes a colonisation of Africa by Jews in connexion with the discovery of Ophir—if we were to suppose that navigation to have yielded this same geographical and ethnographical knowledge as its scientific result.

The attention of the Hebrews could not be directed to ethnographical problems on so large a scale before their residence among the confusion of nationalities in the empire of Babylon and Assyria. That period is also the first at which interest could be felt in another problem—Biblical answer to which is avowedly given at Babylon. I mean the story of the Confusion of Tongues at Babel (Babylon) in Genesis XI. 4–9.

It is not difficult to understand that the Hebrews, who in Canaan, a country of such linguistic uniformity, had no occasion to pay attention to the fact of the variety of tongues, on entering the Babylonian empire with its varying languages were naturally led to ask the question to which the eleventh chapter of Genesis offers a reply. Why, even earlier than this the Northern empire was a nation whose tongue they did not understand (Deut. XXVIII. 49),[730] ‘a nation from afar, an ancient nation, a nation from of old, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say’ (Jer. V. 15). Whilst even in Hesiod’s time men were already called by the Greeks μέροπες ‘speaking variously’ (_Works and Days_, 109, 142), to the ancient Hebrew ‘the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.’ Now, as the impulse to ask this question arose in Babylon, the place where such a problem must force itself most irresistibly on the attention, so Babylon was found to be also the scene of the solution of the problem. It is so natural to place the origin of an event or a phenomenon at the place where it has first occurred to us or we have first perceived it. But, in fact, we find the story of the building of the Tower taking its place among the latest Cuneiform discoveries.[731] That the origin of the Table of Nations hangs together with the story of the origin of the diversity of languages is evident, not only from the inner connexion between the respective problems, but also from the fact that the Table of Nations always distinguishes the various races ‘after their families, _after their tongues_, in their countries, in their nations’ (Gen. X. 5, 20, 31).

The attempted etymology of Bâbhel from bâlal ‘to mix,’ which is tacked on to the story, is quite secondary; it is impossible to approve the notion that this etymology was itself the cause of the invention of the story that languages had their origin at Babylon. On the contrary, the essential part of the story is the origin at Babylon; the etymology is a secondary point, by which it was attempted to leave no part unexplained. People in antiquity, and even in modern times those who are more affected by a word than a thought, were fond of finding in the word a sort of reflexion of the corresponding thing. Indeed, many component parts of ancient stories owe their existence only to such false etymologies. Dido’s ox-hides and their connexion with the founding of Carthage are only based on the Greek _byrsa_, a misunderstood modified pronunciation of the Semitic _bîrethâ_ ‘fortress, citadel.’ The shining Apollo, born of light, is said to be born in Delos or Lycia, because the terms Apollon _Dêlios_ and _Lykêgenês_ were not understood. The Phenician origin of the Irish, asserted in clerical chronicles of the middle ages, only rests on a false derivation of the Irish word _fena_, pl. _fion_, ‘beautiful, agreeable.’ Even the savage tribes of America are misled by a false etymology to call the Michabo, the Kadmos of the Red Indians (from _michi_ ‘great’ and _wabos_ ‘white’), a White Hare.[732] Falsely interpreted names of towns most frequently cause the invention of fables. How fanciful the operation of popular etymology is in the case of local names is observable in many such names when translated into another language. By the lake of Gennesereth lies Hippos, the district surrounding which was called Hippene. This word in Phenician denoted a harbour, and is found not only in Carthaginian territory as the name of the See of St. Jerome, but also as the name of places in Spain. The Hebrew chôph ‘shore,’ and the local names Yâphô (Jaffa) and Ḥaifâ, are unquestionably related to it. But the Greeks regarded it from a Grecian point of view, and thought it meant Horse-town. Did not they call ships sea-horses, and attribute horses to the Sea-god? Then, the Arabs directly translated this ἵππος Hippos into ḳalʿat al-Ḥuṣân: ḥuṣân being _horse_ in modern Arabic.[733] The Persian town Rey was made the subject of a fable, which I mention here partly because it exhibits some similarity with the subject of the ‘Tower of Babel.’ The Persian chroniclers relate,[734] that the old king Keykâvûs had a chariot constructed, by which, after various preparations, he intended to ascend to heaven. But God commanded the wind to carry the king into the clouds. Arrived there, he was dashed down again, and fell into the sea of Gurgân. Keychosrau, son of Shâwush, coming to that coast, employed the same chariot to convey him to Babylon. When he came to the locality of the modern Rey, people said, bireyy âmed Keychosrau, ‘on a chariot came Keychosrau.’ He caused a city to be built at this place, which was called Rey, because a chariot is so called in Persian.[735]

Granting all this, it is generally only accessory features added to the main stem of the story that owe their origin to a mistaken attempt at etymologising. The existence and first origin of an entire story can scarcely be produced by an unsatisfactory etymology. With regard to the Hebrew stories, in which etymologising plays a considerable part, the same rule is, generally speaking, to be observed. There also the story is enriched in details by etymological attempts suggested later. But it is not brought into life in the first instance by this factor. On the contrary, as a connexion must be discovered between the name and the circumstances of its bearer, and the original mythical relation between them has been long lost to memory, features quite foreign to the name itself, but characteristic of the story, are sometimes brought into etymological connexion with the name and fitted on to the story. From this source emanates the striking insufficiency of many of these etymological explanations, _e.g._ of the interpretation of Abhrâhâm by Abh hâmôn ‘Father of a multitude,’ and Nôach (Noah) by nicham ‘to comfort.’ In the Hebrew Myth of Civilisation, Noah is the most prominent founder of agriculture and inventor of agricultural implements; consequently it is he that procures comfort for men against the curse imposed on the soil. This feature is not etymologically expressed in the name Noah; but the later formation of the story about him invented a false etymology, in order to connect it with the name. The case is the same with the story of the Languages, in which Bâbhel is derived from bâlal ‘to mix.’ The etymology relates quite as frequently to a very subordinate feature in the story, as for instance in the interpretation of most of the names of Jacob’s sons in Gen. XXIX, XXX, or in the derivation of the name Ḳayin (Cain) from ḳânâ ‘to gain.’ Sometimes, lastly, the etymon is given correctly, while its original relation to the person bearing the name is lost with the loss of the mythical consciousness. In such cases there frequently arises a new feature of the story. Thus, for instance, it is quite correctly affirmed that Yiṣchâḳ (Isaac) comes from ṣâchaḳ ‘to laugh:’ but it is no longer understood that the word designates the ‘Laughing one’ (the Sun), and so the laughter of the aged mother to whom the birth of a son is announced beforehand, or the laughter of other people on hearing the announcement, is introduced. In the etymology of the name Yaʿaḳôbh (Jacob) both the etymon and that to which it refers (ʿâḳêbh ‘heel’) are correctly preserved, not however without the introduction of a foreign etymological element (ʿiḳḳêbh ‘to cheat’), which became prominent in the subsequent development of the story. The same phenomenon also appears on the domain of the Arabian stories, a region of Semitism which has still to be explored for mythological questions. I have no doubt that the genealogical tables of the Arabs contain names which will be discovered by sound etymology to be Solar designations. This seems to me, for example, to be the case with Hâshim. The story that he and his twin-brother ʿAbd Shams were born with their foreheads joined together, or with the forehead of one joined to the hand of the other,[736] resembles the myths of the birth of Jacob and Esau, and of that of Perez and Zerah.[737] It was worked out with an object during the later dynastic rivalry between the Hâshimites and Ummayads (descendants of ʿAbd Shams). But Hâshim is ‘the Breaker,’ thus answering perfectly to Pereṣ (Perez) or Gideʿôn. When the mythical consciousness was lost, a story bearing an obviously apocryphal character was fabricated to give it an etymology. It is this. On occasion of a famine resulting from a bad harvest, Hâshim went to Syria, where he had a quantity of bread baked. This he put into large sacks, loaded his camels with it, and took it to Mekka. There _hashama_, _i.e._ he broke up the bread into bits, sent for butchers, and distributed it among the people of Mekka. Therefore, it is said, he was called Hâshim, ‘the Breaker.’[738] We have here the very same process in the history of etymology which we had occasion to observe in the etymological explanation of Biblical names. Thus, as is obvious in the above-quoted Hebrew examples, it must be admitted that the later etymological conception frequently forced itself into the foreground so much as to obtain recognition as a portion of the narrative.[739] But no entire story, such as that of the Confusion of Tongues at Babel, can be proved to have been formed upon no other basis than an indifferent etymology. So we may with confidence hold to the above-suggested occasion for the origin of this story of the variety of languages. There is good ground for hoping that before very long the recently discovered mythical texts of the Assyrian and Babylonian literature will pour an increasing flood of light on the question discussed in this chapter. The richness of the stores contained in the two latest works of the meritorious scholar George Smith—‘Assyrian Discoveries: an account of exploration and discoveries’ (1876), and ‘The Chaldean Account of Genesis’ (1876)—allow us to entertain the best hopes of this result. It is greatly to be desired that an unprejudiced conception of the matter of Hebrew mythic stories may be promoted by these discoveries. But to attain to the result of true freedom from old errors, it is essential to put away all fears, and to be guided solely and simply by the interests of the Holiest of Holies, namely, scientific truth, in forming a judgment on the priority or simultaneous origin of such stories in different nations.

Footnote 713:

See Supplement to the Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_ of June 19, 1874.

Footnote 714:

I will here cite a passage of Ibn Chaldûn, although not decisive on questions like the present: ‘Know that the Persians and Indians know nothing of the Ṭûfân (deluge); some Persians say that it took place only at Babylon.’ (History, vol. II.) Edward Thomas, in the _Academy_, 1875, p. 401, quotes a passage of al-Bîrûnî, in which it is said that the Indians, Chinese and Persians have no story of a Deluge, but that some say that the Persians know of a partial deluge. Burnouf believed the idea of a Deluge to be originally foreign to Indian mythology, and to have been borrowed, probably from Chaldaic sources (_Bhâgavata Purâṇa_, III. XXXI., LI.). A. Weber (in the _Indische Studien_, Heft 2, and on occasion of a critique of Nêve’s writings on the Indian story of the Deluge, in the _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1851, V. 526) declares himself in favour of the indigenousness of the Indian story, in opposition to Lassen and Roth, who agree with Burnouf.

Footnote 715:

The similarities and differences of the respective stories of the Deluge are lucidly placed side by side by George Smith in _The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 286 _et seq._

Footnote 716:

Tuch, _Commentar über die Genesis_, 1st ed. 1838, p. 149; 2nd ed. 1871, p. 47.

Footnote 717:

_Academy_, 1873, no. 77. col. 292.

Footnote 718:

See _Westminster Review_, April 1875, p. 486.

Footnote 719:

_Geschichte des Alterthums_, 4th ed. 1874, I. 186.

Footnote 720:

_The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, pp. 60–112.

Footnote 721:

Consult also Dr. Jacob Auerbach’s article _Ueber den ersten Vers der Genesis_ in Geiger’s _Zeitsch. für Wissenschaft und Leben_, 1863, Bd. II. p. 253, who, I now see, comes very near to these ideas, but does not express them fully or clearly.

Footnote 722:

This view is expounded by Kuenen in his _Religion of Israel_, II. 156.

Footnote 723:

This appears to be Bunsen’s opinion: _God in History_, I. 101.

Footnote 724:

See Max Müller’s essay _Genesis and the Zend-Avesta_ (_Chips_, I. 143 _et seqq._). The Dutch scholar Tiele occupies nearly the same position as Spiegel on this question, which he discusses fully in his book _De Godsdienst van Zarathustra_, Haarlem 1864, p. 302 _et seq._

Footnote 725:

_Les Ruines_, XX. 13. System.

Footnote 726:

I must mention a third view on the concurrence of the Hebrew with the Aryan story of the primeval age; it is that which was first declared by Ewald in his _History of Israel_, I. 224 _et seqq._, and is adopted by Lassen and Weber among the Germans, and by Burnouf and (with some hesitation) Renan among the French. In this view the coincidences in the respective primitive stories are to be accounted for by common prehistoric traditions which the Aryans and the Semites formed in their original common dwelling-place concerning primeval history. Renan speaks shortly on the subject in his _Histoire gén. des Langues sémitiques_, pp. 480 _et seq._

Footnote 727:

_Naturgeschichte der Sage_, I. 8.

Footnote 728:

_Die religiösen, politischen und socialen Ideen der Asiatischen Culturvölker, etc._, edited by M. Lazarus, Berlin 1872, p. 590.

Footnote 729:

_Commentar zur Genesis_, 1st ed. 1838, p. 200; 2nd ed. 1871, p. 157.

Footnote 730:

It should be observed that in the postexilian imitation of this sermon of castigations (now called in the Synagogue tôkhâchâ) in Lev. XXVI. 14–43, the circumstance that the people would be carried off by an enemy ‘whose language they understood not’ is omitted. Other points in the tôkhâchâ of Leviticus indicate that it was imagined by one who had a knowledge of the Captivity; so e.g. the especial accentuation of residence in the land of an enemy, as in vv. 32, 36, 38, 39.

Footnote 731:

George Smith, _The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, pp. 158 _et seqq._

Footnote 732:

Fiske, _Myths and Myth makers_, pp. 71, 154. See Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 357 _et seq._

Footnote 733:

From Sepp’s _Jerusalem und das heilige Land_, II. 157.

Footnote 734:

In Yâḳût, _Geogr. Dictionary_, II. 893. The explanation of the name Thakîf in Yâḳût, III. 498, quite reminds one of the Old Testament way of giving etymologies of names.

Footnote 735:

See some useful quotations in L. Löw’s _Beiträge zur jüd. Alterthumskunde_, Szegedin 1875, II. 388; and very interesting references in Pott’s _Wilhelm von Humboldt und die Sprachwissenschaft_, Berlin 1876, p. CIX. _et seq._

Footnote 736:

_Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1853, VII. p. 28.

Footnote 737:

See supra, pp. 133, 183.

Footnote 738:

Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-Ishtîḳâḳ_, ed. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen 1853, p. 9.

Footnote 739:

See Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 19 _et seq._

EXCURSUS

A. (_Page 30._) _Agadic Etymologies._

In another direction also the Agâdâ is wont to supply the omissions of the Scripture. In passages where the Bible itself gives no reason for the choice or origin of a name, the Agâdâ quite independently gives its own etymological reason: this peculiarity occurs excessively often (e.g. in the etymology of the name Miriam in the Midrâsh to the Song of Songs, II. 12, that of the names of the two mid wives Shiphrah and Puah, who in addition are identified with Jochebed and Miriam, in the Talmûd Bab. tr. Sôṭâ, fol. 11. b, etc.).[740] Here I will bring forward out of a great number of instances one which affords an opportunity of exhibiting an interesting coincidence between the Jewish and the Mohammedan Agâdâ, and affords a proof how extensive and how far-reaching into the smallest detail are the loans taken by the Mohammedan from the Rabbinical theologians, and on the other hand how independently and how completely in an Arabian spirit these borrowed treasures were worked up.

In Gen. XLVI. 21, Benjamin’s sons are enumerated without any etymological observations. The Agâdâ supplies the deficiency, and puts every one of the names of Joseph’s nephews into connexion with Benjamin’s melancholy remembrance of his lost brother. The interpretations in question are contained in the Talmûd and Midrâsh; and they are found in a different, but probably the most original form in the Targûm Jerus. on the passage; and it is sufficient to refer to this. According to this, Benjamin named his ten sons ʿal perishûthâ de-Yôsêph achôhî ‘for the separation from his brother Joseph:’ thus Belaʿ, ‘because Joseph was devoured-away (i.e. _torn away_) from him,’ de-ithbelaʿ minnêh: Bekher, ‘because Joseph was his mother’s first-born,’ bukhrâ de-immêh: Ashbêl, ‘from the captivity into which Joseph fell,’ de-halakh be-shibhyâthâ: Gêrâ, ‘because Joseph had to live as a stranger in a foreign land,’ de-ithgar be-arʿâ nukhrâʾâ: Naʿamân, ‘because Joseph was charming and dear to him,’ da-hawâ nâʿîm we-yaḳḳîr: Êchî, ‘because he was his brother (achôhî):’ Rôsh, because he was the most excellent in his father’s house: Muppîm, because he was sold to the land Môph (Egypt): Chuppîm, because Benjamin had exactly reached the age of eighteen years, that of maturity for marriage (chuppâh) in men:[741] Ard, from yârad ‘to go down,’ because Joseph had to go down to Egypt.

The Arabic pendant to this Agâdâ I found in a book Zahr al-kimâm fî ḳiṣṣat Yûsuf ʿaleyhi al-salâm, by the learned Mâlikite ʿOmar b. Ibrâhîm al-Ausî al-Anṣârî. It is the same book as Ḥâjî Chalfâ quotes (V. 381, no. 11386) by the name Majâlis ḳiṣṣat Yûsuf,[742] although the commencement given by him does not agree with the initial words of our Codex (No. 7 of the Supplement, in the Leipzig University Library). The book is divided into seventeen majâlis, or sessions—an arrangement not uncommon in Arabic works of a hortatory character or touching on religious knowledge. Each mejlis contains a portion of the life of Joseph, always introduced by a verse of the Ḳorân, and abundantly mixed with poems and other episodes and intermezzos. It is an instructive source for the legend of Joseph among the Mohammedans. It would take us too far from the subject if I were to give a full characterisation of the book. I will therefore only mention that it betrays a close relation to the Jewish legend, and that the author generally gives frequent occasion for the conjecture that the Bible and the Jewish tradition were not strange to him or to the sources from which he drew. But everything appears here curiously altered. For example, the cry of Isaac when deceived, ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau’ (Gen. XXVII. 22), is there given (fol. 5 _recto_) thus: al-lams lams ʿAysau w-al-rîḥ rîḥ Yaʿḳûb ‘the touch is the touch of Esau, but the smell is the smell of Jacob’ (see Gen. XXVII. 27). The passage with which we have to do here occurs fol. 149 _recto_.

The scene is the brothers’ dinner in Joseph’s house. Each sits beside his full brother; Benjamin alone has none, and begins to weep bitterly. Then Joseph approaches him, and after a long dialogue makes himself known to Benjamin as his full brother, and talks with him. Afterwards Joseph asks him, ‘Youth, hast thou a wife?’ ‘Yes,’ replies Benjamin. ‘And children?’ ‘I have three sons.’ ‘What name gavest thou to the eldest?’ ‘Ḏîb (Wolf).’ ‘And why didst thou choose this name?’ ‘Because my brothers were of opinion that a wolf had devoured my brother, and I wished to have a memento of the catastrophe.’ ‘And what didst thou call the second?’ ‘I named him Dam (Blood).’ ‘And wherefore?’ ‘Because my brothers brought a coat dipped in blood, and I wished to preserve the memory of it.’ ‘And what is thy third son’s name?’ ‘Yûsuf, that my brother’s name may not be forgotten.’

But even names whose etymology occurs in the Bible itself are provided by the Agâdâ with new etymological explanations: so e.g. Yiṣchâḳ, is explained by yâṣâ or yêṣê chôḳ ‘A statute has gone or will go forth.’[743]

B. (Page 34.) _A Hermeneutical Law of the Agâdâ._

The hermeneutic principle to which we have referred in the text, although not so well known to the Agadists as it was in other circles (for they have nowhere expressly declared it), is to be traced throughout their whole conception of Scripture. It is the principle that _the intensity of the sense of a word increases with the enlargement of its from_. This law was also set up by the Greek etymologists, and applied even to the point of pedantry by one of the oldest grammarians, Tryphon.[744] With the Arabic grammarians it controls the entire grammatical field: ziyâdet al-lafẓ (al-binâ) tadullu ʿala ziyâdet al-maʿna ‘the increase of the word (the form) points to increase of the meaning.’ In Agadic exegesis also it is often accepted as a valid rule of Scriptural interpretation. In the case of reduplicated forms especially, the reduplicated indicates a fuller concept than the unreduplicated: e.g. lêbhâbh compared with lêbh (both denoting ‘heart’) is treated as signifying a ‘double heart,’ comprising the good and the evil impulse (yêṣer ṭôbh and yêṣer hâraʿ: Sifrê on Deuter. VI. 5. § 32). So also in shephîphôn compared with shephî, the doubled _ph_ is supposed to point to an enlargement of the signification.

But this word shephîphôn contains besides the reduplication of a radical letter an affix _ôn_. This affix is also generally brought into connexion with an enlargement of the signification, exactly as is done by the interpreters of the Ḳorân with the corresponding Arabic affix _ân_.[745] An example from the Agâdâ is as follows: in Berêshîth rabbâ, sect. 97, Yôsê b. Chalaphtâ says, 'The labours of bread-winning are double as laborious as the labours of child-birth, for of these it is said "With pain (beʿeṣebh) thou shalt bear children" (Gen. III. 16), while of those it is said, "With painfulness (beʿiṣṣâbhôn) thou shalt enjoy it [its fruits] all the days of thy life"' (_ib._ v. 17). Hence the _ôn_ affixed to ʿeṣeb is taken to indicate a doubling of the pain; just as the _ôn_ added to shephî in shephîphôn denoted lameness in both feet.

C. (_Page 100_.) _Pools and Whips of the Sun._

There is no doubt that the ancient idea which associates Pools with the rising and the setting sun was based on the conception that the rising sun emerged from water and the setting sun sank into water. In later times, when the original mythical circumstances had lost their clearness, the conception of the Sun’s Pools underwent a considerable modification. On this subject we must notice two different conceptions, both of which sound quite mythical, which are preserved in the Jewish and Arabic tradition. One of these supposed that the Sun exhibited such an eagerness for the performance of his work, that the whole world would be set on fire if its consequences were not moderated by various means for cooling down the heat; and these means are the Pools of the Sun. In the Midrâsh on Ecclesiastes, I. 6, it is said: ‘It is reported in the name of Rabbi Nâthân that the ball of the Sun is fixed in a reservoir with a pool of water before him; when he is about to go forth he is full of fire, and God weakens his force by that water, that he may not burn up the whole world.’ A similar account is found in the Shôchêr ṭôbh on Ps. XIX. 8, and in the same Midrâsh on v. 8 the Talmudic theory of the _upper waters_ (mayîm hâ-ʿelyônîm, which are said to be above the heaven) is brought into connexion with this idea. Another conception is diametrically opposite to this. According to this view, the Sun at first resists the performance of his business, and is only moved to do it by force and violent measures. In the Midrâsh Êkhâ rabbâ, Introduction, § 25, the Sun himself complains that he will not go out till he has been struck with sixty whips, and received the command ‘Go out, and let thy light shine.’ Among the Arabs the poet Umayyâ b. Abî-ṣ-Ṣalt discourses at length on the compulsion which must be exerted on the Sun before he is willing to bestow the benefit of his light and warmth on mortals:

W-ash-shamsu taṭlaʿu kulla âchiri leylatin * ḥamrâʾa maṭlaʿu launihâ mutawarridu. Taʾba falâ tabdû lanâ fî raslihâ * illâ muʿaḏḏabatan wa-illâ tujladu. ‘The Sun rises at the close of every night * commencing red in colour, slowly advancing. He refuses, and appears not to us during his delay * until he is chastised, until he is whipped.’[746]

According to the tradition of ʿIkrimâ seven thousand angels are daily occupied with keeping the Sun in order.[747] The first conception also is represented in Mohammedan tradition. A sentence of tradition quoted by al-Suyûṭî (Tashnîf al-samʿ bi-taʿdîd al-sabʿ)[748] says that the Sun is pelted every day with snow and ice by seven angels, that his heat may not destroy the earth. This mode of cooling is the Mohammedan equivalent for the Pool of the Sun. Mohammedan tradition speaks, moreover, also of a Pool of the Moon.[749]

D. (_Page 100._) _Solar Myth and Animal-Worship._

The Egyptian animal-worship, indeed animal-worship in general, can only be traced back to mythical conceptions, which, when the myth passed into theology and the true understanding of it became rare and then ceased altogether, gained a new meaning quite different from the original. Animal-worship is accordingly one of the sources for the discovery of mythological facts. This is especially the case with the Egyptian animal-worship, which, as Plutarch (_De Iside et Osiride_, c. VIII.) says of the religion of the Egyptians, is founded _par excellence_ on αἰτία φυσική, since the same impulse which is reflected in the figurative portion of the Hieroglyphic system of writing led the Egyptians to employ animals in mythology with equal profuseness. Thus, e.g. the often discussed Cat-worship of the Egyptians is traced back to one point of their Solar myth. The old Egyptian myth unquestionably called the Sun the Cat; of which a clear trace is left in the XVIIth chapter of the Book of the Dead.[750] Like the Sun, says Horapollo, the pupil of the cat’s eye grows larger with the advance of day, till at noon it is quite round; after which it gradually decreases again. The Egyptian myth imagined a great cat behind the Sun, which is the pupil of the cat’s eye. In the later Edda (I. 96, Gylf. 24) also Freya is said to drive out with two cats to draw her car. In the above-quoted chapter of the Book of the Dead, which Brugsch, who cites the passage of Horapollo, analyses in an interesting essay,[751] it is frequently said that the cat is frightened by a scorpion which approaches on the vault of heaven, intending to block the way of the cat and cover its body with dirt. Brugsch identifies the scorpion with _Sin_; but to me it seems more probable that we have here an echo of the old myth of the Cat, i.e. a Solar myth, in which the Sun does battle against the Dragon or serpentine monster that obscures or devours him. Instead of the mythical expression, that Darkness covers up the Sun, it is said here that ‘The Dragon of storms or night covers the Cat’s body with dirt.’

I mention here this important argument affecting the origin of animal-worship, not on account of the Cat, but in order to point to an element of the Egyptian animal-worship which hangs together with the mythical mode of regarding the Sun which has been more fully worked out in the text—that he sinks into the water in the evening, so as to come to land again in the morning. It is well known that in many parts of Egypt the Crocodile enjoyed divine honours. Now this worship appears to be connected with the fact that in the above respect the Crocodile is, so to speak, a mythological hieroglyph of the Sun, and doubtless figured in the Solar myth as a designation of the Sun. The Crocodile passes the greater part of the day on the dry land, and the night in the water. Herodotus (II. 68) says, τὸ πολλὸν τῆς ἡμέρης δίατριβει ἐν τῷ ξηρῷ, τὴν δὲ νύκτα πᾶσαν ἐν τῷ ποταμῷ. Plutarch shows admirable tact, especially in his sober intelligence in relation to the mythical use made of living creatures that abide in the water or grow up out of it, and consequently understands the relation of the Lotus-flower to the Sun in this sense: οὕτως ἀνατολὴν ἡλίου γράφουσι τὴν ἐξ ὑγρῶν ἡλίου γινομένην ἄναψιν αἰνιττόμενοι (_De Iside et Osiride_, c. XI.). Yet in treating of the Crocodile he strangely heaps hypothesis upon hypothesis (_ibid._ c. LXXV.), and exhibits superior insight only in so far as he endeavours to find in the nature of the Crocodile the origin of the worship paid to it, whereas Diodorus is satisfied with the utilitarian explanation that the Crocodile keeps robbers at a distance from the Nile (I. 89). But on this point he does not, as on many others, hit the nail on the head.

The reverse of the Crocodile-worship is that of the Ichneumon in the country now called Fayûm. According to the classical reporters, this animal was sacred to Buto, who was identified with the Leto of the Greeks. Now Max Müller (_Chips etc._ II. p. 80) has convincingly proved Leto or Latona to be one of the names of the Night. The Ichneumon, accordingly, is likewise a mythical designation of the Night in its relation to the Sun (Cat, Crocodile); for the special characteristic of the Ichneumon, with which the worship paid to it is connected, is its peculiar hostility to cats and crocodiles.

The part played by the Cow also in animal-worship must be traced back to the Solar myth as its primary origin. It is well known that one of the very commonest appellations of the Sun in mythology is this—the Cow. The Sun’s rays are described as the Cow’s milk; especially in the Vedas this is one of the most familiar conceptions. The worship of the Scarabeus among the Egyptians must also be based on a close connexion with the Solar myth, although the point of attachment to that mythological group is not obvious in this case to us, who are so far removed from the mythical mind. However, even Plutarch[752] endeavours to discover some point of similarity which might serve as _tertium comparationis_, and finds it in the Scarabeus’ mode of generation.

The animal-worship was not based upon any experience of the usefulness or hurtfulness of the animals, but always stands in close connexion with the Solar myth, of which it is only a theological and liturgical development. This is most conspicuously evident from the fact that, besides real existing animals, there were also imaginary ones that received divine honours, and played a very prominent part, as, for example, the Phenix. But this word also is only an ancient mythical designation of the Sun. The Phenix is ‘a winged animal with red and golden feathers;’[753] a description of the Sun from the mythical point of view, as must be sufficiently obvious from what was expounded on p. 116. The Phenix comes every five hundred years—at the end of each great Solar period. When the myth-creating stage had been overpassed, and the name Phenix disappeared from the inventory of names of the Sun, the word, surviving the myth itself, and the remains of a misunderstood mythical conception attached to the word, might produce the superstition of the real existence of the bird Phenix. And it is these very remains that permit and render possible the reconstruction of the mythical significance.[754] Even religious usages may have their source in the ancient mythical circle of ideas. From Herodotus we learn that the Egyptians were forbidden to sacrifice or eat the Cow, but that the Ox was not so protected.[755] This is closely connected with mythical ideas. To the Cow, whose milk and horns are the mythical representatives of the rays, whether of the Sun or of the Moon, extensive divine veneration could more naturally be paid than to the Ox, who less perfectly exhibits what the myth tells of the Sun, inasmuch as he has not the milk; and the veneration would naturally carry with it the idea, that it was forbidden either to kill or to eat of the sacred animal.

E. (_Page 109._) _The Sun as a Well._

To the mythical conception discussed in the text, which regards the Sun as an Eye, must be added another parallel view, that of the Sun as a _Well_. Language and myth here show remarkable uniformity, which helps the identification. Many languages have the same name for Well and Eye, as if they followed the mathematical law that when two things are each equal to a third, they are equal to each other. So it is in Semitic (ʿayin, ʿayn, etc.); in Persian tsheshm and tsheshmeh; in Chinese ian, which word denotes both _well_ and _eye_. The thirty-four wells near Bunarbashi, which was formerly believed to be the site of the Homeric Ilion, are called by the people, using a round number, ‘the forty _eyes_.’ For the Sun is not only a seeing eye, but also a flowing well. It is possible that the _weeping eye_, which is actually a flowing well (see Jer. VIII. 23 [IX. 1] we-ʿênay meḳôr dimʿâ ‘would that my eyes were a fountain of tears’), may serve to mediate between the two senses. Heinrich Heine, in his ‘Nordsee-cyclus’ (‘_Nachts in der Kajüte_’) says:

From those heavenly eyes above me, Light and trembling sparks are falling... O ye heavenly eyes above me! Weep yourselves into my spirit, That my spirit may run over With those tears so sweet and starry.[756]

Freya, an acknowledged solar figure, whose car is drawn by cats, weeps _golden tears_ for her lost husband.[757] Here the tears of the Sun’s eye are his golden rays.

The Sun being a Well, the light of his rays is the moisture that flows from the well. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the Sun is called râ pu num âtef nuteru ‘the Sun, _the primitive water_, the father of the gods.’[758] Lucretius (_De Rerum Natura_, V. 282) calls the Sun

Largus item _liquidi_ fons _luminis_, aetherius, Sol, _Inrigat_ assidue coelum candore recenti,

‘who fructifies the heaven with ever-new brilliancy.’ The same view prevails also on Semitic ground. In Hebrew and Arabic the root nâhar denotes equally ‘to flow’ and ‘to shine.’ Nâhâr (Heb.), nahar (Ar.), is ‘a river,’ nahâr (Ar.) ‘the brightness of the sun by day.’ In ʿAbd-al-Raḥmân al-Asadî’s poem in defence of the tribe of Asad against a satire of Ibn Mayyâdâ of the tribe of Murr, the setting of the Sun is called inṣibâbuhâ[759] ‘his pouring himself out,’ his condition when he has poured forth all his rays:

If the Sun’s rays belonged to one tribe, * then his shining-forth and his concealment would belong to us; But he belongs to God, who holds command over him; * to His power belong both his rising and his effusion of himself.

Walau anna ḳarna-sh-shamsi kâna li-maʿsharin * lakâna lanâ ishrâḳuhâ waʾḥtijâbuhâ; Walâkinnahâ lillâhi yamliku amrahâ * li-ḳudratihi iṣʿaduhâ wanṣibâbuhâ.

The poet Ṭarafâ, to express the idea that the Sun _lends_ or _spends_ his rays, uses the verb to ‘give to drink’ (saḳat-hu iyât ush-shamsi, Muʿallaḳâ, v. 9.), and the same idiom is used of the light of the stars. The word kaukab, which in Semitic generally denotes _star_, also signifies a well-spring, e.g. ‘and may no well-spring (kaukab) irrigate the pasture’ (_Aġânî_, XI. 126. 15). Compare a passage in the introduction to the Commentary on the Ḳorân called al-Kashshâf by Zamachsharî (de Sacy, _Anthologie gramm. ar._ p. 120. 8, text), where the two significations of the word occur close together. To this place belongs also a sentence delivered by Rabbi Ami in the Babylonian Talmûd, Taʿanîth, fol. 7 b. He explains the words al-kappayîm kissâôr in Job XXXVI. 32, thus: ‘On account of the sin of their hands he (God) holds back the rain,’ as by ‘light’ rain must be meant (ên ôr ellâ mâṭâr), and gives the same interpretation of the word ôr ‘light’ in another passage, Job XXXVII. 11, ‘he also loads the cloud with moisture, _spreads abroad the cloud of his rain_’ (yâphîṣ ʿanan ôrô). But of what fluid the rays of the heavenly bodies are composed is not fixed and determined by the myth. In the Vendidad, XXI. 26, 32, 34, ‘the Sun, moon, and stars are rich in _Milk_.’ No less frequent is the idea that the heavenly bodies _make water_.[760] This latter view of the Sun’s rays as a liquid is remarkably reflected in the Hungarian language; and I will therefore note some facts relating to the subject, which will be interesting to the investigators of Comparative Mythology. It is especially noteworthy that in old Hungarian the word hugy, which in the modern language means only ‘urine,’ was employed for ‘star.’ In the Legend of St. Francis, an ancient document of the Hungarian language, the Latin _stellarum cursus_ is translated _hugoknak folyása_ 'the flowing of the _hugyok_.' To the same root belong probably some proper names also, collected by Rev. Aron Szilády (_Magyar Nyelvőr_, I. 223), e.g. Hugdi, Hugod, Hugus (which should be read Hugydi, Hugyad, Hugyos), which must surely signify ‘shining,’ _fényes_. The same view of light as a fluid is also preserved in the later language, in which with sugár ‘ray’ the verb ömlik ‘to pour itself out’ is employed, as in many other languages.

F. (_Page 113._) _Cain in Arabic._

The names of the first brothers in the Biblical legend of the Mohammedans are Hâbil and Ḳâbil. Even D’Herbelot (_Bibliothèque Orientale_, S.V. Cabil) explains: Ḳâbil, ‘Receiver,’ as an Arabic diversion of the etymon with which the Hebrew text supplies the name, viz. kânîthî, ‘I have gained or received a man for Jahveh.’ Still we must doubt whether the name Ḳâbil has any etymological foot-hold in this group. Nor can it, as Chwolson supposes, be traced to a transcriber’s error which had been propagated so as to become fixed.[761] It is founded on a peculiar fancy of the Arabs for putting together pairs of names. This process may be observed to take place in one of two modes. First, the Arabs are fond of employing in groups of names various derivatives of the same root: e.g. they call the two angels of the grave Munkar and Nekir; the two armies in the story of Alexander Munsik and Nâsik, a sort of Yâjûj and Mâjûj;[762] and in the story of Joseph the two Midianites who lifted Joseph out of the pit are Bashshâr and Bushrâ.[763] To the same category belong Shiddîd and Shaddâd, the two sons of ʿÂd; Mâlik and Milkân, the sons of Kinânâ.[764] This fancy passed from legend into actual life, where it often decided the names to be given to children, e.g. Ḥasan and Ḥuseyn the two sons of ʿAlî, and larger groups, as the three brothers Nabîh, Munabbih, and Nabahân (_Aġânî_, VI. 101), Amîn, Maʾmûn, and Mustaʾmin the three sons of the Khalif Hârûn ar-Rashîd. The practice is observable not only in the names of contemporaries, but also in genealogical series of names both of prehistoric and of historic times: e.g. Huzâl b. Huzeyl b. Huzeylâ, a man belonging to the ʿAdites (_Commentaire historique sur le poëme d’Ibn Abdoun par Ibn Badroun_, ed. Dozy, Leyden 1848, p. 67. 1 text); the Thamûdite Ḳudâr b. Ḳudeyrâ (Ḥarîrî, _Mak._ p. 201); Sâṭirûn b. Asṭîrûn al-Jarmaḳî, builder of the fortress Ḥaḍr, the conquest of which is bound up with a story full of terrific tragedy (Yâḳût, II. 284. 12), etc. An interesting example of such grouping of nouns in modern popular rhetoric occurs in Burton’s _Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina_ (II. 146 of the ed. in two vols.). Secondly, in pairing names, the Arabs are fond of allowing _assonance_ to prevail. So we have Rahâm and Rayâm, Hârût and Mârût, Hâwil and Ḳâwil, (see Bacher, _ibid._), Yâjûj and Mâjûj for the Biblical Gôg and Mâgôg. From the last instance it is evident that the inclination to form assonant pairs of names is not foreign to the Hebrews; another Hebrew instance is Eldâd and Mêdâd, and from Talmudical literature Chillêḳ and Billêḳ. The assonance occurs not only at the end of the words, the initial syllable being indifferent, but also inversely in the first syllable, the end of the word being indifferent. An instance of the latter is found in the names of the orthodox survivors of the ʿAd and Thamûd peoples in the Mohammedan legend, Jâbalḳ and Jâbars (or Jâbarṣ, see Yâḳût, II. 2; but certainly not Jabulka and Jabulsa, as Justi writes in the _Ausland_ for 1875, p. 306). Moreover, this love of assonance natural to Arabic writers extends beyond the proper sphere of Arabic legends to foreign parts. An instance is found in the Romance of _ʿAntar_, XXIX. 72. 10, where two Franks, brothers, slain by ʿAntar, are called Saubert and Taubert. No doubt the writer had heard of Frankish names ending in _bert_; he had already mentioned a king Jaubert. The tendency to form such assonant names is so prevalent that the correct sounds of one of the two are unhesitatingly corrupted for the sake of assonance. This was the case with Yâjûj and Mâjûj; another well-known instance is the pair of names Soliman and Doliman for Suleyman and Dânishmand. The Biblical Saul is called in the Mohammedan legend Ṭâlût, for the sake of assonance with Jâlût (Goliath).[765] It is also noteworthy that the first species of assonance is to be observed not only in personal names, but also in geographical proper names, e.g. Kadâ and Kudeyy, two hills near Mekka (Yâḳût, IV. 245. 15), Achshan and Chusheyn, also hills (_ibid._ I. 164. 12, and see the proverbs referring to them in al-Meydânî, I. 14. 2); Sharaf and Shureyf, localities in Nejd (Ibn Dureyd, 127. 15.)

This phonological tendency produced also the name Ḳâbil as an assonant with Hâbil. The name Ḳayîn ‘Cain’ was originally pronounced by the Arabs in its Hebrew form, which was particularly easy, because Ḳayn is an old Arabic proper name.[766] Through the force of assonance Ḳayîn was changed in the mouth of the people into Ḳâbil, and this form made its way at a later time into literature and became general. Masʿûdî still knows the name Ḳayin, and expressly condemns the form Ḳâbil as incorrect (_Les Prairies d’or_, I. 62); and he quotes a verse from which it appears that the Biblical etymology from ḳânâ, which is equally applicable to the Arabic language, is known to him:

Waḳtanayâ-l-ibna fa-summiya Ḳâyina * wa-ʿâyanâ nashʿahu mâ ʿâyanâ Fa-shabba Hâbilu fa-shabba Ḳâyin * wa-lam yakun beynahumâ tabâyun.

They (Adam and Eve) gained the son; so he was called Ḳâyin, * and they saw his growth as they saw it. So Hâbil grew up, and Ḳâyin grew up, * and there was no dispute between them.

The same is also evident from the fact that Mohammedan tradition makes Ḳâbil live at a place Ḳaneynâ near Damascus (Yâḳût, II. 588. 11), which can only be explained from its phonetic resemblance to Ḳâyin. Moreover, the connexion in which Abulfaraj (_Historia Dynastiarum_, p. 8) puts the invention of musical instruments with the daughters of Cain,[767] affords evidence for the former employment of the Biblical form of the name by the Arabs, since this tradition depends upon the Arabic word ḳaynâ ‘female singer.’

In the Oriental Christian Book of Adam, which Dillmann has translated, the word Ḳayin is interpreted ‘Hater;’ ‘for he hated his sister in his mother’s womb, and therefore Adam named him Ḳayin.’ Dillmann justly conjectures that this idea is suggested by a derivation of the name from ḳinnê ‘to be jealous of some one.’[768]

G. (_Page 116._) _Grammatical Note on Joel II. 2._

I reserved the justification of the use which I made of the verse Joel II. 2 for a short excursus here. It is well known that in the Semitic languages the passive participle is frequently used instead of the active, similarly to the English _possessed of_ instead of _possessing_, and the German _Bedienter_ for _Bedienender_. In Arabic (in which the native grammarians call this usage mafʿûl bimaʿna-l-fâʿil) ḥijâb mastûr ‘the _concealed_ curtain,’ is said for ‘the _concealing_,’ sâtir (Ḳorân, XVII. 47; compare al-Ḥarîrî, 2nd ed., p. 528. 17) etc., in Aramaic achîd ʿâmartâ ‘the conqueror of the world,’ for âchêd; râphûḳâ ‘digger,’ for râphêḳ (Talm. Babyl. Sôtâ, 9 b.); in Samaritan kethûbhâ ‘the writer,’ (Le Long, _Bibl. sacra_, p. 117; de Sacy, _Mémoire sur la version arabe des livres de Moïse_, in the _Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions_, 1808, p. 16); in later Hebrew lâḳûach ‘buyer’ instead of lôḳêach kephûy ṭôbhâ ‘one who conceals the good he has received,’ hence ‘unthankful’ (see _supra_, p. 193), instead of kôphe; dôbh chaṭûph ‘a tearing bear,’ for chôṭêph (Targ. II. Gen. XLIX. 27). So also frequently in Biblical Hebrew, e.g. aha cherebh ‘holding swords’ for ôchazê, Song of Songs, III. 8); ʿerûkh milchâmâ ‘arranging battle’ for ʿôrêkh (Joel II. 5, compare Jer. VI. 23, L. 42, where the verb ʿ-r-kh, when used of drawing up the lines for battle, is followed by the preposition le; this, however, can be omitted, as in kôhên meshûach milchâmâ ‘a priest anointed for war,’ in the Mishna). I put in the same category the shachar pârûs in the verse now being considered, where in my opinion the passive pârûs stands for the active pôrês.

But to understand my explanation of the verse it must also be noticed that verbs which are regularly employed with a certain noun as subject or object in Hebrew can dispense with the noun, which then is implicitly included in the verb: a very natural proceeding. If I say, for instance, ‘he clapped,’ the verb contains in itself the notion ‘his hands.’ It is an elliptic, or rather pregnant construction where a noun is omitted, similar to that which is used to express motion by a verb not in itself implying motion;[769] e.g. Num. XX. 26, we-Aharôn yêʾâsêph ûmêth shâm ‘Aaron _was gathered_ [to his fathers or his people] and died there.’ The words ‘and died there,’ render superfluous the complement el ʿammâw ‘to his peoples,’ which is added in v. 24. Similarly with s-ph-ḳ ‘to clap’ the object kappayîm ‘the hands’ can be omitted (Job XXXIV. 37; perhaps also Is. II. 6), etc. In the same list I put the pârûs or pôrês of our passage: kenâphayîm ‘the wings’ or kenâphâw ‘its wings’ being omitted. The expression ‘the spreading dawn’ is intelligible by itself, as ‘the dawn that spreads out its wings.’ But the fact that the complementary object after pârûs could be omitted proves how general was the conception of the Bird of the Dawn with outstretched wings, which found this mode of expression.

H. (_Page 153._) _Hajnal._

The Hungarian language shows how speech wavers in determining the colour of the rising Sun. The Hungarian word for Dawn, hajnal, is etymologically related to hó, which means _snow_. Therefore, the former must have originally denoted ‘the white;’[770] and hajnalpir, ‘the morning Redness,’ is literally ‘the Redness of the White.’ And the conception of the _redness_ of the dawn has overcome that which must have prevailed when the expression hajnal came into use, but which is now only recognisable by the help of grammatical analysis. This is evident also from the fact that in the district of Érmellék people of red complexion are derisively called _hajnal_ (i.e. like the _red dawn_, but strictly the _white dawn_).[771]

I. (_Page 155._) _The Sun growing Pale and the Moon Red._

Although, as we have seen, mythology ascribes a reddish as well as a white colour to the Sun, yet it must be observed that this is so only at the earliest stage of the myth. A later period prefers to connect the Sun with the conception of a reddish or yellow colour, leaving the white to the Moon, as more appropriate. Lâbhân, ‘the white,’ has not fixed itself in the language as a name of the Sun, whereas its feminine Lebhânâ has, as a name of the Moon. The conception of colour which the myth attaches to Sun and Moon is well illustrated by a passage in which it is said that both Sun and Moon lose their natural colour through shame, viz., Is. XXIV. 23 wechâpherâ hal-lebhânâ û-bhôshâ ha-chammâ, ‘The moon turns red and the sun pale, for Jahveh of hosts rules on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem.’ The distribution of the expressions for _shame_, bôsh and châphar, which elsewhere also stand in parallelism, is here not arranged haphazard, since the Sun and the Moon are spoken of—objects which are imagined to be provided with distinct colours of their own—but must correspond to the natural colours of each. Of _men_ both verbs are employed without distinction; but ‘making white’ is the prevalent expression for _putting to shame_, so that in a later age, ‘to make white the face of a neighbour’ became a fixed formula in that sense (ham-malbîn penê chabhêrô or achwâr appê, Bâbhâ Meṣîʿâ fol. 58 b; compare Levy, _Chald. Wörterb._ I. 245 a; II. 173 a), and drove the ‘causing to blush red’ out of the field. The word bôsh for ‘to be ashamed’ is moreover even in the earlier times commoner than ch-ph-r. The former denotes ‘to grow white,’ and belongs etymologically to the same group as the Arabic bâḍ, whence abyad ‘white;’ the latter belongs to the group of the Arabic ḥ-m-r (with a change of the labials _p_ and _m_), whence aḥmar ‘red.’ Accordingly, the expression that the Sun bôshâ ‘turns white,’ and the Moon châpherâ ‘turns red’ presupposes the idea of a reddish sun (Edôm) and a white moon (lebhânâ).

The same relation between the colours of the Sun and the Moon is also assumed by the old Persian poet Asadî in his ‘Rivalry between Day and Night,’ a poem to which we had occasion to refer on p. 95. In it Day says to Night:[772] ‘Although the Sun walks yellow, yet he is better than the Moon; although a gold-piece is yellow, yet it is better than a silver groat.’

K. (_Page 155._) _Colour of the Sun._

The following is a literal translation of a passage in the Talmûd, which shows what speculations there were in a late age on the colour of the Sun, and how, even when the technical terms of language were far advanced towards settlement, people were by no means clear what idea of colour was to be attached to the Sun. The passage occurs in the tract Bâbhâ Bathrâ, fol. 84 a. of the Babylonian Talmûd. To enable the reader to understand it, I need only premise that it is a discussion on a word expressing colour, namely, shechamtîth. In the Mishnâ to which this extract of the Talmûd refers, the following words occur:

Shechamtîth we-nimṣâʾath lebhânâ, lebhânâ we-nimṣâʾath shechamtîth shenêhem yekhôlîn lachazôr bâhen, ‘When the buyer and the seller have come to terms about wheat, which is to have the colour shechamtîth, and the seller delivers white, or _vice versa_, then they can both annul the sale.’ Now in the Talmûd it is taken for granted that this colour-word is derived from chammâ ‘sun,’ and means ‘sun-coloured.’

Râbh Pâpâ says, ‘As it is said [that the seller delivers] _white_ [as the opposite to what was required], it is manifest that the sun is _red_ (sûmaḳtî); and in fact it is red at rising and setting; and it is only the fault of our vision, which is not powerful enough, that we do not see it the whole day long of this colour. _Question_: It is said [of one species of leprosy], _A colour deeper than that of the skin_ (Lev. XIII. several times), that is the colour of the _sun_, which appears deeper than that of the shade, whereas the passage manifestly speaks of the _white_ colour of leprosy? [so that the colour of the sun would be white.] _Answer_: Both is true of the colour of leprosy: it resembles the sun-colour insofar as this is deeper than the shade [and this passage speaks of a species of leprosy in which the colour is deeper than that of the skin]; but it fails to resemble the sun-colour insofar as the latter is red while it is itself white. But the putting of the question [which took for granted the white colour of the sun] assumed the idea that the [originally white] sun takes a red tint at rising and setting only because at rising it passes by the roses of the Garden of Eden, and at setting passes the gates of Gêhinnôm [Hell, and in each case the red tint of the object passed is reflected on the sun itself]. Some assume the inverse condition [and suppose that the colours which lie at the opposite side of the heaven—at rising that of Hell, and at setting that of the roses of Paradise—are reflected on the sun].’

L. (_Page 189._) _Transformation of Foreign Stories in Mohammedan Legends._

The Mohammedan legends and popular traditions present instances of borrowing stories which in some foreign cycle of legends are connected with favourite heroes of that cycle, by substituting for the foreign heroes those who are well known in Mohammedan tradition. In this manner many Iranian local traditions and stories were changed and interpreted in a Mohammedan sense after the subjection of the mind of Îrân to the dominion of Islâm. This phenomenon meets us at every step in the history of the religions and stories of the East and West. I will here limit myself to the quotation of a single instance. The mountain Demâwend in the region of Reyy plays an important part in the old Iranian story of the war of the great king Ferîdûn with Zohak Buyurasp; to this mountain the conqueror of the demons chained the inhuman monster and made it powerless for evil. Now the Mohammedan cycle of legends borrowed Suleymân (Solomon) from the Jews, and invested him with the characteristics which the Agâdâ narrates of the great king of the Hebrews; which characteristics, by the way, themselves point strongly to the influence of the Iranian story of Ferîdûn. Among these is especially to be reckoned the subjection of the demons by the mysterious ring, which passed from the Agâdâ into the Ḳorân (Sûr. XXI. v. 82) and into Islamite tradition. When Demâwend had become Mohammedan ground, it had to divest itself of memories of the old fabled Iranian king. ‘The common people believe,’ it is said in Yâḳût, II. 607, ‘that Suleymân son of Dâʾûd chained to this mountain one of the rebellious Satans named Ṣachr, the Traitor; others believe that Ferîdûn chained Buyurasp to it, and that the smoke which is seen to issue from a cavern in it is his breath.’ We learn, moreover, from this note that the original story still possessed vitality alongside of the transformation. The preservation of old national memories was promoted partly by the intellectual movement excited in Îrân by the ‘King’s Book’ (Shâh-nâmeh), partly by national historians of a remarkable type, who were at the same time proficient in Arabic philology and interested in the preservation of old memories of their own nation.[773] Appropriation and transformation of Greek myths are probably rarer. The case quoted in the text is an instance of such appropriation, in which the place of the less-known personages of the Greek myth is occupied by the more familiar ones of Nimrod and his family. There are, however, also cases in which the name is changed, although the abandoned one is quite as familiar as that newly imported into the legend. An instance of this, from Yâḳût’s _Geographical Dictionary_, IV. 351. 16 _sq._, is as follows. The writer is speaking of a place called al-Lajûn west of the Jordan, and says: ‘In the middle of the village of al-Lajûn is a round rock with a dome (ḳubbâ) over it, which is believed to have been a place of prayer of Abraham. Beneath the rock is a well with abundant water. It is narrated that on his journey to Egypt Abraham came with his flocks to this place, where there was insufficient water, and the villagers begged him to go on farther, as there was too little water even for themselves; but Abraham struck his staff against the rock, and water flowed copiously from it. The rock exists to this day.’ No further examination is needed to show that this Mohammedan legend is only a transformation of the Biblical one of Moses striking the rock and providing water for his thirsty people. Yet Ibrâhim has been substituted for Mûsa, a name equally familiar to Mohammedan legends.

This miracle of making water gush out by striking a hard substance with a staff is, moreover, a very favourite one in legends, and is repeated on other occasions, notably in the legend of King Solomon. It is said that the well at Lînâ, a watering station in the land of Negd in Arabia, was dug by demons in the service of Suleymân. For he once, having left Jerusalem on a journey to Yemen, passed by Lînâ, when his company were seized with terrible thirst, and could find no water. Then one of the demons laughed. ‘What makes you laugh so?’ asked Suleymân. The demon replied, ‘I am laughing at your people being so thirsty, when they are standing over a whole sea of water.’ So Suleymân ordered them to strike with their sticks, and water immediately gushed out. (Yâḳût, _ibid._ p. 375. 22 _sq._)

M. (_Page 212._) _The Origins._

As an example of this, I may mention that, in opposition to the Biblical Myth of Civilisation, which brings the planting of the vine into connexion with Noah, the Rabbinical Agâdâ makes even Adam enjoy the fruit of the vine, which was the forbidden fruit of Paradise.[774] The Mohammedan legend names the Canaanitish king Daramshil, contemporary with Noah, as the first wine-drinker, saying that he was the first who pressed and drank wine: auwal man-iʿtaṣar-al-chamr washaribahâ.[775] I also observe in passing that a feature of the Noah-legend of the Arabs which is mentioned in my article quoted below, viz. longevity, seems to have a connexion with the old Solar myth. Long life distinguishes the posterity of Adam in Genesis, and reaches its maximum in Methuselah. The longevity which in the popular belief, especially in Italy, is ascribed to the Cuckoo (A. de Gubernatis, p. 519) is accounted for by its solar character in the myth. Noah’s longevity passed into a by-word in Arabic: ʿumr Nûḥ ‘the length of life of Noah.’ In the writings of the poet Ruʾbâ we find—

Faḳultu lau ʿummirtu ʿumra-l-ḥisli * au ʿumra Nûḥin zaman-al-fiṭaḥli,

‘I said, If I were made to live the lifetime of the lizard or the lifetime of Noah at the time of the flood.’[776] Marzûḳ al-Mekkî says, in a poem to Moḥammed al-Amîn: Faʿish ʿumra Nûḥin fî surûrin wa-ġibṭatin, ‘Live the lifetime of Noah in joy and comfort’ (Aġânî, XV. 67. 4); and similarly Abû-l-ʿAlâ (Saḳṭ al-zand, I. 65. v. 4.):

Fakun fî-l-mulki yâ cheyra-l-barâyâ * Suleymânan fakun fî-l-ʿumri Nûḥâ.

‘Then be in the government, O best of created beings, a Solomon, and be in length of life a Noah.’ And we also find in Ḥâfiẓ:[777]

Come, hand me here the gold-dust, victorious for ever; be it poured, That gives us Ḳârûn’s treasures rich _and Noah’s age_ for our reward.

But a collateral reason for Noah being made a special example of longevity may be found in the South-Semitic signification of the verb nôch. In Ethiopic Noah is called Nôch, and the verb denotes _longus fuit_. And in an Ethiopic poem (in Dillmann’s _Chrestomath. Aethiop._, 111. no. 13. v. 1) it is said of Methuselah’s longevity, ôzawahabkô _nûch_ mawâʿel la-Matûsâlâ.

N. (_Page 254._) _Influence of National Passion on Genealogical Statements._

The same tendency which among the Hebrews caused the origin of the Ammonites and Moabites to be referred to the incestuous intercourse of Lot’s daughters with their father, produced exactly the same result many centuries later in a different yet related sphere. It is known to students of the history of the civilisation of Islâm that the best Persians, despite their subjection to the sceptre of Islâm, strove long and actively against Arabisation, which they regarded as quite unworthy of the Persian nation, to them the more talented of the two. This reaction caused the publication of many literary documents; and produced especially one very curious and not yet fully appreciated movement, which originated in the circle of the Shuʿûbîyyâ.[778] In order to appear as a member of the great family of Islâm of equal birth with the Arabs, the Persians took care to weave their own early history into the legends of that religion. This was managed in two ways. _First_, they were anxious to trace their genealogy to a son of Abraham, so as to possess a counterpoise to the Arabs and their father Ishmael. Thus it was managed to refer the non-Arabs to Isaac, with a collateral intention of representing this descent as nobler than that from Ishmael.[779] And we also meet with an allegation, in the Kitâb al-ʿayn, that Abraham had another son besides Isaac and Ishmael, named Farrûch, from whom the non-Arabs (al-ʿajam) descend.[780] _Secondly_, the genealogical sacred history is perverted in a sense hostile to the Arabs. Thus, for instance, Ishmael is not allowed to be the son whom Abraham is about to sacrifice to Allâh, but Isaac the ancestor of the non-Arabs, as the Hebrew tradition has it[781]; and the story of the well Zemzem is put into connexion with Sâbûr the Persian king and with other reminiscences.[782] In the _Commentaire historique sur le poëme d’Ibn Abdoun par Ibn Badroun_, published by Prof. Dozy, page 7 of the Arabic text, we find various assertions relative to the derivation of the Persians. The majority of these genealogies trace the Persians back by various ways to Sâm b. Nûḥ (Shem, son of Noah); one derives them from Joseph, son of Jacob. The ethnological derivation of a nation from Sâm in the view of the Arabs certainly involves no idea of special excellence in the nation concerned; for even the enigmatical Nasnâs of the Arabic fables, a sort of monstrous half-men, half-birds (apes are also called so in vulgar Arabic), are allowed to have a Semitic genealogy.[783] But, at all events, no hostile intention lurks in the pedigree from Sâm. Thus the above genealogies, while possessing no tendency directly hostile to the Persians, are far from placing that nation in the foreground, and allow an unexpressed idea of the eminence of the Arabian nation to shine through. The case is very different with another derivation propounded in the same passage. This makes the Persians to belong to the descendants of Lot, their ancestors being the fruit of his incest with his two daughters. The Samaritans say the same of the Druses.[784] I believe this genealogy is based on intention only—like the identical story told by the ancient Hebrews of Ammon and Moab. A local tradition, existing at Jeyrûd, a village to the north of Damascus, on the road to Palmyra, speaks of _a tribe of the people of Lot_ as having dwelt on the ground now covered by a salt lake (Memlaḥa or Mellâḥa), whose city was destroyed by the wrath of God.[785] This story perhaps originated in some war of the later Mohammedan population against the older inhabitants or against Beduins who had taken up an abode there. It must also be observed that Mohammedan writers exhibit a prevailing tendency to remove far to the north, to Ḥamâ and Ḥaleb (Aleppo) in Syria, the muʾtafikâ or maḳlûbâ, i.e. the Sodom of the Bible. This follows from Yâḳût, III. 59, 124. In the particular case just mentioned, no doubt the existence of the salt lake cooperated in the creation of the local tradition (in the language of the Talmûd the notion of the Yam ḥam-melach ‘Sea of salt’ is greatly generalised and becomes almost a figure of rhetoric; see the passages in the Tôsâphôth on Pesâchîm, fol. 28 a. init. ʿAbhôdath); on the lake Yammune on the north of Lebanon, see Seetzen’s _Reisen_, I. 229, 302, II. 338, referred to by Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 314. Similarly a later Arabic local tradition localised an episode of the Sodom-story on the transjordanic shore of the Dead Sea. For it is evident that the story of the conversion of Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt is the source of the following popular tradition noted by Palmer (_Desert of the Exodus_, p. 483). Not far from the Dead Sea, in the former country of Moab, at a place called El-Yehûdîyyâ ‘the Jewess,’ there is a great black mass of basalt, said to have been originally a woman, who was thus changed into stone as a punishment for having denied the ‘certainty of death’—a somewhat obscure expression.

Footnote 740:

I have referred to this in _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._ 1870, XXIV. 207.

Footnote 741:

According to Rabbinical views, Âbhôth V, Mishnâ 21.

Footnote 742:

The author refers on p. 127 _recto_ to his earlier work, _Biġyat al-mutaʿallim wa-fâʾidat al-mutakallim_. Ḥâjî Chalfâ does not know this book of the author’s.

Footnote 743:

Berêsh. r. sect. 53; see Beer, _Leben Abraham’s_, p. 168, note 506.

Footnote 744:

See Steinthal, _Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei Griechen und Römern_, p. 342.

Footnote 745:

See on raḥmân and raḥîm al-Beyḍâwî’s _Comm. in Coranum_, ed. Fleischer, 5. 11.

Footnote 746:

_Kitâb al-aġânî_, IV. 191. My translation differs from Sprenger’s.

Footnote 747:

Sprenger, _Leben Mohammed’s_, I. 112.

Footnote 748:

MS. of the Leipzig University Library, Cod. Ref. no. 357.

Footnote 749:

See Sprenger, _ibid._ p. 111.

Footnote 750:

See Lenormant, _Premières Civilisations_, I. 359.

Footnote 751:

_Aegyptische Studien_, in the _Zeitsch. der D. M. G._, X. 683.

Footnote 752:

_De Iside et Osiride_, c. LXXIV.

Footnote 753:

Herod. II. 73: τὰ μὲν αὐτοῦ χρυσόκομα τῶν πτερῶν, τὰ δὲ, ἐρυθρά.

Footnote 754:

On other animals, rather fantastic than mythological, belonging to Egyptian antiquity, see Chabas, _Études sur l’antiquité historique_, Paris 1873, pp. 399–403.

Footnote 755:

Herod. II. 41: Τοὺς μέν νυν καθαροὺς βοῦς τοὺς ἔρσενας καὶ τοὺς μόσχους οἰ πάντες Αἰγύπτιοι θύουσι· τὰς δὲ θηλέας οὔ σφι ἔξεστι θύειν, ἀλλὰ ἱραί εἰσι τῆς Ἴσιος.

Footnote 756:

E.A. Bowring’s translation of the _Book of Songs_, where the ‘Nordsee’ is rendered ‘Baltic’!

Footnote 757:

Later Edda, I. 90, Gylf. 35.

Footnote 758:

Lepsius, _Aelteste Texte des Todtenbuchs_, Berlin 1867, p. 42.

Footnote 759:

_Aġânî_ II. 118. 7.

Footnote 760:

See especially Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, p. 30 sq.

Footnote 761:

See Gutschmid in _Zeitschr. d. D.M.G._ 1861, XV. 86.

Footnote 762:

See W. Bacher’s Nizâmî’s _Leben und Werke_, p. 21.

Footnote 763:

MS. of the Leipzig University Library, Suppl. 7. fol. 30 _recto_.

Footnote 764:

Yâḳût. III. 92; Krehl, _Vorislam. Religion des Araber_, p. 12 etc. See also Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 272. note 4.

Footnote 765:

See Frankel’s _Monatsschrift für jüd. Geschichte_, II. 273. See on assonance of names, _Zeitschr. d. D.M.G._ XXI. 593.

Footnote 766:

E.g. Ḥamâsâ, p. 221; compare _Zeitsch. d. D.M.G._, 1849, III. 177.

Footnote 767:

See Gutschmid, l.c. p. 87.

Footnote 768:

In Ewald’s _Jahrb. für bibl. Wissenschaft_, 1853, V. 139. note 53.

Footnote 769:

_Gesenius, Hebrew Grammar_, edited by Rödiger, § 141; Ewald, _Ausführl. Lehrb. der. Heb. Spr._ § 282. c.

Footnote 770:

Paul Hunfalvy in the monthly magazine _Magyar Nyelvőr_, 1874, III. 202.

Footnote 771:

Ibid., 1873, II. 179.

Footnote 772:

Rückert, l.c., p. 62. v. 18.

Footnote 773:

Such as Ḥamzâ al-Iẓfahânî; compare Yâḳût, I. 292–3, 791. 20; III. 925, 629. 18 _sq._, IV. 683. 10. and my _Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachgelehrsamkeit bei den Arabern_, Vienna 1871–3, no. I. p. 45 and no. III. p. 26.

Footnote 774:

Leviticus rabbâ, sect. 12: ôthô hâ-ʿêṣ sheâkhal mimmennû Âdâm hâ-rîshôn ʿanâbhîm hâyâh.

Footnote 775:

Ibn Iyyâs, in the book Badâʿi al-zuhûr fî waḳâʿi al-duhûr, Cairo 1865, p. 83: see my article _Zur Geschichte der Etymologie des Namens Nûḥ_ in _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1870, XXIV. 209.

Footnote 776:

Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 19, al-Jauharî, s. v. fṭḥl. On the proverbial longevity of the lizard see Kâmil, ed. W. Wright, p. 197. 18; al-Damîrî, II. 34; al-Jauharî, s. v. ḥsl; Burckhardt’s _Reisen in Syrien_, note by Gesenius in the German translation, p. 1077.

Footnote 777:

Rosenzweig, III. 465.

Footnote 778:

See A. von Kremer, _Culturgeschichtliche Streifzüge auf dem Gebiete des Islams_, Leipzig 1873.

Footnote 779:

See Kitâb alʿikd, MSS. of the Imperial Hofbibliothek, Vienna, A.F., no. 84, vol. I. pp. 188 _sq._ The data bearing on this subject I have collected and published in a essay on the Nationality-question in Islâm, written in Hungarian, Buda-Pest 1873.

Footnote 780:

See al-Nawawî’s _Commentary on Muslim’s Collection of Traditions_, ed. Cairo, I. 124.

Footnote 781:

Compare al-Damîrî Ḥayât al-ḥaywân, II. 316 _sq._

Footnote 782:

Al-Masʿûdî, _Les Prairies d’or_, II. 148 _sq._; al-Kazwînî, ed. Wüstenfeld, I. 199; Yâḳût, Muʿjam, II. 941.

Footnote 783:

Al-Maḳrîzî, _History of the Copts_, ed. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen 1847, p. 90.

Footnote 784:

Petermann, _Reisen im Orient_, I. 147.

Footnote 785:

Kremer, _Mittelsyrien und Damaskus_, p. 194.

APPENDIX.

TWO ESSAYS BY H. STEINTHAL,

PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN:

I

THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE LEGEND OF PROMETHEUS.

II

THE LEGEND OF SAMSON.

_THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE LEGEND OF PROMETHEUS_:

A REVIEW OF AD. KUHN'S ‘HERABKUNFT DES FEUERS UND DES GÖTTERTRANKS.’

By H. STEINTHAL.

------------------

The soundness of a new discovery is attested in various ways, but especially by the circumstance that the new thought is no sooner uttered in speech than it is seized upon and worked out by others besides its author; for the thought in question is thus proved to be really the subject which the intellect of the time is best prepared to take up, and which will lead on the Past to the Future. This is found to be the case with Comparative Mythology, Kuhn’s new creation. When a large number of Vedic Hymns—text, translation, and commentary—first appeared in Europe through the instrumentality of a German, Rosen (too early lost to science), Kuhn saw at once not only that they were written in a more ancient language than the classical Sanskrit, but, what was more important, that they opened up a source of mythological views which flowed from a more distant and primeval antiquity than is known to us anywhere else, and that this was the common source of the more important myths and figures of gods of the Aryan nations. He then demonstrated this, in successive essays on Erinnys, Despoina and Athenê, the Kentaurs, Minos, Orpheus, Hermes, and on Wuotan (Odin) in the German mythology, by proving the identity of their names and myths with corresponding ones in the Vedas. Kuhn’s acuteness and skilful combinations thus established the fact, of the highest importance to primeval history, that the heathen Aryan nations possessed a belief in gods, the outlines of which dated from the age of their original unity. But Kuhn saw also that two further facts followed from the first, one more important, the other more interesting. By the former I mean the fact, that the Vedic myths still exist in so primitive a form as to point to the ground of their own origin, and thus themselves to furnish their own certain interpretation. The latter is the fact that all Saga-poetry, whether epic or dramatic, artistic or popular, stands in connexion with the oldest myths; and further, that the mythological faith and worship, so far from being extinct even among the civilised Christian nations of Europe, still lives on in the rural classes of the population in spirit and practice, as superstition or sometimes as jest, though of course not without frequent transformations and disfigurements. This last point, however, had already been discovered by the genius of Jacob Grimm, who only wanted the support of the Vedas to become the founder of Comparative Mythology, as he was of Historical Grammar. But this support was necessary to elevate Comparative Mythology into a science based on method, and to give sufficient certainty to the interpretation of myths and gods. The greatest genius—fully entering into the spirit of the ancient Greeks and Germans, and endowed with a lively sympathy with nature—could, without the guarantee of the Vedas, never have produced anything higher than unproved conjectures. It would have remained impossible to demonstrate the original identity of different gods, had not the Vedas given us the connecting terms. And the sense of the myths and gods could only have been vaguely and uncertainly guessed at, had not the language of the Vedas, with a happy transparency both of grammar and of psychology, furnished the means of tracing the development of ideas from the most primitive impressions received by the soul.

Starting from the same fundamental idea as Kuhn, Roth proved, about the same time, that the heroes of the New-Persian epos are only old mythic figures of the religion of Zoroaster, which are equivalent in names and functions to certain Vedic gods. In the _Oxford Essays_ of 1855, Max Müller gave a sketch of Comparative Mythology, drawn in a certain poetical spirit which is quite in harmony with the subject. He endeavoured, very justly, to exhibit the essential connexion between the poetical and the mythic aspect, and to show that all formation of myths was simply poetic invention. Kuhn’s idea was immediately and generally accepted and worked out by all those who were engaged on the Vedas—Benfey, Weber, and others. Mannhardt has frequently elucidated German myths with penetrating thoroughness from Vedic-Indian ones.

Thus Kuhn’s idea has with rare rapidity become a secure common property of science. In the book, the title of which is given at the head of this article, he now gives an unsurpassable model of careful method in this field of investigation. When the weight of every argument is tested with such accuracy and the conscientiousness of a judge, and exhibited so unvarnished and so entirely free from special pleading, and the conclusion is drawn with such cautiousness, as here, not only scientific but also moral recognition is the writer’s due.

We will first attempt to realise the result attained, and then proceed to a psychological analysis of it. I shall, however, here strictly confine myself to the one mythical feature which forms the foundation of _Prometheus_. Kuhn’s book contains, besides, an extraordinary multitude of mythological facts, grouped together as belonging to the subject mentioned in his title.

In the earliest times Fire must have been given to man by nature: there was a burning here or there, and man came to know fire and its effects by experience. At the same time he learned also how to keep it in, and very soon he may also have learned how to produce it. He took certain kinds of wood, bored a stick of the one into a stick or disk of the other, and turned the former round and round in the latter till it produced flame. Kuhn has shown elaborately that the Aryan nations’ oldest fire-instrument was formed in this way, and that the rotation of the boring-stick was effected by a thread or cord wound round it and pulled to and fro.[786] But man knew also of another sort of fire, that in the sky. Up there burned the fire of the Sun’s disk; from thence the fire of the Lightning darted down. The primitive man, in his simplicity, believed the heavenly fire to be like the earthly; its effects were the same, and it went out from time to time like the earthly fire. Therefore, Must not its origin also have been similar? must it not after every extinction have been kindled again in like manner? There was no want of the necessary wood in the sky. In the sky was seen the great Ash-tree of the world,—in a configuration of clouds which is still in North Germany called the _Wetterbaum_, the _storm-tree_.[787] It was supposed, before men believed in gods of human form, that the lightning fell down from this Ash-tree, against which a branch twined round it had rubbed till the fire was produced, as had been observed in forests on earth. The men thought that the earthly fire had its origin in the sky, and was only heavenly fire that had fallen down. They saw how it fell down in the lightning; they recognised in the lightning a divine eagle, hawk, or woodpecker;[788] and many a bird which now flies about in the atmosphere of earth is a fallen flash of lightning, proved to be such either by its colour or by some other circumstance. The wood, too, which when rubbed turns to fire, is similarly a transformed lightning-bird. This is seen sometimes in the fiery-red colour of the fruit, _e.g._ of the mountain-ash (rowan),[789] sometimes in the thorns or in the pinnate leaves of the plant, in which the claws and feathers of the lightning-bird are still recognisable. The rubbing merely revokes this transformation: the igneous creature is enabled to take up again its original form.

Originally the bird was probably regarded as being itself the lightning, because inversely the lightning was treated as a bird. Afterwards it was thought that the bird which was at first perched upon the heavenly Ash that produced the fire brought the fire down from the tree to the earth.

But further, Is not Life, too, a fire, burning in the body?—and Death the extinction of the flame? And as fire is kindled by boring with a stick in the hole of a plate of wood, so human life is produced in the womb. And what happens now and always here on earth, happened up there in the Ash-tree of the world at the original creation of man. That Ash produced, first Fire, and then Man, who is also fire. Indeed, strictly speaking, this is still going on: the Soul is a lightning-bird that has come down to earth, and the birds that bear down the fire—such as the Stork[790]—still bring us children too, just as they brought the first man down to earth: in short, the Fire-god is also the Man-god.

Then, at a later stage of the development of ideas, when the divine powers were imagined as personages in human form, the wonderful element of Fire, which drew to itself the attention of men no less by its mysteriousness than by its usefulness, was undoubtedly one of the first divine figures to be personified. Now one of the oldest words for fire was _agni-s_, Lat. _igni-s_. According to Benfey it comes from the root _ag_ ‘to shine,’ by means of the suffix _ni_; _s_ is the sign of the nominative. Therefore Agni is the Shining one, the Fire; but in the earliest times the word designated not the element Fire, but the god Fire. He, the god Agni, had his abode in the wood, and was allured forth by the turning.

Agni was fire and light in general, both the absolute element in general and also every special and separate manifestation of it: such as the brilliant sky, the shining sun, the lightning, fire burning here for us, the first man and progenitor of mankind. But alongside of this, the peculiar conception of the Lightning-Bird still continued. That also was converted into a personal divine or heroic figure, which brought fire and man to the earth in the lightning. Sometimes Agni himself was called a ‘golden-winged bird,’ even in the Vedic Hymns; and sometimes the bird was made into a special god or hero distinct from Agni, bearing a name taken from one of Agni’s various epithets. Thus Picus, originally only the woodpecker, was in the belief of the Latins the Fire-Bird. He was Lightning and Man; and it was said later that the first king of Latium was Picus, for the first man and father of mankind frequently appears in localised stories as the first king of the locality. Picus is shown to be a Lightning-Bird and Lightning-Man, not only by his name and story, but also by the manner of his worship: since he was regarded as the protecting deity of women in childbed and of infants.[791]

Less obviously, but not less certainly, a Lightning-Bird was preserved at Argos in Phoroneus. He, and not Prometheus, was said in the Peloponnesian story to have given fire to men; and in his honour a holy flame was kept burning on an altar at Argos. He was at the same time regarded as father of the human race. Having been originally a bird sitting on the celestial Ash-tree, he was made a hero, son of the nymph Melia, ‘the Ash.’ Now his name is Grecised from the Sanskrit _bhuraṇyu-s_, an epithet of the Fire-god Agni, denoting ‘rapid, darting, flying,’ thus picturing Agni as a bird. The name Phoroneus, _bhuraṇyu-s_, is in root (_bhar_ = φερ) and signification, though not in grammatical form, equivalent to the word φερόμενος.[792]

It was not possible to stop with the mere conversion of the bird into a person. When the divine beings were once thought of as persons, they were also allowed to appear and act as such. So men no longer imagined the fire in the sky to be self-originated on the World’s Tree, but regarded it as produced by gods, who acted similarly to men on earth, and revived the extinct flame of the sun hidden behind a mountain of clouds in the morning or during a storm, by driving a bolt into the sun’s disk or into the cloud.

These are mythic conceptions of the very earliest age, but they contain in themselves a motive to further development, to give completeness to the relations subsisting among them, or binding them to the natural phenomenon that they represent. Thus true myths arise.

Now, the most striking peculiarity of fire was obviously the necessity of constantly kindling it again afresh, because when lighted it must go out again sooner or later. This aspect was exhibited in the following very simple myth. Agni vanished from the earth; he had hidden himself in a cave. Mâtariśvan brings him back to men. This myth is easily understood. The existence of the god Agni is assumed to be absolute and uninterrupted: but Fire is often not present; consequently the god must have hidden himself. Where, then, can he be? Afar off, it is sometimes said, quite generally; another time it is said, In the sky—which seems to be regarded as his proper home—or with the gods. But sometimes he is not there either, as at night or in a storm. Where is he, then? Why, where he is found; in the hollow of the cloud, from which he soon shines forth: in the hole of the disk in which the stick is turned round and round. Then, who finds him there, and brings him back to men? He who makes the fire appear, or flame up, and thereby restores to men the god who had withdrawn from them: that is, the Borer, or the Lightning which bores into the cloud as the stick into the wooden disk; it is Mâtariśvan, says the myth. This is a divine or semi-divine being, of whom but little is known. He seems to be a figure which has never been fully crystallised;[793] regarded as a divine person, he fetches back the Fire-God to men.

Then the following terminology was introduced. The boring, by which man kindled fire and the sun when extinguished was lighted up again, was called _manthana_, from the root _math_ (_math-nâ-mi_ or _manth-â-mi_, ‘I shake, rub, or produce by rubbing’). In German, the corresponding word is _mangeln_, ‘to roll,’[794] _Mangelholz_, used in North Germany; _manth_ here becomes _mang_, as _hinter_ is pronounced _hinger_, and _unter unger_. The boring-stick was probably originally called _matha_, from which _mathin_, ‘a twirling-stick,’ differs only in its suffix. Very soon, however, _matha_ appears to have been restricted to another signification,[795] and then the fire-generating wooden stick was designated by a term formed from the same root with the preposition _pra_ prefixed, which only gave a shade of difference to the meaning, _pramantha_. But the fetching of the god Agni by Mâtariśvan (the personified _pramantha_) is also designated by the same verb _mathnâmi, manthâmi_, as the proper earthly boring. Now this verb, especially when compounded with the preposition _pra_, gained the signification ‘to tear off, snatch to oneself, rob.’ Thus the fetching of Agni became a robbery of the fire, and the _pramantha_ a fire-robber. The gods had intended, for some reason or other, to withhold fire from men; a benefactor of mankind stole it from the gods. This robbery was called _pramâtha_; _pramâthyu-s_ is ‘he who loves boring or robbery,’ a Borer or a Robber. From the latter word, according to the peculiarities of Greek phonology, is formed Προμηθεύ-ς, Prometheus. He is therefore a Fire-God, very like Hephaestos, whose functions he often assumes. Mâtariśvan, who is quite synonymous with him in meaning, derives his name still more directly from the Fire-God; for mâtariśvan is originally a mere epithet of Agni; for the boring-stick itself bursts into flame, and in so doing reveals itself as Agni. Originally a mere epithet, mâtariśvan was subsequently separated from Agni and made into a distinct person; but, as already observed, without clearly-defined characteristics. Prometheus is the fire-generator, and as such the creator of the human race.[796] This relation to men explains the affection for them which prompts him to give them fire against the will of Zeus. He hid the spark of fire in a stem of Narthex,—one of the kinds of wood which were used for the production of fire, and were regarded as transformed fire.

Fire on earth was the Fire-God descended from heaven; the first man was only the same god in another form; consequently the first men—the representatives and benefactors of the human race—the first kings—the founders of the great sacerdotal families among the priest-ridden Indians—all were designated by attributes of the Fire-God. The family of the Aṅgiras-es acknowledges its descent from _Aṅgiras_. But Agni himself is often called by this name; and indeed these two names, Agni and Aṅgiras, come from the same root _ag_ or _aṅg_, and have the same meaning—‘shining.’ Thus, in the mythical view Fire existed in three forms: first, as actual fire, i.e. as the Fire-God; secondly, as generator, rubber, fetcher, and robber, of fire, i.e. as Pramantha, Mâtariśvan, Prometheus; and thirdly, as those for whom it exists, and to whom it is given, i.e. as men. After the Fire-God has come down from heaven as man, he as man or as god fetches himself as god or divine element to earth, and presents himself as element to himself as man.

In the view of primitive man the mediating term between heaven and earth lay in the Lightning. In the lightning he saw the Fire—the god, the man—fall from heaven. _Bhṛgu_,[797] originally _bhargu_, from the root _bharg_, from which the Latin _fulgeo, fulgur_, and the Greek φλέγω also come, signifies ‘the Shining,’ ‘the Lightning;’ German _blitz_, which latter word comes from the identical German root (Old High German _plih_, Middle High German _blic_).[798] Bhṛgu was said to be the ancestor of the Bhṛgu-s, a sacerdotal family. To them, as representatives of the human race born from the lightning, Mâtariśvan is said to have given the fire. But as the Bhṛgu-s are the lightning, and consequently the Fire-God himself, the myth could be so turned round as to make Mâtariśvan fetch the god from the Bhṛgu-s as divine beings, or to make the Bhṛgu-s go after the traces of Agni, find him in the hole, take him among men, and cause him to display his fire.

It is also told of the above-mentioned Aṅgiras that _they_ found Agni hidden in the cave. They are, indeed, only the same god broken into fragments: the fire separated into individual cases of burning, flame flashing at various places.

Thus there is a mythical identity, on the one hand, between Prometheus and Mâtariśvan as fire-god and fire-fetcher, and on the other, between Prometheus and the Bhṛgu-s in the same capacities, except that the latter are also representatives of mankind. And their relation to Prometheus can be authenticated in Greek myths as well. Bhṛgu is Lightning in his very name. His son _Ćyavana_ ‘the Fallen’ (from _ćyu_ ‘to fall’[799]) is the Lightning again. Hephaestos, also, is well known to have fallen down. The name Iapetos appears most likely to express the notion of ‘the Fallen’; only he is not the son, but the father, of Prometheus. Prometheus created men of clay, and the earth which he used for the purpose was shown near Panopeus in Phokis, the seat of the Phlegyans; the Phlegyans, therefore, considered themselves the first men: they are the Bhṛgu-s, Grecised regularly. The Indians had, moreover, other ideas connected with the Bhṛgu-s which closely coincide with those held by the Greeks concerning the Phlegyans; especially the conception that Bhṛgu, the ancestor of the Bhṛgu-s, like Phlegyas that of the Phlegyans, was hurled into Tartaros for pride and insurrection against the gods. The same characteristics, pride and opposition to Zeus, as well as the punishment, are also found in Prometheus, who is identical with the other two.

The identity of the Indian Mâtariśvan with the Greek Prometheus, and the explanation of the latter thereby gained, are accordingly based on such a coincidence of several mythical features and so similar a combination of these features, as cannot possibly be the work of chance; as well as on several interpretations of names, which are intrinsically more or less certain. If we knew more of the Indian Mâtariśvan, or if the word _pramâthyu-s_, corresponding to the Greek Prometheus, could be authenticated in the Vedas, then the certainty of all that has been said above of the Greek Titan would force itself upon us. In compensation for what has not yet been found, and is perhaps lost for ever, it may be serviceable to learn about a host of divine beings described in the epic poems of the Indians, who have some connexion with the Fire-God and are called _Pramatha_-s or _Pramâtha_-s; they appear to be only the one original Pramâtha or Pramâthyu-s broken up into fragments.

This is, in Kuhn’s profound exposition, the simplest and the pure form of the Story of Prometheus. Later, in Greece, it was brought into relation to other stories in Hesiod’s poetry; and again, with peculiar profundity, into new combinations by Aeschylos. Prometheus received his higher mental signification mainly through the fact that the Greek verb μανθάν-ω, with which the name of the Titan was correctly assumed to be connected, had taken a more mental meaning than the Sanskrit _mathnâ-mi_ or _manthâ-mi_. The two verbs are obviously originally absolutely identical; only the nasalisation of the root _math_ is effected differently in each language. We might suppose that the meaning ‘to learn,’ which the root μαθ has in Greek, had grown out of the fundamental sense ‘to shake’; for learning is a shaking up, a movement, of the mind to and fro. Yet such a mode of conception might be scarcely possible to the mind of the primeval age in which that signification must have grown up; the primitive act of learning was not such violent exertion as ours in modern times, but rather a simple _hearing_, a mental _reception_. Now as the Sanskrit word _mathnâmi_ grew into the meaning ‘to take’ (as has been observed), it is more probable that the notion of _learning_ was formed by the Greeks from this (‘snatching to oneself, taking’[800]), as Kuhn supposes. Then the physical sense of μαθ was lost altogether to the Greeks; it was, indeed, still known that Prometheus was a fire-_taker_, but not that the name indicated this. So they attempted to understand his name in a strictly mental sense, and remodelled the nature of the Titan accordingly.

Accordingly, the answer to the question of the nature of the etymology of the name Prometheus must be this: Prometheus comes from a root _pra_ + _math_, which had the same meaning as the simple verb μανθάνω. But the formation of the name from the verb is older than the appearance of any specific Hellenism; for Prometheus was not formed by the Greeks. With the verb _mathnâ-mi_ the name _pramâthyu-s_, without any verb _pramathnâ-mi_, was also delivered to them; and so there were in Greek μανθάνω and Προμηθεύς, but not προμανθάνω. The knowledge of the mutual connexion of the two former words continued vivid in the language; and when the sense of μανθάνω was spiritualised, the same change came over that of Prometheus also. Besides this, the preposition προ was understood, according to the usual Greek analogy, as ‘beforehand’; and the verb προμανθάνω was then formed on Greek ground. Thus Prometheus came finally to denote to the Greeks ‘the Fore-learner, the Provident.’ I shall have more to say presently on this development. Let us pause for a while here, and attempt the psychological analysis of the simpler form of the myth exhibited above.

The following definitions must be given in advance:

Every simple act of the soul and every simple occurrence in the soul shall be termed a _Motion_, that we may have a general word to embrace all psychological data and designate, so to speak, a psychical atom.

Simple Motions _combine_ together for very various reasons and in various ways, which I need not enumerate here; e.g. a colour, a form, and a matter. Thus they form a _Combination_ of motions, e.g. ‘a black round disk.’

Simple Motions, or single Combinations of them, in case they are not distinct or distinguished from other simple motions or single combinations on account of the similarity or equality of their contents, _coalesce_ with the latter into one motion or combination of motions, as the case may be. For instance, to one who has not a clear sight, or has no sense of colour, or is looking at too great a distance, two colours that are but little different will appear one and the same. If one sees a ribbon today, and tomorrow sees at the same place another scarcely differing from it in colour, length, and breadth, one will suppose it to be the same. Thus, Coalescence produces a loss of contents (for in the place of two or more motions only one remains, whereas distinction brings an enrichment of contents), but the loss is compensated by the force of the motion.

Not simple motions, but certainly combinations, can be _interlaced_ (_sich verflechten_) with one another. Interlacing of combinations occurs when certain motions belonging to two or more combinations coalesce, whilst the other motions belonging to them remain apart. The interlacing of the combinations approximates more or less to a coalescence of them in proportion to the number and value of the motions that coalesce. On this more accurate definitions may be given presently. Here I will only allude to a frequently occurring instance: two words of similar sound in a foreign language are easily interlaced, even to the point of perfect coalescence, i.e. they are confounded with each other. So also two persons closely resembling each other. The coalescing members of the combinations here so greatly exceed in number and force those that remain separated, that there is no consciousness of the latter.

When something presents itself to the mind to be perceived, estimated, or in the most general sense received, a certain procedure or negotiation takes place between this something on the one side, and certain older ideas, through the instrumentality of which the reception is to be effected, on the other. This procedure is _Apperception_: it is obviously far from a primary occurrence in the consciousness; it depends upon Coalescences, Interlacings, and Combinations of all sorts.[801]

* * * * *

The primitive man saw fire on the earth and in the sky; or, to express it more precisely, he saw something burning, shining. From the conception of burning things the idea of Burning or Shining was extracted. The difference between Conception (_Anschauung_) and Idea (_Vorstellung_) must now be carefully noted.[802] The former is an undivided sum-total of many elements, corresponding to the object or occurrence presented to the senses. The thought of it is expressed in language by a plurality of ideas, every one of which corresponds to one single element of the conception; so that the ideas are equal in number to the separate elements which are recognised and distinguished in the conception. Thus, to a single conception corresponds a combination of many separate ideas. The two combinations of ideas concerning the heavenly fire and concerning the earthly, contained elements (ideas) which coalesced together; and thus they became interlaced with one another. The conceptions of the two fires (as aggregate unities, in opposition to the ideas, into which they are broken up by the analysis of their elements) would not, indeed, easily coalesce; for as such aggregates they appear to the observer too different from each other. But when the conceptions are converted into combinations of ideas, which conversion is effected by language, then the related elements in the two combinations come into prominence and coalesce, and thus produce an interlacing of the combinations. But it must not be imagined that in this interlacing only those elements are affected which coalesce, and those which do not remain entirely unaffected by them; on the contrary, while the one set of elements press on towards coalescence, they are held back by their connexion with the others. The coalescence is therefore not quite perfect. Now, when on the one side even the not-distinguished elements are protected against the coalescence to which they incline, on the other the distinct elements which keep the two combinations asunder are themselves drawn in to the inclination towards coalescence. Thus the mutual relations of the combinations as aggregates are disturbed by their interlacing; they do not become identical, and yet are not severed: they become analogous.

The one is analogous to the other, the one gives the measure by which the other is measured: the one is the more powerful, the ruling, that which gives the means of apperception; the other the weaker, the ruled, the apperceived. How is this relation divided between the combinations of ideas of the earthly and the heavenly fire?

No doubt the heavenly fire is by far the greater and more effective, and therefore also the more penetrating into the soul of man. Man soon recognises the Sun as the source of the daylight and the origin of growth, and consequently as the giver of all wealth and all joy; and learning, on the one hand, what the sun procures him, he also experiences, on the other, by night and in winter, what it is to be deprived of it. At its rising and setting, but most impressively in the thunderstorm, the sun surprises him by the grandest sights. Thus it might be thought that the heavenly fire must give the measure for the apprehension of the earthly, and therefore for that of fire in general. But the matter demands more careful consideration.

Only the more powerful combination of ideas can give the measure and be the organ of apperception. Now a physical occurrence which works more powerfully, i.e. with greater force, upon our senses, will indeed arouse stronger feelings; but we cannot speak of stronger sensations. For instance, the vibrations of the air produce in the organ of hearing both the sensation of a tone and a feeling of pleasure or pain. Stronger commotions of air produce stronger and more painful feelings in the ear, but not stronger sensations, only sensations of louder, stronger tones. In memory we distinguish louder and softer tones merely in defining their contents, without meaning that the memory of the one is stronger than that of the other. The sensation of a louder tone is not a louder sensation. Therefore, from the mere fact that the sun is brighter and speaks louder to men in the thunder than the earthly fire, no greater power in human consciousness accrues to men’s ideas of the heavenly fire.

The more important and impressive idea, too, is not necessarily also the more powerful; for this quality also, importance and force of impression, works in the first instance only on the feeling, not on the course of ideas also at the same time. A number or a name may be very important to us, and yet we forget it very soon.

Therefore the power which an idea can exert on the consciousness, e.g. in an apperception, essentially depends on conditions which flow simply from the nature of our consciousness. I hope that the following exposition will meet with assent. Power, or influence on the consciousness, is obtained by a combination of ideas through the number of its elements, through familiarity with it as an aggregate, and yet more through accurate acquaintance with its separate elements by themselves and in their relations both to one another and to elements belonging to other combinations, and through the number and variety of such relations. Greater clearness in our consciousness of something is only another mode of expression for more manifold distinction of the elements contained in it; and this implies increase of knowledge, but also sharp definiteness and thoroughness.

There is a curious contrast between feeling and theory. In the latter clearness, careful assortment, delicate distinction, and reference, give preponderance; whereas it is the masses of unclearness that work most powerfully on the former.

We will measure by this principle the force of the ideas concerning the heavenly and of those concerning the earthly fire. The latter must be much more numerous, clear, definite, and certain, as man has the earthly fire nearer, and works in company with it, and work is a copious source of knowledge. The earthly fire is the only one that he knows; a heavenly fire he only infers. The earthly fire enlightens the darkness of his night, which surrounds him as soon as ever it goes out; by it he learns the operation of warmth: this first leads him to seek the cause of the brightness and warmth of the day in the place where he sees something similar to his fire—in the sun; especially as, when he sees no sun, darkness and cold prevail just as when there is no fire. It is then the knowledge of the earthly fire that helps him to apprehend the kosmic fire; from the former he transfers his ideas to the latter. He experiences the former only; he constructs or images to himself the latter. Therefore, in the theoretical consciousness the ideas of the earthly fire are the more powerful and creative, and they give the measure; those of the heavenly are formed in conformity to them. The feeling, on the contrary, is more powerfully affected by the heavenly than by the earthly fire, because that is grander in its activity, mysterious in its appearance and disappearance, and independent of man. It surprises, stirs, and troubles the mind in a higher degree, and excites a more lively attention.

Now the power exerted by ideas upon the feeling is certainly not without influence even on their theoretical connexion and distinction, on their prominence and their formation. Further, much as man may have to do with fire, often as he may kindle it and put it out, variously as he may employ it, still he never fully understands it as to its appearance, mode of working, and essence. Now it always seems that the great must be the generator of the small, the strong the point of departure for the weak, the worthy and impressive more original than the mean and ineffective. If therefore, on the one hand, the ideas of the celestial fire are formed by analogy with those of the terrestrial, on the other hand, the latter are complemented by being put into connexion with the former. First of all the question is asked, What is there above?—and the answer is, The same as here below. But then comes the question, Whence comes this that is here below, and what is it?—and the answer is, It comes from above, and is the same as what is above. There above is the great, the self-subsisting, the adorable; it has descended to earth to do us good. Thus the idea of the heavenly is attained through the earthly; but the origin of the latter removed to the upper regions.

Thus it comes to pass that, although the ideas of the earthly fire are prior in psychological perception and give rise to those of the heavenly, still man holds the heavenly fire to be the original and creative one, from which the other is derived. He is so overpowered by the grandeur, wonder, and unapproachableness of the celestial element, that he regards the fire which he kindles for himself as fallen down from on high and given to him.

Man receives certain visual sensations of the Sun; and he converts these into a conception, or an object, by apperceiving them with the ideas that he has of fire. Thus he makes of them a fiery wheel. The ideas of this wheel are partly the same as those of the earthly fire, partly different; for they are distinct in the elements of place, size, effect, and dependence or independence. Thus arises an interlacing of the two combinations of ideas, as has been already observed. The disturbance produced among the ideas by this relation impels to a double apperception of the two combinations, first on the part of what is alike in them, and next on the part of what is different. The first apperception results in the comprehension of the two combinations as fire; the other in the separate conceptions of a divine and an earthly fire. This latter separation contradicts the first comprehension; and this contradiction is composed by a new process of apperception, in which both the likeness and the difference are regarded as the consequence of the relation of originality or derivation, in which the earthly fire stands to the divine. They are both really the same, namely, the god Agni, who lives above and descends to men.

For the separation of the combination of ideas of the celestial fire from that of the terrestrial, is not sufficiently supported to offer an effectual opposition to the coalescence to which the most essential elements tend. All the difference that declares itself here resolves itself ultimately into one point only; for the differences of nearness and distance, of greatness and smallness, and whatever else may be added to these, all unite in the one point of the independence of the celestial fire and the dependence of the terrestrial. But this point is very weak. For even the terrestrial fire is observed by man to be not dependent on him, and seems to him to be even less so than it is in fact. The primitive man does not think he actually generates the fire by boring: he regards his action as scarcely more than a petition to the fire to appear. And if the fire then does appear, it does so as a free and kindly being that has an independent existence. Where, then, could it live in its own character, if not on high? It lives there for itself and for ever; here it comes down out of kindness.

Having thus discovered the psychological foundation for the fact that the primitive man regarded the fire as a god, we will endeavour to make clear to ourselves also the first forms of mythical conceptions.

We must imagine the primitive man placed as he was freely in the midst of nature. He saw the sky, the sun, clouds, and in the storm the lightning, and likewise heard thunder. He saw, he heard:—this means only ‘he received sense-impressions.’ These may no doubt have formed themselves into an image; still the image was not yet an object placed before his mind,—not yet a conception. When we see something strange to us, we ask, What is it? Yet we see clear, and have a definite image of the thing; then what more can we have to ask about it? We want to know also the purpose, origin, and regulation of what we have seen, so as to be able to find a place for it in the series of things previously known, or, if there is no suitable place, at least to find out its relation to that series. Nothing less will satisfy us; then it is no longer an isolated image, but a conception, an object; then we have apperceived it. It remains therefore for the mind to convert the image into an object through apperception. But certain means are demanded by the mind for all its creations, _i.e._ for everything that it makes its own by thought. The sensations—all that is presented by the senses: tones, colours, touch—are merely matter which the mind appropriates to itself. The means whereby this appropriation is rendered possible are not delivered to it by the organs, nor yet innate in it and ready for use. On the contrary, as in trade and commerce possession is multiplied by possession, so also the mind enriches itself every time by means of that which has been already gained; every acquisition is made a means towards its own enlargement. Thus then the primitive man apperceived the descent of the lightning and the sun’s rays by means of that which his mind already possessed. But I must insist on the necessity of caution. In speaking here of the ‘descent of the lightning and the sun’s rays,’ I have presented and apperceived a certain physical occurrence in the way in which we are now wont to do in conversation. But that is not the way in which the primitive man spoke; and we have still to enquire how he did speak. For him there was as yet no sun, no lightning, no ray; of all these he knew nothing. He saw at first only _something shining_, in various forms and movements. But he had not set himself the task of working further with his mind at this presentment of the senses: his consciousness passively received motions, out of which mythical ideas grew up. He apperceived unconsciously, and of course with the ideas that he already had; his mind built with the materials that it possessed. What, then, was likely to be the result of his building?

Which, of all the creatures known to man, passed through the sky like the sun, darted down and cut through the air like the lightning and the ray of light? Only the Bird. This comparison of the bird with the manifestations of light, was made immediately and unconsciously. Among the ideas about the bird, motion through the air was the most prominent; so when this motion was perceived, the aggregate of ideas about the bird was instantly ready to operate as a means towards the apperception that ‘What moves in the air is a bird.’ It comes down from the heavenly tree. Thus then the Fire-god Agni, as god of the lightning, is invoked as a fiery, golden-winged bird. The bird in general is next individualised into an eagle or falcon—a strong, swift bird, that darts down with might and majesty.

This apperception was one of the simplest, and was made unconsciously, as has been said. The idea of motion through the air presented by the lightning, and the same idea derived from the combination of ideas of the bird, coalesced and became one. The mere smallness of man’s knowledge of the lightning caused the entire combination of ideas of the lightning to be drawn into that of the bird, whereby the latter combination was enriched so far as to admit the existence of a most wonderful divine bird beside the earthly ones. Thus no conscious comparison between lightning and bird took place; but immediate coalescence of the two was effected by the single conception of the lightning-bird, in which men were not conscious of any dualism. What we call lightning, was to the primitive man a bird, not lightning at all.

But also conversely, what we call a bird of this or that kind—eagle, vulture, or woodpecker—was to him lightning. The original meaning of the name φλεγύας, given by the Greeks to a kind of eagle or vulture—which, as has been noticed, has a connexion with _Blitz_, the Phlegyans and the Bhṛgu-s—was not ‘a bird as swift as lightning,’ but ‘lightning’ itself.

Thus, then, a multitude of mythical conceptions exhibit the lightning as some kind of bird, or a bird in general. So Phoroneus, ‘the quickly descending’ (p. 368), is in origin only an epithet of the powerful bird, and the Sabine goddess Feronia presents the corresponding feminine form; and numerous superstitions are founded on the recognition of lightning in a bird.

Still there is a difference between lightning and a bird flying; and this did not escape the notice of the primitive man. Nevertheless, so far from this difference having power to cancel, when once accomplished, the coalescence of the ideas of lightning and bird, and the unconscious apperception of the former through the latter; the difference itself was rather apperceived only in conformity with this coalescence. The difference was without any reflexion explained thus: when the bird has once descended flashing with lightning, it flashes no more; it is now only a lightning that has become weakened and earthly. Or it may also be said: the bird is not itself the lightning, it has brought the lightning down.

But where, then, has the lightning gone? It has shone for a moment, and vanished. It shone as if it were fire (_fulgeo_ = φλέγω). Or perhaps it hit and fired something—then, whether it be bird or no, it is clearly fire. We must figure it to ourselves thus. In the sky, at the farthest limits of the space which the eye can reach, the primitive man saw light, radiance, brightness, in an overpowering degree; there he saw the sun and stars. He knew only the things on earth; only ideas of earthly things formed the possessions of his mind; and on the dark earth he knew nothing similar to those things of the upper world, except fire; only by his idea of this could he apperceive those. Now fire darts down from above before his very eyes. Now all is explained: the earthly fire comes from above, and the upper fire, having descended, conceals itself at once, by a transformation, in the body from which he extracts fire—in wood.

But now the relations are becoming more complicated; and already they are so far complicated that the original idea of the Lightning-Bird cannot be retained in its simplicity. Alongside of it the idea of the deity, or of the divine essence, has been everywhere developed; and the fire, the lightning, the golden-winged bird, has become the god Agni. Now the ideas of fire also take a new and less simple form.

The flame breaks forth from the wood: consequently, it must have been in it for a long time. The boring and rubbing in a certain way move Agni to appear: such action is therefore loved by the god, he allows himself to be drawn forth by it. If he loves it, it cannot be indifferent to the man who yields himself to the god in fear and thankfulness. It is a holy action. The pieces of wood which he stirs hold the god concealed. All appears divine to him, and his consciousness tarries in a world of gods. For the slight separation which he can make between the fire on high and that below, consists merely in the distinction between essence and manifestation. But wherever the god manifests himself, why there he is for certain. Consequently, during the holy act of kindling fire the two combinations of ideas of the God-Fire and of the earthly fire coalesce completely; there only remain ideas of one fire. But it was the ideas of the divine fire that completely absorbed those of the earthly. Unresisted, they exert an exclusive power over the consciousness and entirely fill it. Man is removed in spirit from the earth into the world of gods. He has forgotten everything sensuous and earthly, and sees and touches only gods and divine things. And every perception received from his senses is directly laid hold of by the ideas respecting the world of gods of which his consciousness is full, and has a place and significance assigned to it among them. The pieces of wood are no longer wood; the borer, the really active piece that draws the god forth, is a divine being that fetches the god. The god is concealed in the hole of the disk, but this is transformed in conception into a locality in the country of the gods—a hollow, in which the god is found. It is an occurrence that took place among the gods: the divine Pramantha fetches Agni out of the hollow.

The flaring of the flame, however, brings the consciousness back to the earth: Pramantha has brought the god to earth. We must realise the revolution effected in the consciousness by the fire breaking out. The combination of ideas concerning the earthly fire, which had coalesced with the other combination concerning the divine fire, is, by the present perception, again introduced into the consciousness as a special power, and its coalescence with the other conception is thereby cancelled. Against the sensuous impression of the present actual fire the circle of ideas of the divine one cannot maintain its supremacy. It retires and leaves the foreground of the consciousness to the circle of ideas of the earthly fire. But all this appeared to the primitive man not a psychological, but a real procedure; not a shifting of ideas, but an actual shifting of the imagined reality. When attention was shifted from the one circle of ideas to the other, guided by the idea of fire, which bound the two together, then it appeared to the primitive man as if the actual fire had removed from the one into the other, and had come from heaven to earth; and the already-begun fancy that the god Pramantha had fetched Agni, is accordingly carried on to the further point of saying that he put him among men.

Man soon observed in the sky on an enlarged, divine scale, the identical process which he had learned when producing fire by rotation. Agni dwells in the bright, clear, light sky. But the sky is overcast and darkened by a thunder-cloud: Agni has concealed himself; he has hidden himself in the hollow of the cloud. He breaks forth from it, being fetched by a divine Pramantha, Mâtariśvan, the Lightning. The lightning bores into the cloud as the earthly borer into the wooden disk: Prometheus, or Bhṛgu and his descendants the Bhṛgu-s, fetch the god from his hiding-place. They go down to the earth with him and take him to men.

The primitive man does not ask, Where does the fire come from? what becomes of the fire that has fallen from heaven? Before he asks this, and without his asking, he sees, and the lightning tells him, that the fire comes from heaven, and the wood tells him that the lightning (Agni) is concealed in the wood. Neither does the primitive man ask, Where does man come from? He sees it, and practises it.[803] The birth of man is a generating of fire. When the primitive man sees a tree, he does not ask, What is it? but by the sight of the tree present before him the combination of ideas respecting trees which is already formed in his mind is without his observation recalled into his consciousness; and this combination appropriates to itself the present sight, the perception coalescing with the combination of ideas through the similarity of their contents: and thereby what is seen is apperceived as a tree. Similarly, when the primitive man figures to himself the act of copulation, it is the combination of ideas of producing fire by rubbing that enters into his consciousness on account of the similarity of the movement, and gives him an apperception of that act. The similarity of the two acts seems to the primitive man greater than to us. On the one hand, the production of fire is to him a religion and a divine energy; on the other, man is already regarded by him as a fire-creature, lightning-born quite as much as a bird. The two combinations of ideas do not, indeed, coalesce; but yet are greatly interlaced with each other in some of their essential elements. The opposition between the partial difference which separates the combinations and the partial similarity which unites them, leads to a solution in a double and reciprocal apperception: first, that the divine rubber, Pramantha or Prometheus, created man, or that lightning, Bhṛgu, Yama, or the lightning-bird Picus, was the first man; secondly and conversely, that the production of the flame by rubbing is the production of the Fire-God Agni, and that the wood is the cradle of the new-born god. Thus Agni remains always the ‘new-born’ and the ‘youngest,’ as he is called in the Vedas; and Dionysos, also a fire-god, appears as λικνίτης, a god in a cradle.

The primitive man was convinced that man was fire. Indeed, his wonder at his own lightning-nature was aroused every time that he produced the god; and when sacerdotal families had gained the exclusive privilege of kindling fire, these families traced their origin to Bhṛgu or Agni, and called themselves Bhṛgu-s, Aṅgiras-es, etc. For they continued to do just what their ancestor, the Lightning, had done before them.

This is, as far as I can give it, the psychological explanation of the original forms of the stories of the Descent of the Fire. The superstition attached to these stories, in ancient as well as in modern times, would be more fittingly considered separately. The peculiar formation of the character of Prometheus among the Greeks however, may still engage our attention a little longer.

Prometheus is a god and yet a Titan also. He is the greatest benefactor of the human race. Yet in all other cases the mythical idea is that whoever does good to man is also friendly to God, and that only those who do harm to man rebel also against God. For the elucidation of this most peculiar and contradictory position, the following points seem to me worth pondering.

All the forces and occurrences of nature show two sides; one beneficial to man, and one hostile to him. So also the myth almost always discovers in the one and the same natural event, a good and a bad god. The bad god is hostile at once to men and gods. The development of a myth frequently takes the course of converting one of the epithets of the god who represents some process of nature, into a good god, and another into a bad god. The course to be followed in such a case is frequently determined by the nature or significance of the epithets themselves. Now it is certain that Hephaestos and Prometheus are identical in their origin, as indeed is shown in the story of the birth of Athene, in which the head of Zeus is cleft by either one or the other of them. But both Hephaestos and Prometheus are Agni in different forms. We have seen what Prometheus signifies. Somewhat of the physical signification must have still clung to this name even when it came upon Greek ground. Hephaestos, on the other hand, possessed from its very origin the finest signification of Agni; for it probably represents Agni as a home-god, guardian of the family, as a god of the hearth. And Hephaestos was still worshiped by the Greeks as a hearth-god. It surely seems natural, then, that the ideas of the beneficent action of fire should fasten themselves to him. But, on the other side, to make Prometheus, the Fire-stealer, an actual enemy of the gods, was impossible, for the very reason that he had been a benefactor of men by giving them fire, and was also the creator of men. Thus, he, as a god, became the champion of mankind against the injustice of the gods. It must be added that, perhaps even in the age of the unity of the Aryan race, the Fire-god, in his capacity as god (creator) of mankind, was also a god of Thought, who among primeval circumstances could scarcely be anything else but a god of Prudence, or foreseeing caution—an idea which gave the Romans their Minerva, but which might very naturally be attached to a god of fire, since prudence is exhibited nowhere more plainly than in the use of fire. At all events, even in the Vedas, Agni has the epithet _pramati_, which would yield something like προμῆτι-ς in Greek. Epic story made Pramati an independent personage, a son of Ćyavana (_supra_, p. 373), the ‘Fallen,’ who is a son of Bhṛgu, the Lightning. Thus in sense, if not in name, the Indian Pramati is equivalent to Prometheus.

Prometheus is Fire-god, Man-god, God of human energy in thought. In this capacity he comes into collision with the supreme god. So he appears in Hesiod, and also in Aeschylus, except that the latter was able to give a far deeper meaning to the guilt of Prometheus, to his entire relation to Zeus, and therefore also to his ultimate reconciliation.

Thus then in Prometheus is comprised the whole essence of heathenism: deification of Man and Nature. He was the most characteristic figure of that mode of conception which created gods in the image of man. But the opposite mode of conception, according to which man was created like one single god, and was expected to make himself like God in life, produced a figure opposed to that of Prometheus—Moses. I speak here not of the historical, but of the mythical Moses; and I hope that the reader will be inclined to distinguish the two as clearly as we distinguish the historical and the legendary Charlemagne. Now the mythical Moses may be compared in meaning with Prometheus. Prometheus ascended to heaven and fetched down fire from the altar of Zeus for men. Moses also went up and brought back the Tables of his God with the fundamental laws of all common human moral life; for this act Moses could not come into conflict with God. But the original heathen myth respecting Moses was different. Moses struck water out of the rock with his staff: the staff is the lightning, the rock the cloud, the water the rain. Kuhn has shown at length what a close connexion subsists between the procuring of water, wine, honey, mead, and soma, and the bringing down of fire,[804] (like the connexion between rain and lightning), and that they are so to speak, mythical synonyms. And this water did cause a difference between Moses and God. Now the reconciliation is brought about by Aeschylus by making both Prometheus and Zeus purify themselves and bind themselves by moral elements. But the monotheistic spirit of the Prophet transfigured the entire myth, and put in the place of the water and the fire the Word of God; and then no reconciliation was needed, for God spoke with Moses as his servant and messenger. Yet alongside of this monotheistic myth of Moses who brings down the Word of God, there remained also the old heathen one, which said that he brought water. It was a correct feeling, or a lingering consciousness which had been retained, that declared that Moses had sinned in the matter of the water, although it was no longer known in what the sin consisted.[805] Therefore I interpret and clear up the obscured remembrance or suspicion of the author of the Book of Numbers, by saying that, forasmuch as Moses strikes water out of the rock with his staff, he is a heathen god, a Mâtariśvan, a Pramantha, and therefore in opposition to the one true God, and must die; but forasmuch as he gives the Word of God to men, he is the Prophet without his equal.

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_THE LEGEND OF SAMSON._

By H. STEINTHAL.

When an author can presume that his readers share his views on things in general, and also accept like principles respecting the special sphere to which his subject belongs, it may be fitting to descend from the general to the particular. But when, as is now more frequently the case, no such assumption can be made, the opposite course, from the particular to the general, is preferable for the sake of both the matter and the manner of the investigation itself. I shall therefore adopt it.

I shall, therefore, at the outset leave out of the question what view it is possible to hold respecting the growth of the people of Israel, and especially of their monotheism. I shall not proceed on the assumption that any particular view is proved true, but try whether, after the consideration of our subject in its details, any result affecting general questions is reached. I also for the present leave undetermined the value of the Biblical Books as sources of history, the period of the composition of the separate books, and even their relative age—i.e. the earlier or later compilation of one with reference to others. For all these are still disputed points; and I desire not to build upon any unproved assumption, but to see how much can be contributed to the solution of the questions that arise. Even the question, whether, and how far, we are justified in treating the history of Samson in the Bible as legend,[806] may be left to be answered only from the result of the following enquiry. If, on comparing these stories with other nations’ stories, similarities are discovered alongside of much that is dissimilar, nothing shall, in the first instance, be decided about the cause and significance of such similarities, but new investigation shall be made on the subject.

I. THE ADVENTURE WITH THE LION, AND THE RIDDLE.— THE FOXES.

I pass over the narrative of the birth of Samson for the present, intending to come to it only after the contemplation of his actions. The reason for this arrangement will then become apparent. I therefore commence with Samson’s first action.

It is narrated (Judges XIV.) that Samson was attacked by a lion when on the way to see his bride, and killed him. When he went by the same road to his wedding, he looked at the carcase of the lion, and found a swarm of bees and honey in it. This occurrence suggested the following riddle, which he put forth at the wedding-feast: ‘Out of the Eater came forth Meat, and out of the Strong [Wild] came forth Sweetness.’ By his bride’s treachery the riddle was solved: ‘What is sweeter than honey? and what stronger than a lion?’

Samson’s riddle is still a riddle even to us now. It has never yet been solved, as far as I know; certainly not in the Bible itself, for the answer there given is a still greater riddle than the riddle itself, which seems not to have been observed. Only look closely at the pretended solution. It looks as if the question had been: ‘What is the sweetest, and what the strongest?’ But the actual problem was: ‘Out of the wild eater comes sweet food;’ how that came to pass, was the question—and still is a question. For even the story of the slain lion and the honey found in his carcase cannot contain the solution, because it involves a physical impossibility. Bees do not build in dead flesh; their wax and honey would be spoiled by putrefaction. In no such wise can honey come out of the lion. Besides, Samson would be very foolish to base a riddle on a mere personal experience known to no one; it would then be absolutely insoluble. We cannot credit the original narrative with so gross an ineptitude. Then what is the position of the affair?

It is certain that a riddle like the one in question was in circulation among the ancient Hebrews, and that Samson was believed to have proposed it. It is equally certain that its solution lay in the words transmitted from antiquity: ‘What is sweeter than honey, what stronger than a lion?’ But it is not only to us at the present day that this solution is as obscure as the riddle itself; it was quite as unintelligible to the latest elaborator of the Book of Judges. So he attempted a solution on his own responsibility. He had two data in his possession: the riddle, and the story of the lion-killing. Well, he concluded, Samson must have found honey in the carcase of this lion. What he had wrongly inferred, he narrated as a fact which ought to yield the solution of the riddle. But we must guess better. If it is certain that Samson cannot have found honey in the lion’s carcase, yet, on the other hand, the pretended solution at least proves that by the strong eater the lion is to be understood, and by the sweet food the honey. And if this was solution sufficient for the legend, it follows that at the time when the riddle arose some connexion between lion and honey was so definitely and clearly present to the consciousness of every individual, because held by the mind of the entire people, that it came into prominence as soon as ever lion and honey were named together: somewhat as among us when we speak of bear and honey together, though with reference to something else.[807] But there must have been some known connexion which made it evident how honey came out of the lion. It is our task now to discover this connexion if we are to attempt the solution of the riddle—one which is more than thirty centuries old, and the unriddling of which has been forgotten for some twenty-five. Can there be any other riddle of equal interest? In the following remarks I endeavour to solve it.

When once we know that the Eater in the riddle is the Lion, of course it is natural to think of the lion killed by Samson; and the compiler of the Book of Judges would not have fancied that the honey was in its carcase, but for an obscure memory that this particular lion had something to do with it. Now to us this lion is not a real but a mythological one, i.e. a symbol. And we know the meaning of the symbol. Herakles also, it is well known, begins his labours by killing a lion. The Assyrians and Lydians, both of them Semitic nations, worshipped a Sun-god named Sandan or Sandon; he also is imagined to be a lion-killer, and frequently figured struggling with the lion or standing upon the slain lion. The lion is found as the animal of Apollon on the Lycian monuments as well as at Patara.[808] Hence, it becomes clear that the lion was accepted by the Semitic nations as a symbol of the summer heat. The reason of the symbol was undoubtedly the light colour, the colour of fire, the mane, which recalled Apollon’s golden locks, and also the power and rage of the wild beast. The hair represents the burning rays. So we have here to do with the sign of the Lion in the zodiac, in which the sun is during the dog-days. At this season the sky is occupied by Orion, the powerful huntsman—of whom I shall presently have a few words to say—and Sirius, who in Arabic is designated ‘the Hairy’ in reference to his rays.

‘Samson, Herakles, or Sandon kills the lion,’ means therefore, ‘He is the beneficent saving power that protects the earth against the burning heat of summer.’ Samson is the kind Aristaeos who delivers the island of Keos from the lion,[809] the protector of bees and hives of honey, which is the most abundant when the sun is in the Lion. Thus sweet food comes out of the strong eater.

Very possibly and probably, however, there was a superstition to the effect that bees are generated out of the lion’s carcase, in the same way as they are believed by some nations to spring from an ox’s carcase.[810] But such a superstition must have some basis, and no other basis is easily conceivable but the mythological one which I have mentioned. What was true in symbol, that the Lion produced honey, was taken as true in fact. For I must insist on the fact that, according to the literal meaning of the Hebrew, no mere taking of the honey from outside a lion’s skeleton is meant, but its being actually produced by the lion.

However, when we try to clear up to our own minds what has been said, we stumble upon a difficulty. It is after all the Sun that produces the summer-heat; Apollon sends the destructive shafts. Therefore, if the Sun-god does battle against the summer-heat, he is fighting against himself; if he kills it, he kills himself. No doubt he does. The Phenicians, Assyrians, and Lydians attributed suicide to their Sun-god; for they could only understand the sun’s mitigation of its own heat as suicide. If the Sun stands highest in the summer, and its rays burn with their devouring glow, then, they thought, the god must burn himself; yet does not die, but only gains a new youth in the character of the Phenix, and appears as a gentler autumn-sun. Herakles also burns himself, but rises out of the flames to Olympos.

This is the contradiction usual in the heathen gods. As physical forces they are both salutary and injurious to man. To do good and to save, therefore, they must work against themselves. The contradiction is blunted when each side of the physical force is personified in a separate god; or when, though only one divine person is imagined, the two modes of operation—the beneficent and the pernicious—are distinguished by separate symbols. The symbols then become more and more independent, and are ultimately themselves regarded as gods; and whereas originally the god worked against himself, now the one symbol fights against the other symbol, one god against the other god, or the god with the symbol. So the Lion represents as a symbol the hostile aspect of the Sun-god, and the latter must kill him lest he should be burned himself.

Samson also unites both aspects in himself. The Hebrew story makes him operate even on the pernicious side, but against the foe. To the foe he is the scathing Sun-god. This is the sense of the story of the Foxes, which Samson caught and sent into the Philistines’ fields with firebrands fastened to their tails, to burn the crops. Like the lion, the fox is an animal that indicated the solar heat; being well suited for this both by its colour and by its long-haired tail. At the festival of Ceres at Rome, a fox-hunt through the Circus was held, in which burning torches were bound to the foxes’ tails: ‘a symbolical reminder of the damage done to the fields by mildew, called the “red fox” (_robigo_), which was exorcised in various ways at this momentous season (the last third of April). It is the time of the Dog-star, at which the mildew was most to be feared; if at that time great solar heat follows too close upon the hoar-frost or dew of the cold nights, this mischief rages like a burning fox through the corn-fields. On the twenty-fifth of April were celebrated the Robigalia, at which prayers were addressed to Mars and Robigo together, and to Robigus and Flora together, for protection against devastation. In the grove of Robigus young dogs of red colour were offered in expiation on the same day.’[811] Ovid’s story of the fox which was rolled in straw and hay for punishment, and ran into the corn with the straw burning and set it on fire,[812] is a mere invention to account for the above-mentioned ceremonial fox-hunt; still it has for its basis, though in the disguise of a story, the original mythical conception of the divine Fire-fox that burns up the corn.

The stories of Samson hitherto discussed seem to me so similar to the Eastern and Western ones that I have compared, their interpretation so certain, and their sense so essential to the character of the Sun-god, that I am of opinion that even the coincidence of collateral points cannot be treated as accidental. The Bible says that Samson killed the lion with his bare hands: ‘there was nothing in his hand.’ But Herakles also kills the Nemean lion without his arrows, by strangling him with his arms. This feature, too, is probably significant. The Greek myth says that the reason why Herakles could not use any weapons was because the lion’s hide was invulnerable; but this is pure invention. The truth seems to me to be, that the weapons possessed by the Sun-god are actually his only in so far as his symbol is the lion; for they consist of the force and efficacy of the Sun. Now when the Sun itself is to be killed, that cannot be done with the very weapons which are its strength. The god is forced to catch the burning rays in his own arms; he must extinguish the Sun’s heat by embracing the Sun, i.e. by strangling or rending the lion.

The following point is less clear, but surely not without significance. The Philistines avenge the destruction of their cornfields, vineyards, and olives by Samson, by burning his bride and her father. This causes Samson to inflict a great defeat on his enemies; but after the victory he flies and hides in a cavern.[813] What means this behaviour, for which no motive is assigned? What had Samson to fear in any case, but especially after such a victory? But let it be remembered that Apollon flies after killing the dragon; so also Indra after killing Vṛtra, according to the Indian legend in the Vedas; and that even Êl, the Semitic supreme god, has to fly. Thus Samson’s retreat, mentioned, but not very clearly expressed because not understood, by the Biblical narrator, appears to indicate this often-recurring flight of the Sun-god after victory. In the tempestuous phenomena, in which two powers of nature seemed to be contending together, men felt the presence of the good god; but after his victory, when all was quiet again, he seemed to have I withdrawn and gone to a distance.

But if on the last-mentioned point the story is seen to be shrouded in much obscurity, this is the case in even a higher degree with the two next-following deeds of Ṣamson.

2. THE ASS’S JAWBONE.

We come to Samson’s heroism displayed with the ass’s jawbone. There is much difficulty here, and it will be impossible to be certain as to the interpretation. But it must be noticed at the outset that the story belongs strictly to a certain locality. Its field of action is a district between the Philistine and the Israelite territories, which was called ‘Jawbone,’ or perhaps in full, ‘Ass’s Jawbone,’ and doubtless received this name from the peculiar conformation of the mountains. Pointed rocks probably formed a curved line, and thus presented the figure of a jawbone with teeth. Between these teeth of rock there may have been a cauldron-shaped depression, which had the appearance of an empty place for a tooth; and just there a spring, no doubt a well-known and perhaps a particularly healing one, must have risen.[814] So, although the story wishes to derive the name from Samson’s feats, the truth is rather that the name and the territorial conditions produced the transformation of the story.

Now I must first remind the reader of the tongue of land in Lakonia close to the promontory of Maleae, which stretches out into the Lakonian gulf opposite the island Kythera: it bears the very same name as the place where Samson performed his feat, Onugnathos (‘Ass’s Jawbone’). The name is certainly only the Greek translation of an original Phenician name. From Strabo[815] we learn little or nothing of this peninsula. Pausanias[816] reports that there had been on it a temple of Athene without image and without roof. Now this Athene was probably identical with a modification of the Astarte of Sidon, Athene Onka, who was worshipped at Thebes also. And it may be significant, that there was in that temple a monument to Menelaos’ steersman, who was called Kinados (‘Fox’). At all events _Onugnathos_ proves a myth, known also to the Phenicians, of which an ass’s jawbone was an essential part.

But the ass, like the fox, was in many nations sacred to the evil Sun-god, Moloch or Typhon, on account of his red colour, from which his name in Hebrew is taken. The Greeks say that in the country of the Hyperboreans, hecatombs of asses were offered to Apollon. But he was also ascribed to Silenos, the demon of springs, on account of his wantonness; and this may perhaps furnish the explanation of the celebrated spring at this place, which has its rise in the Jawbone. Perhaps formerly there was at this spring, which was called ‘Spring of the Crier,’[817] a sanctuary where the priests of the Sun-god gave out oracles, as those of Sandon, the Lydian Sun-god, did at a spring in the neighbourhood of Kolophon. And the ass is a prophetic animal: I need only refer to Balaam’s ass.

To ancient tradition must undoubtedly be ascribed the exclamation which Samson is said to have uttered on this occasion: ‘With an ass’s jawbone a heap, two heaps—with an ass’s jawbone I slew a thousand men.’[818] Now Bertheau conjectures[819] that this short verse had originally ‘_at_ the place called _Ass’s Jawbone_ I slew,’ and that the story of Samson gaining a victory with an ass’s jawbone arose solely from false interpretation of it; and no doubt the Hebrew preposition _be_ can denote ‘in, at’ quite as well as ‘with.’ The same scholar observes further, that according to the story the rocks called ‘Jawbone Hill’[820] are, themselves, the very ass’s jawbone that was thrown away by Samson after his victory; for only so is it intelligible that a spring should gush out of the cast-away jawbone, as the story goes on to relate.[821] To this I must add, that the throwing of the jawbone seems to me the most essential and original feature in the whole story, from which the name and origin of the locality, and the victory with the jawbone also, were developed. For surely the jawbone cannot be anything but the Lightning, just as in Aryan mythology the head of an ass, or still more that of a horse, denotes a storm-cloud, and a tooth, especially the tusk of a boar, signifies the lightning.[822] Here then we have a thunder-bolt thrown down in the lightning—the instrument with which the Sun-god conquered, and at the same time formed the locality.

I have two more observations to make here. We nowhere find Samson armed with the weapons which we see almost everywhere else in the hands both of the Greek and of the Oriental Herakles—the mortar-club (pestle) or the bow and arrows. The club had the appearance of a mortar with the pestle in it, or of a tooth in its cavity; and in Hebrew one word[823] denoted both a mortar and the cavity of a tooth.[824] The second remark relates to the Spring. The Bible tells that Samson, wearied out by the murderous contest, at length sank down, faint with thirst, and prayed to God, saying ‘Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant, and now I shall die for thirst and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised!’ upon which God made the spring burst forth. This might be a fiction, in which Samson was depicted under human conditions; and the story of the spring given to relieve Hagar and Ishmael might in that case serve as a model for it. But perhaps the following combination will not be found too far-fetched. The Solar hero wages war with the mischief done to nature by an excess of heat. Thus the battle of Herakles with Antaeos is only the form localised in the deserts of Libya, of the story of the contest against the stifling heat, against the simoom which gains its strength from the sandy soil, as Movers, who also sees in the Erymanthean boar only a variant of Antaeos, has ingeniously explained. In Tingis, i.e. Tangier, the grave of Antaeos was shown, _with a spring beside it_. A similar legend among the Hebrews might perhaps assume in time the above strictly Jahveistic form. In that case the national instinct of Israel would have retained only the spirit and sense of the old story, while putting off all the heathen form and substituting a Jahveistic one for it. This would require no reflexion indeed, but undoubtedly much creative power of popular imagination. The fact, that in the Hebrew story the spring is put into combination with the jawbone, would seem to me, connecting it with my conception of the latter as Lightning, to indicate that the spring is the Rain, which breaks forth from the cloud with the lightning.

3. SAMSON AT GAZA.

It is related[825] that to escape out of the Philistine town of Gaza by night, Samson pulled up the city-gates with their posts and bars, and carried them to the top of the hill opposite the city of Hebron; which seems an utterly senseless practical joke, though quite in keeping with Samson’s overweening jovial character. It will probably be difficult to make out with any certainty what is the foundation of this legend. It seems probable to me, however, that we have to do here with a disfigured myth, of the same import as that of the descent of Herakles into the nether-world,[826] which originally declared that Samson broke open the gates of the well-bolted (πυλάρτης) Hades. As in the Greek story of Herakles the fight at the _gate_ of the nether-world, ἐν πύλῳ ἐν νεκύεσσι, was transformed into a fight at Pylos,[827] by a mere play on words; so in the Hebrew story, instead of the gates of the nether-world or of death (shaʿarê mâweth), those of the city called the Strong (Gaza, or properly ʿAzzâ) might be named. The cause for which Samson went down into the nether-world was forgotten, and a new motive was invented by the legend for his visit to Gaza, in keeping with the licentiousness of his character. The fact that he starts at midnight, and does not sleep till morning, is certainly not without significance, but contains a remembrance of the circumstance that the deed took place in the darkness, i.e. in the nether-world. And the feature of the story which tells that Samson carries the gates to the top of a hill, must have been suggested by some local peculiarity in the form of the rock. But very probably the recollection of a myth which made the Solar hero bring something up from the nether-world had also some influence on the story.

4. SAMSON'S AMOURS.

The circumstance that Samson is so addicted to sexual pleasure, has its origin in the remembrance that the Solar god is the god of fruitfulness and procreation. Thus in Lydia Herakles (Sandon) is associated with Omphale the Birth-goddess, and in Assyria the effeminate Ninyas with Semiramis; whilst among the Phenicians, Melkart pursues Dido-Anna.

The beloved of the god is the goddess of parturition and of love. She is, in general terms, Nature, which is fructified by the solar heat, conceives and bears; or is specially identified with the Moon, or even with the Earth, but more frequently with Water—originally rain, and subsequently the sea and rivers also, and finally (the rain being regarded as mead or wine) the vine, caressed by the sun. Thus Venus rises out of the sea; and Semitic goddesses have fish-ponds dedicated to them. Iole, whom Herakles woos, is the daughter of Eurytos, the ‘Copiously Flowing.’ Of the three Philistine women whom Samson approaches, only one—the one who brings about his ruin—is named. Her name, Delîlâ, denotes, according to Gesenius, _infirma_, _desiderio confecta_, i.e. the ‘Longing, Languishing,’ and according to Bertheau the ‘Tender;’ at all events, it refers to love. She lives in the ‘Vine-Valley,’[828] and consequently appears to represent the vine itself, which the Sun-god is so zealous in wooing; indeed, even the name Delîlâ might denote a Branch, a Vine-shoot. Deianeira, also, is the daughter of Oeneus the ‘Wine-man,’ or, as others say, of Dionysos. Orion, who stands so near to the Sun-god, woos the daughter of Oenipion the ‘Vine.’ But even supposing—what is very possible—that Delîlâ originally denoted a Palm-branch, we know that the palm was sacred to Asherah.

But yet another combination appears admissible. Delîlâ may also signify the ‘Relaxed, Vanishing,’ as a Moon-goddess. This goddess is indeed originally a chaste virgin; but in Tyre and Assyria she also assumes the character of Birth-goddess, and is variously served by strict chastity, by sacrifice of children, and by prostitution of virginity.

The coalescence of the chaste and cruel goddess with the luxurious one is exhibited in Semiramis, who is said to have killed her husband and all her numerous lovers. This might have given to the story of Samson its present form, which represents his ruin as brought about by a woman. But this leads to the following point.

5. SAMSON’S END.

Looking back, we find that we may probably regard as certain the proposed interpretation of the killing of the lion, of the foxes carrying firebrands, and of Samson’s sexual passion: while the deeds with the jawbone and the gates must be termed uncertain. Now Samson’s end brings us back into perfect clearness; it refers again to the Solar god. If the hair is the symbol of the growth of nature in summer, then the cutting off of the hair must be the disappearance of the productive power of Nature in winter. Samson is blinded at the same time, like Orion: this again has the same meaning, the cessation of the power of the Sun. Again, Samson and the other Sun-gods are forced to endure being bound: and this too indicates the tied-up power of the Sun in winter.

The final act, Samson’s death, reminds us clearly and decisively of the Phenician Herakles, as Sun-god, who died at the winter solstice in the furthest West, where his two Pillars are set up to mark the end of his wanderings. Samson also dies at the two Pillars, but in his case they are not the Pillars of the World, but are only set up in the middle of a great banqueting-hall. A feast was being held in honour of Dagon, the Fish-god; the sun was in the sign of the Waterman; Samson, the Sun-god, died.[829]

6. SAMSON THE HEBREW SOLAR HERO = HERAKLES, MELKART.

The above comparison and interpretation of all Samson’s deeds and the manner of his end has yielded so clear and decided a result, that the answer to the question, ‘Who or what was Samson originally?’ has necessarily been already anticipated. I therefore now only combine together what has been discovered, and say: Samson was originally a Sun-god, or his vicegerent a Solar hero—the Sun being conceived as the representative of the force of Heat in nature, whether vivifying and salutary, or scorching and destructive.

To this result we are brought, finally, by the name of our hero. For Samson, or more accurately Shimshôn, is an obvious derivative from the Hebrew word for ‘Sun.’[830] As from dâg ‘fish’ Dâg-ôn,[831] the name of the Fish-god of the Philistines, is formed, so from shemesh ‘sun’ we have Shimsh-ôn, the Sun-god.

Now, to recur to Samson’s hair, our thoughts turn most naturally to Apollon’s locks. But this comparison appears to me not quite accurate. For Apollon’s locks are connected with his arrows, and are, like them, a figure of his rays. But Samson is not the shining god, but the warming and productive god. His hair, like the hair and beard of Zeus, Kronos, Aristaeos, and Asklepios, is a figure of increase and luxuriant fulness. In winter, when nature appears to have lost all strength, the god of growing young life has lost his hair. In the spring the hair grows again, and nature returns to life again. Of this original conception the Biblical story still preserves a trace. Samson’s hair, after being cut off, grows again, and his strength comes back with it.[832]

This Sun-god was, moreover, regarded as the beneficent power that destroyed all powers and influences injurious to man and to life in general,—the chivalrous hero, who wandered over the earth from the east to the furthest west, everywhere ready to strike a blow to deliver the earth from the creatures of Typhon, the Hydra, etc., the defender and king of cities, leader of emigrants and protector of colonies—in short, as _Herakles_.

This character of the Herakles-Melkart of the Phenicians appears in Samson in greatly shrunken proportions. The Hebrews sent no colonies to Mount Atlas; the supernatural monsters become a natural lion; and Samson’s strength was required only against the Philistines. It is also seen, moreover, from the above comparison, not only that it is correct, but also how far it is correct, to call Samson the Hebrew Herakles. The one as well as the other is a martial Sun-god. And this makes it clear also that we are equally justified in classing Samson with Perseus and Bellerophon, with Indra and Siegfried,—in short, with all the mythological beings and legendary heroes whose nature is related to sun, light, and especially warmth, like Orion, Seirios, Aristaeos, and Kronos. In mythology, as in language, there are synonyms; e.g. Apollon and Helios, Herakles and Perseus; indeed, the two latter are both synonymous with Apollon. Now two words belonging to different languages, though similar in meaning, still scarcely ever call up absolutely the same conception, but are a little different from one another as synonyms. So also mythological beings and names in two nations, especially where the difference is so great as it is between the Hebrews and the Greeks, and between the Semites and the Aryans in general, are probably never perfectly identical, but never more than synonyms. Therefore we must not indulge the caprice of trying to make Samson as similar as possible to Herakles: for instance, there is not the slightest reason to assign to Samson twelve labours, and the less so as that number even in the case of Herakles is only derived from a late age and forms too contracted a sphere. And, on the other hand, in finding analogies to Samson, we are nowise compelled to rest satisfied with Herakles. But now we must look closer into Samson’s birth and the position ascribed to him in the Biblical narrative.

7. SAMSON'S BIRTH AND NAZIRITISM.

The birth of the hero of a legend is always the last circumstance to be invented concerning him, when his life and character are already settled; just as an author writes his preface only after the completion of his book. This comparison is here particularly apposite, since the narrative of the appearance of the angel who announces to the parents of Samson after a long period of childlessness, the birth of a son who is to be dedicated to God,[833] is not invented by popular imagination, but produced by the writer.

This introduction to the history of Samson is capable of two comparisons. It may be put side by side with the birth of Samuel,[834] or with the law of Naziritism.[835] In either case several differences appear. Samuel is not described by the Biblical narrator as a Nazirite (nâzîr). But from this it does not follow that at the time of the composition of the Book of Samuel this word had not yet come into use, but only that in the signification which it then had, it did not seem appropriate to Samuel as he was then fancied. Samuel was called one Lent to God.[836] In consequence of this, he lived in the Tabernacle, waiting on the High Priest and Judge Eli; he wore a priest’s dress, and, as is stated with great emphasis, no razor came upon his head.[837] The latter is said of Samson also. The expression ‘Lent to God,’ seems not to have been a technical word or fixed designation, but only an etymological interpretation of the name Samuel. The life in the Tabernacle and the priest’s dress were certainly not essential to the position of a Nazirite any more than to that of a Prophet, and are also out of accord with the narrative of Samuel’s later life; they must be only a later invention.

The narrative of Samuel’s dedication is perfectly simple, concerned only with universal human conditions and feelings, deeply and fervently religious. Deeply troubled and vexed at her childlessness, the wife prays God for a son, vowing, if only her prayer be answered, to dedicate the child to God for all the days of his life. With the impulse of true piety, after the fulfilment of her prayer, she performs a voluntary vow, to which she is compelled by no law. This story is older than that of Samson, who becomes a Nazirite, not in fulfilment of a vow, but by reason of a Divine command.

The term Nazirite is first found used by the prophet Amos,[838] who couples together the Nazirite and the Prophet; but he makes no mention of the hair, only of the prohibition of wine. But it does not follow from this fact that in the time of Amos the Nazirite did employ the razor on his head. Samson’s parents received a command to dedicate their son: he was to be a Nazirite from his mother’s womb to the day of his death. But to the prohibition to shave off the hair and to drink wine was added a prohibition to eat anything unclean; this was a later addition. The written law on the subject was the latest and also the severest and most fully developed; for it adds to the previous prohibitions another against defilement by dead bodies. On the other side, however, the Law knows nothing of any life-long Nazirites, who were to live like Samuel all their days in the Temple before God; for, in the later view represented by the Law, only the Priest, the son of Aaron, lived in the Temple; he was then the truly dedicated person, and wine was denied him not absolutely, but at the time of his service in the Temple.[839] And the Law had no need expressly to forbid the Nazirite to touch unclean food, since it was already forbidden to every Israelite. But to defile himself by the touch of a corpse, even of that of his father or mother, brother or sister, was forbidden to the Nazirite.[840]

Thus we discover three or four stages in the development of Naziritism among the Israelites, exhibited, (1) by the passage in the prophet Amos, (2) by the narrative of the birth of Samuel, (3) by that of the birth of Samson, and lastly, (4) by the Law. Before the time of Amos there were Nazirites—that is, as appears from their being classed next to Prophets, people who by a voluntary resolve consecrated their lives to God and the establishment of religion in the nation, and as a symbol of their resolve denied themselves the use of wine and did not cut their hair. There might be many prophets living as Nazirites because such a mode of life seemed to them appropriate to their intercourse with God. At the time of the construction of the narrative of Samuel’s birth the Nazirite’s abstinence was regarded as something intrinsically meritorious, rewarded by the special favour of God. Hence arose the idea that Samuel, a man whom tradition allowed to have possessed extraordinary greatness, had been a Nazirite, not only at a mature age, but from his very birth, although tradition did not call him such, but represented him only as a Prophet and Judge. It was supposed that Naziritism from birth had qualified him for his subsequent greatness. At the time when the narrator of the birth of Samson lived, this idea was probably so firmly established, that God could be imagined to bestow his special favour on an individual only by means of Naziritism, which was demanded at his very birth as a condition of that favour. Naziritism, which to Amos had been only a peculiar mode of working for the cause of the religion and morality of the nation, was degraded by the above process into a personal mode of life which was thought to be especially well-pleasing to God. And then any one could adopt it at any moment, and keep it up for a certain time only, longer or shorter; and the Law then prescribed the conduct of such as took a vow to live as Nazirites for a certain period.

But how does the author of this narrative of Samson’s birth stand in relation to the subsequent popular legends? and what do these legends know of Samson’s Naziritism? Little, not to say Nothing. The contradiction cannot be obliterated, and seems to have been observed by the narrator of the birth himself. He was the first who called Samson a Nazirite. If even his mother was to observe abstinence during her pregnancy, it seemed to follow as a matter of course that Samson himself as a Nazirite ought to pass his life in no less abstinence. But the legends reported the fact to be the reverse. The narrator observed this. So when Samson’s father prayed earnestly that the angel who had appeared to his wife and given her a rule of conduct, might appear to him also and say how they should do unto the child, the angel gave no answer, but only repeated the rule for the mother. Thus the narrator did not venture to allow a degree of abstinence to be prescribed for Samson, which in the legends he never practised.

There is, however, one feature of the Nazirite which is known even to the legends: the uncut hair. The legend knows for certain that Samson’s hair is the seat of his strength. But in the legend the hair is not represented as a mere ideal sign of divine consecration, but as the real source of strength. And therefore Samson, having trifled away his hair and thereby lost his strength, gets his strength back as soon as his hair has begun to grow again. Thus the loss of the hair is not in the legend a symbol of a falling away from God, nor the weakness that attends it produced through being deserted by God; but the hair itself is the strength, and to cut it off is the same thing as to curtail the strength, as we have already seen.

There must, at all events, have been a time in Israel when hair and fulness of physical energy formed one identical idea: it was the heathen time. When the people had gained a knowledge of the true God, the old legend had to be modified. Then the uncut hair was treated as a consecration of its possessor to the service of Jahveh. But the modification was not fully carried out: one heathen feature remained unaltered—the idea that with the growth of Samson’s hair his strength also grew up again.

8. GENERAL CHARACTER OF SAMSON, THE HEBREW HERO.

The very distinctness and clearness with which it has been found possible to invest the conception and interpretation of Samson as a hero of heathen mythology, proves the justice and certainty of such an interpretation. And the justice of the mythical conception of Samson’s deeds may be demonstrated also by another consideration. The difference between Samson’s position and that of the other Judges makes it obvious enough that his history is mere legend through and through. All the other Judges, Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, fight at the head either of a large force or of a small and picked company: Samson always appears alone, and beats hundreds and thousands alone, and this too without arms. If the other Judges receive Divine apparitions by which they are impelled to action for the deliverance of their people, yet they act with perfectly human forces and means, in human fashion: Samson acts with supernatural force, and is a miracle from beginning to end. In spite of this, Samson’s action is not only destitute of any proper result, but also—what is more significant and far worse—devoid of even the consciousness of any aim, devoid of plan or idea. He—Samson the Nazirite consecrated to God!—looks for wives and mistresses among his own and his people’s enemies.[841] He teases, irritates, injures his enemies, and kills many of them. But there appears nowhere the consciousness of any mission which he had to fulfil for the good of his native land against his enemies. He is inspired by no idea of Jahveh, driven forward by no impatience of a shameful yoke. He is roused only by pleasures of the senses and the caprice of insolence. Samson is utterly immoral. He is exactly an old heathen god, and therefore immoral, like all idols. Idols must be so, for they are only personifications of the forces and occurrences of nature; now nature as such is indifferent towards morality, and consequently, though not moral, still not immoral either; but when the mechanical force of nature is pictured as a person, and removed into the conditions of ethical life, it cannot but appear absolutely immoral. This is what all heathendom does, that of Greece not excepted.[842]

If, on the one hand, Samson wants all the qualities necessary to an historical hero, he is on the other, viewed from the esthetic point, a most admirable phenomenon, quite unique in Hebrew literature. It is really wonderful with what tact, and what firm and delicate esthetic feeling, the gigantic, Herculean, Samson is delineated in the Hebrew legend. His behaviour evinces nothing uncouth or vulgar, a fault from which even the Greek Herakles is not free. Herakles, though adored as a god, has to put up with being scorned and derided for his greediness; he is a standing character in the Greek comedy, and a butt against which all jests are levelled. Samson, on the contrary, is himself the jester and scoffer, who adds the jest of insult to the injury he does his enemies. A native merriness encircles him; and in the very hour of death, at his self-prepared destruction, he maintains his humour, which here assumes a sarcastic tone.

* * * * *

We have now to take in hand two more considerations of a general character, which will determine the true import of the preceding detached ones and set them on a firm basis. We must first enquire: What means the above demonstrated accordance of the Hebrew legend with the legends of other nations?—what is to be inferred from it? The answer to this will assign the cause of the accordance. And then the field for the development of the legend of Samson in the popular mind, and the connexion of the legend with the progress of religions life in the course of centuries, must be more fully discussed.

9. THE MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP OF THE COMPARED LEGENDS.

In the preceding comparisons, I have in the first instance proved Samson’s relationship to the Semitic Sun-gods. The Hebrews being Semites themselves, and living in the midst of Semitic nations, there can be no doubt that the similarity of the Story of Samson to those of the Semitic Sun-god is founded on original identity. But, on the other hand, the Hebrew form of the story exhibits sufficient peculiarity to negative the idea of its being simply borrowed from other Semitic nations. Samson is not exactly the Tyrian Melkart, nor the Assyrian and Lydian Sandon, but a peculiar modification of the conception which lies at the base of both of them. It is, moreover, quite inconceivable that myths and stories heard from strangers could yield materials for tales about a national hero such as Samson. If we knew the Semitic myths and stories more completely, there would probably be not a single feature in the story of Samson left without some mythical conception of the Semites corresponding to it; yet every feature would have undergone a peculiar Hebrew modification. In the absence of such knowledge, we were obliged to proceed to a comparison with Greek and Roman legends. Now how are we to understand the similarities discovered there?

In the abstract, three cases may be assumed as possible. First, there may have been borrowing; and if so, we should probably be inclined without hesitation to assume that the Greeks borrowed from the Phenicians and the Semitic nations of Asia Minor. Secondly, there may have existed an original similarity in certain mythical conceptions between Semites and Aryans, whether by reason of original historical unity, or because both races had, independently of one another, hit upon the same conception. Then thirdly, a combination of borrowing and unity is conceivable, by which the Greeks regained by borrowing some element which had been lost out of their memory, or obtained by borrowing from strangers an idea synonymous with a preexisting native one. Which of these possibilities is the reality, cannot be decided all at once with reference to Herakles in general; but even after some result has been reached respecting that hero’s personality, the above enquiry must be instituted afresh concerning every one of his acts.

Now as to the general aspect of Herakles, I think we have at the present day advanced far enough to be able summarily to reject as absurd the idea that the Greeks had borrowed him from the Phenicians. The hero exhibits so decidedly the character of the Aryan Sun-god and Solar hero, and moreover appears in so specifically Greek a form, that there can be no doubt but that in him we see the peculiar Greek modification of a possession held in common by all the Aryans.

The fact, however, of Herakles being originally Greek, does not exclude the possibility that the Greeks, if they heard of a Semitic god whom they believed to be their Herakles, might claim the deeds of the foreign god as belonging to their own hero. This was a perfectly natural and simple process in the mind, such as may occur now to any one of us. Suppose that some one tells us news of a certain person whom we think we know, because we know a person of the same name and position living at the same place; then we shall immediately attribute what is told us of the stranger to the one known to us. Thus the Greeks could, and could not but, ascribe unconsciously to their Herakles what were really Semitic stories of Solar heroes.

Accordingly, it seems to me beyond doubt, that the Greeks borrowed the killing of the lion from the Semitic god. For the Lion is a mythical symbol that recurs among all Semitic nations, whereas he is scarcely ever, if ever, found in the original Aryan mythology. In the original seats of the Aryan races there can scarcely have been any lions. Moreover, it is only after the seventh century B.C. that Herakles was figured with the lion’s hide. His original arms were those of Apollon, the bow and arrows.

We touch here on a characteristic distinction between the Semitic and the Aryan Sun-god. The former kills a lion, the latter a dragon. The Lion is a symbol of solar heat; the Dragon was originally a symbol of winter, rain, mist, marshy vapours. The Semitic god has to combat chiefly with the burning sun, the Aryan with clouds. In India, no doubt, Indra does battle with the ‘Scorcher,’ ‘the Drought’ (_śushṇa_); but this is surely a later, peculiarly Indian, accretion. On the other side, however, as we shall see further on, the Semites were not ignorant of the Cloud-Dragon. The distinction just indicated, therefore, must be understood as meaning only that here the one, there the other, of the two characteristics is the more widely spread and important; or that the one or the other is the more fully developed.

With this may be combined another interesting feature. The Semitic Sun-god represents chiefly the procreative warmth and the scorching heat; the Aryan rather the illuminating light and the fire, which latter however, in connexion with the rain, is no doubt regarded as productive of fertility. The two races also appear in general to be similarly distinguished: the Semite has greater heat, the Aryan more light; the former is more passionate, the latter more sanguine. But this is not a suitable place to follow out this train of thought.

As to the foxes with fire-brands, that feature is probably also borrowed. Among all the Aryan nations, it is only the Latins, as far as I know, with whom this feature assumes any prominence; and with them it appears only in the form of sport, derived from a legend already enfeebled, and scarcely at all in religious rites; for in the latter we find the red dog with the same signification; and the dog also is Semitic. It is possible that the fox is also preserved in the Fox of Teumessos;[843] but the latter belongs to Boeotia, where much Phenician influence is visible.

If the adventure with the gates of Gaza is correctly interpreted above, the corresponding descent of Herakles into the nether-world can still scarcely be regarded as borrowed. The interpretation of the adventure at Gaza, however, is not certain enough to build any further theories upon, any more than the story of the ass’s jawbone, which moreover is very different from the boar’s tusks.

10. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MYTHS AMONG THE ISRAELITES IN CONNEXION WITH THAT OF MONOTHEISM.

We have convinced ourselves that the mythical mode of looking at things indicates a distinct stage in the development of the intellectual life of nations. The substance, which is looked at in the myth, is very various, and by no means bound to a polytheistic system. Without offending the dignity of Monotheism, it must be affirmed that not only Genesis, but also the narrative portion of the other Books of Moses, of Joshua and Judges, and isolated passages in all other books of the Old and the New Testament, are mythical. The primeval history comprised in the first ten chapters of Genesis, sublime above the cosmogonies and theogonies of all other nations, contains also sublimer myths.

But these Israelite myths, in the form in which we have them now, are framed throughout on a monotheistic principle. This form is for the most part not the original one, but a conversion out of a polytheistic form. My exposition of the legend of Samson might be considered to have sufficed to prove the existence of a primeval heathenism among the Hebrews, which of course rested on a Semitic foundation. But this conclusion may be further confirmed by the following considerations.

I believe myself justified _a priori_, i.e. by reflections of a general nature, in relying on the concession, that the notion of Revelation, in the sense that at a definite point of time and by a special Divine contrivance, Monotheism was taught to a whole nation, and immediately handed down by them in the sharpest, fullest, and most elaborated antagonism to all heathen ideas, is philosophically untenable, since it is in accordance neither with psychology nor with history. This leads directly and necessarily to the assumption, that the Israelites freed themselves gradually from their inherited Semitic heathenism, and passed over to a Monotheism which increased in purity with time.

In opposition to these ideas, some have very recently renewed the attempt to establish Monotheism as the belief of primeval mankind, from which the nations passed into Polytheism, either, as some assume, through a growing dulness of spirit (a Fall), or, as others think, through the very opposite process, a higher development of mind; whilst the Israelites preserved the old original Monotheism, which is reckoned to their credit by the first, and to their blame by the latter, theorists. It suffices here to remark that this primitive Monotheism is absolutely incapable of proof from history, that at the outset it turns history upside down, and especially that it is conjoined to a very loose and mean notion of the nature of Monotheism. Moreover, the Semitic race did not possess Monotheism as an inheritance from its birth.[844]

Now if history is unable to prove Monotheism to have existed from the beginning in the Semitic race, even the monotheistic literature of the Israelites contains evidence on the other side, exhibiting a mythical Polytheism that extended from high antiquity down into those writings. For this Polytheism, as was natural, impressed on the language a stamp so distinct as to be still recognisable in various views and phrases belonging to the Prophets and sacred poets.

I will begin with the Book of Job. We need not here discuss the age of the composition of this wonderful poem. No one will now think of placing it before Solomon’s time; and Schlottmann’s view, that it was produced at the end of Solomon’s reign or under his successor, has probably but few adherents. Now in this poem occur many personifications, which, although mainly based on lively poetical views and forming simply the poet’s language, often also betray the existence of decidedly mythical persons. Although the author was undoubtedly a monotheist and a Jahveist, yet in his ideas of the world heathenism was still not far removed from him. This appears precisely in the passages in which he tries to portray the omnipotence of Jahveh; for there he sometimes slips into expressions which look as if intended to picture the power of Indra and Zeus or Apollon. So e.g. (XXVI. 11–13): ‘The pillars of heaven tremble, and are frightened at his rebuke; by his strength he shakes the sea, and by his wisdom he crushes Rahabh; by his breath he brightens the heaven, his hand pierces the flying Dragon.’ To understand these words in the poet’s own sense, I think we must make very delicate distinctions. He appears to me to occupy a position in the middle between the pure Heathenism of a Vedic bard, and Prophetism, and no doubt nearer to the latter than to the former; yet a position from which the myth still almost looked like a myth, and was not a mere poetic figure. I must explain my meaning more fully.

Ewald’s view, that Rahabh was originally a name of Egypt, and then became the mythological designation of a sea-monster, is an exact inversion of the fact, and requires no refutation—especially as it has been already answered.[845] _Rahabh_, etymologically denoting the Noisy, Defiant, was originally the name and description of the Storm-Dragon. In the storm it was believed that Jahveh was fighting with a monster that threatened to devour the sun and the light of the sky. I should claim this well-known myth of Indra for the Semitic race, were it supported only by the above verses, and should consequently regard it as a primeval feature of the mythical aspect of nature, common to Semites and Aryans, even if we were not so fortunate as we are, through Tuch’s and Osiander’s investigations, in finding the same myth repeated among the Arabs and Edomites, who have the divine person Ḳuzaḥ, a Cloud-god, who shoots arrows from his bow.[846] Here it is clear at the same time that the Bow is the Rainbow, and the Arrow the Lightning.[847] I see no reason for the supposition that the Storm-monster was fettered to the sky. But I think we may gather from Is. XXVII. 1, that the Semitic Storm-Dragon[848] was imagined in three forms: coiled up (ʿaḳallâthôn), i.e. the Cloud; flying (bârîach), i.e. the Lightning, or the dragon flying from the lightning, and lastly stretching himself, extended (Tannîn), i.e. streaming Rain. By the downpour of the rain the sea in heaven produced a sea on earth, and the tannîn was removed from the sky into the ocean. As a sea-serpent he is called Rahabh, the Noisy.

Of this nothing was known even to Isaiah, and no later Prophet or Psalmist understood this mythical view; these names of mythical beings had been imperceptibly converted into names of hostile nations, having been probably first used to designate great and notorious beasts living in the territories of the nations. Thus in Ps. LXXXVII. 4, Rahabh indisputably stands for Egypt; and two passages in Ezekiel (XXIX. 3, and XXXII. 2), exhibit clearly the supposed transition, since Pharaoh, that is Egypt, is in the latter compared to the Tannîn, that is the Crocodile, and in the former actually addressed as such. Thus the Tannîn or Rahabh became first any kind of sea-monster, then specially the crocodile, and finally Egypt. Similarly it is said in Ps. LXVIII. 31 [30], ‘Rebuke the beast of the sedge,’[849] i.e., the crocodile, meaning Egypt.

But there is a general connexion between this dragging down of mythical beings into the life on earth and the conversion of mythical actions in heaven into terrestrial history. Passages are not wanting in which a wavering between the mythic signification and that of legendary history, or the absorption of the former in the latter, is evident. Thus it is said in Ps. LXXXIX. 10–12 [9–11], ‘Thou rulest the pride (elevation) of the sea; when it raises its waves, thou stillest them; thou treadest under foot Rahabh as one that is slain; with the arm of thy might thou scatterest thy enemies. Thine is the heaven, thine also the earth, etc.’ Here the parallel to Rahabh in the preceding member is gêʾûth ‘elevation, pride, defiance,’ and in the succeeding one ‘thy enemies.’ The writer’s general attention is directed to physical phenomena, which yielded to him the old heathen conception of Rahabh; but Rahabh had already gained a historical signification, and consequently suggested in the following member an historical reference.

This appears still more beautifully, and in a way which lays open to us the origin of the legendary history, in the following passage, Ps. LXXIV. 12–17: ‘But God my king, from the olden time working deliverances in the middle of the earth. Thou cleavest with thy might the sea, breakest the heads of the Tannîns over the water. Thou crushest the heads of Livyâthân, givest him for food to beasts of the desert. Thou splittest open (i.e. makest to burst forth) spring and stream; thou driest mighty rivers. Thine is the day, thine also the night, thou hast appointed light and sun. Thou settest all the borders of the earth; summer and winter, thou formest them.’ Here, again, we have a picture of the natural world, and one taken from the mythical point of view. God cleaves the cloud with the lightning, and by that act kills the upper Dragon above the water, so that the rivers of rain stream down out of cloud-rocks. But this mythical act, which is repeated for ever in every thunderstorm, had been converted first into a single act, performed once in ancient time (miḳḳedem), and subsequently into a cleaving of the sea at the Exodus out of Egypt. It is this which the poet intends to depict in these six verses, which he probably took from an ancient song. Thus he sings of Israel’s passage through the sea and the desert in words which were intended to picture the Semitic Storm-myth; and thus we see how the latter was transformed into the former. This transformation was facilitated on the part of the language by the circumstances that in the verses just quoted the verbs may be understood as well as in a preterite as in a present sense (‘thou cleavest’ or ‘thou cleavedst’), and that ḳedem denotes either ‘past time, antiquity,’ or ‘the beginning of all time.’

The case is exactly the same with the Prophet, Is. LIX. 9, 10: ‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Jahveh; awake, as in the days of the beginning (ḳedem), in the generations of olden times (ʿôlâmîm)! Is it not thou that dost (or ‘didst’) cut Rahabh, that piercest (or ‘piercedst’) Tannîn? is it not thou that didst dry the sea, the water of the great abyss, that didst make the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?’ Here also it is clear how the Prophet’s consciousness passed imperceptibly from the myth into the legend, or, if you prefer to call it so, history.

From these passages it appears that the conversion of the legend into history was already so firmly fixed in the minds of men, that, when they began with depicting nature, and in so doing had recourse to the stereotyped expressions that originally had a mythical meaning, they were involuntarily drawn into historical contemplation. This is not the case with the writer of Job: he remains within the mythical contemplation of nature. So full of life are the mythical pictures in his writings that we must suppose them to have been to him more than a mere matter of constructive fancy. The Pillars of Heaven are not to him mere mountains poetically described, but also convey a full-toned echo of the Pillars of Hercules that supported the heaven.[850] The stars and constellations are to him still actually living beings. In his work Rahabh cannot signify Egypt, but is still really the Sea-serpent. It is true that in other passages of the Prophets and Psalms Jahveh walks over the water of the clouds, which is by Habakkuk (III. 15), in a chapter containing many references to mythology, actually called ‘Sea’ (yâm): but only the writer of Job still speaks of the ‘heights of the sea,’[851] which in mythology are the clouds; even Amos, one of the earliest Prophets, substitutes for it ‘the heights of the earth’ (IV. 13). Isaiah mentions the ‘heights of the clouds,’[852] a decidedly mythical phrase; but the Prophet appears in that passage to have intentionally adopted heathen conceptions, as the words are put into a heathen mouth. Amos (V. 8) names the constellations Orion and the Pleiades, but he knows only that Jahveh ‘made’ them; whereas the writer of Job (XXXVIII. 31) speaks of their fetters. From the speech which he puts into the mouth of Jahveh it may probably be inferred that he regarded the mythical acts as acts that took place at the Creation. Thus, as I have already remarked, he takes a middle position between pure myth as such and myth transformed into legendary history. Altogether, he never directs his attention to History and the revelation of God in history: to his mind God is only a wise creator and upholder of Nature, and within this nature lies Man, i.e. the individual whom God created thus, and whose destiny he determines in wisdom and grace. The poet of Job does not possess the world-embracing glance of the Prophet.

Still, though in his mythology he stands nearer to heathenism than the Prophets, and his mind falls short of the breadth and greatness of the prophetic soul, he may yet be a contemporary of theirs, only one who lived in a retired circle, and had, so to speak, a one-sided education. And his whole phraseology possesses a somewhat sensuous and materialistical character, which becomes strikingly obvious on the comparison of certain expressions and certain passages expressing the same thought. Orion is in Job still really the fettered Giant (Kesîl ‘the Strong,’ not ‘the Fool’); but Isaiah (XIII. 10) forms from this word the plural kesîlîm, ‘the bright-shining stars.’ Then the word had ceased to be a proper name, which it was still in Job. Similarly Tannîn is here a proper name; but later it denotes a great sea-animal in general (e.g. in Ps. LXXIV. 13, quoted above), and therefore can have a plural. See also Is. XIX. 13, 14: ‘The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; the heads of her tribes have led Egypt astray. Jahveh pours into their midst a spirit of perverseness, and they lead Egypt astray in all her action, like a drunken man tumbling into his vomit;’ and compare with this Job XII. 24: ‘[God] taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and leads them astray in a pathless waste; they grope in darkness without light, and he leads them astray like a drunken man.’ Here we have not, as in Isaiah, the abstract ‘Spirit (rûach) of perverseness,’ but the concrete ‘Heart’ (lêbh); and the ‘Going astray’ also is depicted more sensuously.[853]

Now that we have thus learnt that the Storm-myth existed among the Hebrews and the Semites in a form similar to that which it had among the Aryans, to such an extent that it indelibly permeated their views of nature and their language, we have not only gained a greatly increased justification for regarding the story of Samson as a myth, but we can now venture also on other mythological combinations and interpretations, which taken singly possess but little security and may pass for mere conjectures, but which almost certainly have a general mythic character. Thus we may find in the Bible a copious source of knowledge of Semitic Mythology. While only calling to memory in general terms the numerous accordances with Semitic mythology contained in the Bible, which Movers has in many cases made quite certain, I will here select a few narratives which seem to have a connexion with the above discussed Storm-myth.

I have before[854] pointed to the fact that myths of a Sun-god are embodied in the life of Moses. Now all of these correspond to wide-spread Aryan myths of the Sun-god or Solar hero. Immediately after his birth Moses is put into a chest and placed on the water. A similar fate befalls nearly all the Solar heroes: e.g. Perseus, and heroes of the German legends. As Moses sees a burning bush which does not burn away, so the grove of Feronia[855] is in flames without burning away. I have already shown[856] that the staff by which Moses performs his miracles is the Pramantha. Like Moses, Dionysos strikes fountains of wine and water out of the rock.[857] Moses, by throwing a piece of wood into bitter water makes it sweet (Ex. XV. 25). This must be the same as the churning of the Amṛta, Soma, Nectar, the divine mead. Moses has no dragon to kill, but he kills an Egyptian, and immediately flies, like all Solar heroes;[858] and like Apollon, Herakles and Siegfried, he becomes a servant. And the sea, over which Moses stretches out his hand with the staff, and which he divides, so that the waters stand up on either side like walls while he passes through, must surely have been originally the Sea of Clouds;[859] and I have consequently little inclination to look for the spot of the earth where, and the conditions under which, the passage might have taken place. A German story presents a perfectly similar feature.[860] The conception of the Cloud as sea, rock and wall, recurs very frequently in mythology. Moses feeds the Israelites with quails. By means of a quail Iolaos wakes the dead Melkart from death. And the quail appears to have had a close connexion with Apollon and Diana; for Ὀρτυγία is an old name of Delos, the island of Apollon; and the nurse of Apollon and Diana, and even Diana herself, are called by the same name. Moses causes manna, sweet as honey, to be rained down with the dew; this again reminds us of the nectar and the mead of the gods.

Thus we see that almost all the acts of Moses correspond to those of the Sun-gods. We have here not only similar mythical features, but features which in both cases unite to form one and the same cycle.

The Book of Judges, as well as the Books of Moses, exhibits ancient elements preserved from the heathen times, also in conformity with Aryan myths. So Shamgar (Judges III. 31), who slew six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad, is only Samson in another form. And his name points to the Sun-god; for it seems to me to denote ‘He that circles about in the sky.’ We must pay attention to the fact that Barak denotes ‘Lightning,’ even though Barcas is a Carthaginian name. With Barak is associated Deborah, the ‘Bee.’ Now if rain and dew are treated as Honey, then the Bee must stand for the rain-cloud. A third name occurs in this connexion—Jael (Yâʿel), the ‘Wild Goat,’ which is also a symbol of the Cloud. The Melissae (bees) and the goat Amalthea among the Greeks take each others’ places. Lastly, the manner in which Sisera is killed, by a hammer and nail, reminds one of the God of Lightning. The mode in which David kills Goliath reminds us of Thor’s battle with Hrungnir, in which he throws his hammer into Hrungnir’s forehead.

The germ of these various agreements ought in fact probably to be referred to an original identity in the mythical views of the Semites and Aryans, who were not separated till later. The Fire and (connected therewith) the Sun, and then the Storm also, may well have led to the formation of the same myths by the two races while they still lived together. The separation of the races then produced distinct developments out of the common germ, which developments, however, naturally had many points of agreement.

11. ANALOGY WITH OLD HEATHEN ELEMENTS IN THE POPULAR IDEAS OF THE LATER AGE.

It results from the preceding historical investigation that the oldest Hebrews were heathens, and that elements belonging to heathen mythology are even present in the Bible. To gain a clearer idea of the nature of this fact, I will refer to a precisely similar case—the relation of our age to the old German heathen times.

The Germans had originally gods, worship, myths and legends—in short, a heathen faith, of their own. But for more than a thousand years all the German tribes have been Christian. Nevertheless, heathen practices still survive among them everywhere and in most various forms; and are so closely interwoven with Christian practices as to be almost ineradicable. I will only select a few instances. The old German gods still live in the names of the days of the week.[861] Churches and convents were founded at places which had been heathen sanctuaries; Christian feasts were fixed on days sacred to heathen deities, and thus the heathen name ‘Easter’ has maintained its existence as a designation for the highest Christian feast. Heathenism is preserved chiefly in the popular legends both of the hills and of the lowlands, in popular customs, usages, games and superstitions; all which has been lately collected in special books and periodicals. Kuhn’s collections made in North Germany and Westphalia are of especial scientific value. The gods, however, have been converted into devils and monsters, the goddesses into night-hags and witches. But religious stories, Christian legends, are also often utterly heathen; there are deeds and occurrences belonging to gods and heroes, which are attributed to the Saints and to Christ himself. Thus the killing of the Dragon, which is known as a myth to all the Aryan nations, is ascribed to Saint George. The office of the god Thor, who pursued and bound giants, is filled in Christian Norway by Saint Olave. Christ and Saint Peter wander about unrecognised in human form, to reward virtue and punish vice, as the heathen gods did before them. Mary, especially, had a multitude of lovely and charming features ascribed to her, which under heathenism were attributes of Freyja, Holda, and Bertha. A great number of flowers, plants and insects, the older names of which referred to Freyja and Venus, are called after Mary, e.g. Maiden-hair (i.e. the Virgin Mary’s hair), otherwise Capillus Veneris;[862] and Holda who sends snow becomes Mary: Notre Dame aux neiges, Maria ad nives. In short, ‘now Christian substance appears disguised in a heathen form, now heathen substance in Christian form,’ as Jacob Grimm says, in whose _Deutsche Mythologie_ the reader will find much relating to this mixture of old heathen and Christian ideas in the spirit of the ‘simple folk that have a craving for myths.’

With the Hebrews it must have been much the same as with the Germans. We know that no less time than the entire period from Moses to Ezra—a thousand years of all manner of struggles and of the exercise of the greatest intellectual and moral forces—was requisite to develop the faith in One God, and make it a common and permanent possession of the people, pervading the whole spiritual consciousness.

But the fact that the Germans’ monotheism was brought to them from outside, while that of the Israelites sprang up among themselves, must surely have been favourable to the preservation of heathen characteristics among the latter. Whilst in Germany a systematised Christianity, fully conscious of the issues involved, contended against Heathendom; among the Hebrews, Monotheism unfolded all its inevitable consequences only by degrees, gradually gaining a knowledge both of itself and of the antagonism in which it was implicated towards all phases of the heathen faith, worship and life. The Germans knew that their ancestors were heathens; they endeavoured as far as possible to break with their heathen past; and yet, knowingly or unknowingly, they retained a great deal of heathenism; and the pride of the Old German popular poetry, the _Nibelungen_, has a primeval myth for its subject. But the contrast between the heathen and the modern age was not at all firmly fixed in the mind of the Israelites, precisely because the transition was gradual. Only exceptionally do we find any reminiscence of the old heathenism, which is put back into the most ancient times. As far as the people were able to trace their history backwards, that is, to their supposed ancestor Abraham, they put back the faith in Jahveh; or indeed still farther, to Adam. The only true God Jahveh was soon treated as the only one worshiped in the beginning, from whom mankind fell away, intentionally defying him. Abraham alone remained faithful, and therefore Jahveh elected Abraham’s descendants to be his people. Thus the Israelite fancied the faith in Jahveh to be the primitive and inalienable possession of his people, which had been only temporarily weakened, but never really lost. Even to other nations the knowledge of Jahveh could never be wanting; for they worshiped false, non-existent, gods from folly and malice, and the Israelite took for granted that they must know all that he knew. Now if even the Christian of the middle ages, although he knew that his ancestors were heathen, nevertheless often described them as acting like Christians, because he had no knowledge of heathendom, and no power of imagining a past age, except in the likeness of his own; how much more would the monotheistic Israelite picture his past ages, in which he acknowledged no heathenism at all, in a Jahveistic light? His whole history was unconsciously transformed. The heathen myths, which must have something in them, else they could not be told at all, were converted into events of the earth, closely coalescing with historical facts, what the heathen gods were said to have done was ascribed to Jahveh himself or one of his human ministers. The old Semitic gods, if not utterly forgotten, were made by the Hebrew into men of the primeval age, powerful heroes, or Patriarchs. I can invoke the authority of Ewald and Bunsen, for the assertion that no Biblical name before Abraham has any historical significance, and that of Movers for saying that Abraham is only the ancient national god of the Semites, El, who was also their first king or their ancestor, and that Israel, Abraham’s grandson, was the Semitic Herakles Palaemon. The Israelite knew no longer how his forerunners had lived and thought in those ages, while they were still heathen; and he flooded his past history with the light which shone for him, but was of recent origin. He unconsciously falsified the facts of the history, because he did not care particularly for facts. Everything heathen received a Jahveistic sense, the heathen form a Jahveistic significance, the heathen substance a Jahveistic form. Only under these conditions could the past history of Israel be made intelligible to the mind of the people.

And then, when priests and prophets came to reduce the popular stories to writing, they could certainly only complete what the populace had already begun. They also were not historians or investigators at all; instead of transporting themselves into a past age, they raised the past age to the light of the present. No doubt they were more consistent and more inventive than the populace; for they wrote with an intelligence which marks and attempts to explain inconsistencies; and even in the interest of a certain political or religious object. The heathenism, which they could not understand, seemed to them impossible; they discovered everywhere at least Jahveistic motives.

Thus, I think, the Biblical narrative of Samson was an old heathen story, transformed by a Jahveistic colouring, given to it first by the Israelitish populace, and subsequently by the author of the narrative. I have endeavoured, by the aid of parallel instances, to trace the mode of this transformation and to recover the original form and meaning of the old story.

12. GENERAL PSYCHOLOGICAL REFLECTION.

We must now attempt to realise the psychological relations and processes upon which is based the preservation and transformation of heathen ideas within the range of Monotheism, the fact of which has been exhibited above.

We require here to see clearly, at least in broad outline, what relations ideas of recent growth, especially on religion and morals, bear to older representations. For from this it will then be easy to make the application to the special case before us, the relation of the monotheistic Jahveistic ideas to the older heathen representations among the Israelites. The story of Samson will then present only a special instance of this relation.

Among the ideas and thoughts, either of a nation or of an individual, a certain harmony prevails, which is in its nature not logical but psychological, not based on the law of Contradiction, but yielding that law as a specially rigorous result; in itself, however, much broader and more delicate, and indeed through its very breadth losing in stringency. The laws of logic have a double basis, a metaphysical one on the objective side, and a psychological on the subjective. That is, the logical law must be observed, because, if it be not, there arises, on the one hand, a disturbance of the metaphysical relation under which things in their reality have to come into thought, and on the other, an insoluble problem for our psychological function of Consciousness. Of course, in logical error or offence against logical law, so far as it actually occurs, there is nothing psychologically impossible. For example, a logically improper association of two ideas in the mind is possible—but only through the absence from the mind of the third factor, which logically makes it an error: if it were present, it would infallibly have prevented the improper association. That which is logically wrong is thus incapable of being thought. No one can think that 7 + 4 = 12. We may certainly make such a false reckoning, if we happen not completely to spread before us the contents of the numbers in this succession: then such an association of ideas, such a summation of the series, may be formed. But as soon as the set of numbers is fully counted out, our passage from 7 + 4 to 12 is stopped, and no effort would avail to connect them as equals. That which in the logical sphere is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ takes, in the psychological, the form of ‘complete’ or ‘incomplete.’ Accordingly, if without knowing logic men can think right, and tell right thinking from wrong, it is because, when once the elements of a case are all clearly present to the mind, wrong thinking is psychologically impossible. This impossibility in the first instance only forces us to drop the wrong combination; but this is the first inducement to search for the right one. But, supposing no free movement of search and a total absence of reflection, then we shall simply have such range of combination as may be compatible with the psychological conditions; and, provided the necessary factors are all clear in the mind, this can be no other than the right one, viz., that which accords with the aggregate view of things.

This congruity among the ideas of particular nations or individuals is no doubt tantamount in the end to an avoidance of logical contradiction; and into this we might in all cases resolve such concord, could we exactly trace all the threads or intermediate members. But where the most we can do is to _feel_ such threads of connexion, the congruity takes the shape of some Characteristic pervading the circles of ideas—some common stamp.

According to this, we ought to be able to discover in the mind of every nation a system of ideas intrinsically bound together and never self-contradictory. And this will so far prove to be the fact, that a certain national type will be everywhere present. But it is possible for contradictions to occur in the national life; for, if only they do not clash against one another in the consciousness, the contradictory ideas do not operate with their force of contradiction. Even every individual doubtless bears about with him unconsciously many ideas in harshest contradiction; contradictions, however, they are, in virtue not of any objective force proper to the ideas in themselves, but of an act of judgment which sets them forth as mutually contradictory. The contradictions are often hidden very deep, and only brought to light by a methodical search. When, however, new ideas, proclaimed everywhere in the streets, conflict with the old ones, the contradiction is at once brought to the light of day. What will be the result?

A conflict will arise, without doubt: will it be one with physical weapons? Such a conflict, though it may be inevitable, and though it has often given occasion for the exhibition of high and noble virtue, is nevertheless of no value to the real cause, the true victory, the victory of truth; and the chief point gained by the physical victory has generally been only the conviction of its worthlessness.

The conflict within the mind, where Ideas _en masse_ confront Ideas in rank and file,—this forms the substance of the History of Mankind: a Conflict of Souls.

Mind rules and moulds, Matter is ruled and moulded: this relation repeats itself within the consciousness. Whatever consciousness owes to impressions of sense, serves as material to be moulded by mental activity. For the purpose of this moulding, the mind, impelled partly by this material itself and partly by its own nature, forms representations, notions, forms i.e. modes of apprehension, and ideas, namely, the general conceptions of genera and species, the metaphysical categories, and the moral ideas. In accordance with the moral ideas are formed principles of action, judgments on the acts of others, even of God, insofar as man believes himself acquainted with the acts of God. Conversely, acts are declared to be or not to be God’s, insofar as they do or do not accord with the moral standard and the conception of God. In accordance with the general class-conceptions the world of things divides itself before the view: and while by certain esthetic and moral ideas these things are brought under a rule of valuation, in metaphysical aspects they are put into a causal relation. Finally, religious ideas form the foundation and the summit of all these curious constructions of a world and judgments passed on a world.

Accordingly, the conflict shows itself in two forms. Sometimes a certain domain of materials, in which new relations and connexions have become prominent, requires a new form of thought to dominate it; sometimes a new form of thought strives to supplant the old one, and to reshape, in accordance with its new laws, the matter which had been shaped by the former one. An example will make this clear. The thought ‘God’ forms the apex of the pyramid of ideas; it possesses the highest and widest dominion—for this very reason unfortunately often the weakest—and therefore shapes every province of consciousness in accordance with what it contains. Now, let an altered character come over the contents of one of these domains, say of the ideas concerning our relation to our fellow-men, or concerning causality in nature; then that domain can no longer tolerate to be ruled and moulded by the thought previously connoted in the word ‘God,’ standing as it now does in contradiction to that thought. It sets up the sway of a new form of thought, which fits its new contents, because growing out of them; there arises a new conception of God, a new Theology. But the old Theology has still its seat in all the other provinces of consciousness; so that, before any further advance, the new Idea has still to bring all these other provinces under its sway, to dissolve the shape given them by the old principle, and replace it by one which is congenial with itself. This may, nay must, produce a long conflict, which demands much labour. Of many a concept the intension will have to be entirely cancelled,—of all to be at least remodelled. Yet with many ideas the association has through long habit become quite fixed. Severed they must be, the new God requires it; but it can only be done very gradually. A thousand forbidden combinations find lurking-places and remain; they maintain themselves in contradiction to the new order of things, and perhaps half accommodate themselves to it in order to avoid a shock.

Imperfectly as I have expounded the point in question, I hope, nevertheless, that what I have said will suffice for the present purpose. What it wants in transparency and clearness may yet be added by the application of the general remarks to the particular case.

There existed for a long time, as I have remarked, monotheistic and heathen ideas in the national mind of the Israelites side by side—the former being the newer, the latter the older. But yet the former were the ruling ideas, and always gaining strength and clearness and coming to the brightest foreground of the consciousness, whereas the latter were constantly losing ground and clearness. Thus the nation lost the true consciousness of its heathen past history and the understanding of its former condition and experiences. For no nation as such possesses that true sense for history, by which it would conceive of itself and its present existence in conscious contrast to the past, and strive to gain an objective view of the mind and nature of past ages. The consciousness of a nation is only the active present age, and knows nothing of history. Therefore, whenever a radical revolution, extending over many important domains of ideas, has come over the nation, it no longer understands its own past history which lies on the other side of the revolution. Yet the old words, sayings and stories are transmitted all the same, and they contain accounts of bygone events and conditions, ancient ideas and ancient faith. But the stories which refer to obsolete and forgotten states of things are unintelligible; the names and sayings of forgotten gods, things and ideas are empty; typical figures and phrases based on those legends and gods, though still living on the lips, have become senseless. The nation always thinks that the word must have an idea behind it. So what it does not understand, it converts into what it does; it transforms the word until it can understand it. Thus words and names have their forms altered: e.g. the French _écrevisse_ becomes in English _crawfish_, and the heathen god _Svantevit_ was changed by the Christian Slavs into _Saint Vitus_, and the Parisians converted _Mons Martis_ into _Montmartre_. And what was reported of persons or beings represented like persons, that are no longer known, is now told of persons whose acquaintance has been newly made. In Germany it was told of the god Wuotan, that he was called Long-beard, and as such fell asleep inside a mountain; now when Wuotan was utterly forgotten, a new subject had to be found; and the legend was transferred to the heroic kings Charles [the Great] and Frederick [Barbarossa]. Moreover, the myth that forms the groundwork of the poem of the _Nibelungen_, which was originally told without mention of any definite time or place, was assigned to a well-known locality, and its heroes received the names of historical kings.

Every nation must of necessity act similarly; for the legends which it tells must be its own legends, and reflect its own life and present circumstances; if they have ceased to do so because its life has changed, then they are changed in accordance with the change in the life. Even the future beyond the grave is to the popular mind only the present life somewhat gilded; then how is it likely that the past shall be thought of as different from the present?

And precisely because these transformations and transferences are necessary, they take place unconsciously and unintentionally. The mind of the nation does not make them; they are an occurrence in that mind, which makes itself by itself. The nation has subjects and predicates, sounds and meanings, given to it in the legend. Now if the stream of time carries off the subjects and meanings into the ocean of oblivion, then by the psychological law the unattached predicates and sounds must fasten themselves on to any other subjects and meanings by which they can be supported. This takes place without any one intending it, and without any one observing it.

The words, names and phrases which a nation uses have to be apperceived in the moment when they are employed. This is true both of the hearer and of the speaker. But the apperceptions are dependent on the previously formed associations of ideas. Now if a German heard ‘Sinfluth,’ or if, when speaking, this word known to him by tradition presented itself to his consciousness in the course of speech, then the second part of the word, _Fluth_ ‘flood,’ found the idea with which it was associated, and which was reproduced by being brought into consciousness by the word; but the first part, _Sin_, stood in no association and roused no idea. But by material relationship and partial identity of sound, _Sin_ is associated with _Sünde_ ‘sin,’ and the latter idea (that of sin or guilt) was at the same time associated with the word _Sinfluth_ as a whole; thus then this idea of sinfulness was strongly lifted into prominence on two sides, much more strongly and quickly than the German _Sin_ itself. This latter was ultimately raised into prominence only through its traditional combination with _Fluth_ ‘flood,’ and this only as a sound; consequently in its advance it was overtaken by _Sünde_ ‘sin,’ which was lifted into prominence partly through it (_Sin_), and partly also through _Fluth_, and therefore with double force. Consequently people spoke and thought _Sünd_, instead of saying without thinking _Sin_; and this was the direct result of a simple psychological process.[863] Similarly in all analogous cases. Among the Ossetes of the Caucasus the Dies Martis, Tuesday, is unconsciously converted into George’s Day; and the Dies Veneris, Friday, into Mary’s Day. In many nations the gods form a circle limited to twelve immortals; the thirteenth in a society was then a mortal, one destined to die. Similarly, even at the present day, Christians fear that out of thirteen one will die, referring it however to the company of thirteen formed by Jesus and the twelve Apostles. Again, there was a legend widely spread among Teutonic nations, of an Archer, who shot an apple from his own little boy’s head, and answered the despot at whose command he had done it, when asked about his other two arrows, that they were intended for him, in case the first had killed the child. Who was the Archer? Who was the Despot? where and what was the motive? All this was forgotten; there only remained a dim echo of the legend of the shot. But when Switzerland, a nation of archers, had shaken off the yoke of a despot, all the features of the story recovered definite names, places, time, and motive. As the stone flying through the air falls to the earth by the law of attraction, so the old legend fell into the Liberation-time.

Sometimes we forget something, but yet retain a small part of it in the memory, as when we say, I have really forgotten his name; but I am sure it begins with B. The same thing happens to nations. The name of Venus, or Holda, was forgotten; but people were sure that she was a divine woman. Now to the Christians of the middle ages ‘Divine Woman’ and ‘Mary’ were one single idea; consequently, the name Mary, unobserved, took the place of the heathen goddesses in the numerous appellations and legends which are now connected with Mary. Of Mars it was only remembered that he was a warrior; so Tuesday, which was sacred to him, could only become Saint George’s Day.

Similar was the history of the Israelites when they became monotheistic. The heathen cosmogony, and the heathen idea of the activity of the gods in physical occurrences, contradicted the new idea of the One Almighty God, before whom Nature is nothing. But even though the idea that this God alone created the world, had been long accepted and established, yet there were still, preserved in stereotyped expressions of language, many ideas which preserved from oblivion and ruin features of the old modes of thought alongside of the new. They remain, so long as attention is not drawn to the contradiction in which these separate words stand to the new general system. When the clouds were no longer regarded as a sea, as they once were, people ceased to understand the meaning of ‘the heights of the sea;’ this expression no longer finds any organ of apperception, because ‘Sea’ is no longer associated with the idea of the clouds. Therefore, the expression is sustained only by its traditional connexion with ‘heights.’ But ‘heights’ are very closely associated with earth and with the idea of mountains; and thus with the Prophet Amos[864] this association supplanted the older one—the living took the place of the dead. We will now, in conclusion, return to Samson.

13. HISTORY OF THE MYTH OF THE SUN-GOD.

We will now review the entire history of the old Semitic God of the Sun or of Heat, as he was present to the national consciousness of Israel.

I wonder whether I am mistaken? I flatter myself that I know the particle by which was expressed the greatest revolution ever experienced in the development of the human mind, or rather by which the mind itself was brought into existence. It is the particle ‘as’ in the verse[865] ‘And he [the Sun] is _as_ a bridegroom, coming out of his chamber; he rejoices _as_ a hero to run his course.’ Nature appears to us _as_ a man, _as_ mind, but is not man or mind. This is the birth of Mind, the generation of Poetry. This ‘as’ is unknown not only to the Vedas, but even to the Greeks. This does not mean that the Greeks had no poetry at all, but only that there is an inherent defect in their poetry, which is connected with the deepest foundation of their national mind. Helios, driving along the celestial road with fiery steeds, is not poetry, but only becomes poetical when we tacitly insert the ‘as’ of the Psalmist. He to whom Helios is a conscious being is childlike, if not childish: the Psalmist is poetical.

Now when such psalms were being spread abroad increasingly in Israel; when Jahveh was acknowledged as the being that brings up the sun, the stars and the rain-clouds, that builds the house and guards the city; then the old Sun-god or Herakles was forgotten; that is, his divinity, and that only, was forgotten. His deeds were still recounted; but deeds demand an agent. And thus out of the god, who could exist no longer in the presence of Jahveh, a man was made, who with Jahveh’s force to aid him performed superhuman things, but in other respects lived among men and within human conditions, worked quite as a man, and even enjoyed his superhuman power only on human terms, namely the terms of Naziritism.

Deeds were reported of some one who had long hair. But who wore his hair long, but the Nazirite consecrated to Jahveh? Deeds were told, which no one could accomplish unless exceptionally endowed with strength by Jahveh; and Jahveh would give such privilege only to the Nazirite consecrated to him. Consequently, when Samson was no longer a god, he must be a Nazirite. Nevertheless, he was distinguished beyond all other Nazirites: he was so from his very birth, like Samuel, to whom with Naziritism was granted Prophecy, a gift vouchsafed to others only later in life and occasionally. The strictly mythical character, the allusion to a religion of nature, was entirely lost from the stories about Samson. Whatever happened to him took a purely human character.

There was also a dim memory of the same forgotten god, that he was Melkart, i.e. ‘king or guardian of the city.’ Samson, now reduced to humanity, could have been such a guardian only in a human sense, though perhaps in an extraordinary degree. Now Israel preserved from the first half of its political existence the memory of no other enemy so dangerous, so difficult to withstand, and again in its subsequent weakness so hateful, as the Philistines: against them Samson must have fought. No other foe had laid on Israel so hard a yoke or such bitter degradation as the Philistines: but Samson must have avenged this on them. He must not only have conquered them, but likewise have given them a taste of his great physical and intellectual superiority: the Nazirite consecrated to Jahveh could scoff at the Philistines. Thus Samson was in the end a Judge, Shôphêṭ; for in the age of the Judges, the wars with the Philistines had begun, and after Eli and Samuel, Saul and David, or even beside any of them, Samson could not have lived. These were not deliberations, but unconscious impulses, which shaped the legend of Samson in the national mind of Israel.

No feature of the Solar hero has suffered a more characteristic conversion than his end, as is seen by a comparison with the corresponding polytheistic legends. Orion is blinded by the father of his lady-love, and Samson had his eyes put out. But Orion kindled the light of his eyes again at the rays of Helios, whereas Samson remains blind, and only prays to be endowed with strength to avenge the loss of one of his two eyes.[866] It is true, his hair grows again and brings back his strength: after the winter comes a new spring. But all in vain—Samson dies, notwithstanding. He dies like Herakles: but there is no Iolaos to wake him to a new life, no Athene and Apollon to lead him to Olympos, no Zeus and Here to present to him Hebe, the personification of the enjoyment of perpetual youth. Samson dies and remains dead; he dies, and tears down with him his own pillars—the pillars on which he had built the world—to find a grave beneath them. The heathen god is dead, and draws his own world down with him into his own nothingness; his battles were a play of shadows. Jahveh lives, ‘he hath established the world by his wisdom,’ ‘he giveth rain, the autumn and the spring showers, each in its season, and keepeth to us the prescribed weeks of harvest,’ ‘cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night;’[867] he lives, the Lord of the world, the King of the earth, and his hero is Israel.

Footnote 786:

See W.K. Kelly, _Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore_, London 1863, chap. II.—TR.

Footnote 787:

See Kelly, _ibid._, p. 74.—TR.

Footnote 788:

See Kelly, _ibid._, p. 83.—TR.

Footnote 789:

See Kelly, _ibid._, 163–5—TR.

Footnote 790:

See Kelly, _Curiosities etc._, p. 89.—TR.

Footnote 791:

See Kelly, _Curiosities etc._, p. 83–85, 151.—TR.

Footnote 792:

See Kelly, _ibid._, p. 83, 141–3.—TR.

Footnote 793:

See Kelly, _Curiosities etc._, pp. 37, 43.—TR. The literal meaning of his name is _qui in matre tumescit vel praevalet_, i.e. a boring-stick like the lightning.

Footnote 794:

In English _mangle_, substantive and verb. The verb _mangle_ ‘to tear’ is probably the same, derived from the action of _boring_. To _mantle_—to winnow corn, to rave, to froth, may be from the same original root, represented by the Sanskrit, _math, manth_, in the sense ‘to shake.’ See Halliwell, _Dict. of Archaic and Provincial Words._ The Greek μόθος ‘tumult’ is connected with the same root by Gr. Curtius, _Grundzüge der griech. Etymologie_, No. 476.—TR.

Footnote 795:

The penis. The Latin _mentula_, as Prof. Weber reminds me, is clearly the same.

Footnote 796:

The boring-stick and the penis.

Footnote 797:

ṛ in Sanskrit is pronounced as _r_ with a very short vowel, _e.g._ like _ri_ in _merrily_.—TR.

Footnote 798:

Halliwell, _l.c._, gives in provincial English _bliken_ ‘to shine,’ _blickent_ ‘shining,’ and _blink_ ‘a spark of fire.’—TR.

Footnote 799:

ć in Sanskrit is the English _ch_ in _church_.—TR.

Footnote 800:

This is supported by the analogy of the French _apprendre_. It should also be noted that Plato, in defining the signification of μανθάνειν, says that it means πράγματός τινος _λαμβάνειν_ τὴν ἐπιστήμην (Euthyd. 277. e.).

Footnote 801:

On all this see my _Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_.

Footnote 802:

It is explained by Lazarus, _Leben der Seele_, II. p. 166, and by me in _Grammatik, Logik und Psychologie_, pp. 319–340, and in _Charakteristik der Typen des Sprachbaues_, pp. 78 _et seq._

Footnote 803:

The male is the Pramantha, the female the ἐσχάρα (the lower piece of wood and the female pudenda).

Footnote 804:

See Kelly, _Curiosities etc._, pp. 35–38, 137–150, 158.—TR.

Footnote 805:

Num. XX. 12, XXVII. 13, 14.—TR.

Footnote 806:

_Sage_, a ‘saying’ or legendary story, which may have no historical foundation, but be produced out of mythic matter. Where, as here, it is sharply distinguished from history, I render it _legend_; elsewhere _story_, which is generally the best English equivalent, notwithstanding its derivation from _historia_.—TR.

Footnote 807:

The allusion is to the story of Bruin the bear and the honey, in Reynard the Fox: see _Reinhart_, v. 1533–1562, _Reinaert_, v. 601–706, in Jacob Grimm’s edition, Berlin 1834; and Goethe’s modern German version, canto 2.—TR.

Footnote 808:

Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_, I. 478.

Footnote 809:

Welcker, _ibid._, 490.

Footnote 810:

Studer, _Buch der Richter_, p. 320: Sachs, _Beiträge zur Sprach- und Alterthumsforschung_, II. p. 92.

Footnote 811:

Preller, _Römische Mythologie_, p. 437–8.

Footnote 812:

Ovid, _Fasti_, IV. 679 _et seqq._

Footnote 813:

Judges XV. 8.

Footnote 814:

Judges XV. 15–19.

Footnote 815:

VIII. 5. 1, p. 353.

Footnote 816:

III. 22. 8.

Footnote 817:

Judges XV. 19: ʿÊn haḳḳôrê.

Footnote 818:

Judges XV. 16.

Footnote 819:

_Buch der Richter_, p. 185.

Footnote 820:

Judges XV. 17: Râmath Lechî.

Footnote 821:

v. 19.

Footnote 822:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_.

Footnote 823:

Makhtêsh, v. 19.

Footnote 824:

I formerly saw in the Jawbone the representative of the Harpe (toothed sickle), with which Herakles cuts off the heads of the Hydra, and which Kronos and Perseus also employ—the latter when he beheads Medusa. I have changed my view in favour of that here propounded, through consideration of the ‘throwing,’ which undoubtedly is significant. But complete certainty is unattainable. What meaning can be attached to the circumstance that the jawbone is called a ‘fresh’ (new) one (v. 15)?

Footnote 825:

Judges XVI. 1–3.

Footnote 826:

Welcker, _Griech. Götterlehre_, II. 776; Preller, _Griech. Mythol._, II. 154, 167; Movers, _Phönizier_, I. 442.

Footnote 827:

Welcker, _ibid._, II. 761.

Footnote 828:

Judges XVI. 4: Nachal Sôrêḳ, _i.e._ Valley of the Vine.

Footnote 829:

I formerly took Delîlâ, _i.e._ the ‘Worn out,’ to be a personification of Nature, worn out and no longer productive in the winter-season. Then the name Delîlâ might be compared with that of Aphrodite _Morpho_, supposing Movers (p. 586) to give the right interpretation of the latter, in discovering it to be the Syriac word for Fatigue, Flagging. Then Delîlâ would be the Winter-goddess, and might be a peculiar phase of Derketo, who was worshiped in conjunction with the barren Sea-god Dagon (see Stark, _Gaza_, p. 285). Pausanias (III, 15. 8) relates that there was at Sparta an old temple with an image of Aphrodite to whom it belonged—_i.e._ Astarte, Semiramis, etc. This temple (alone of all the temples that Pausanias knew) had an upper story, in which was an image of Aphrodite Morpho. She was represented sitting, veiled, and with her feet bound. Pausanias himself interprets the fetters to indicate women’s attachment to their husbands; but this reading is not binding on us. I regard this Morpho as a picture of Nature fettered and mourning in winter. Similarly, and also at Sparta (_ibid._ 5) the bound Enyalios signifies the restrained solar heat of Mars. However, this interpretation of Delîlâ as Winter stands in no contradiction to what is said in the text. Moon-goddess, Love-goddess, Chaste goddess, and Winter, are only different aspects of the same mythological figure, to which a name capable of many interpretations is very suitable. Stark (_Gaza_, p. 292) is right in asserting the hostility of Herakles to the descendants of Poseidon, the gloomy sea-god, who according to Semitic conceptions I believe to have been also the Winter-god (Dagon). But Movers (p. 441) appears to be also right in showing how, besides combating the creatures of Typhon, Melkart-Herakles is also hostile to the evil Moon-goddess. For she is only the female figure corresponding to the male Moloch, Typhon and Mars. In the Greek myth the place of the Semitic Lunar Astarte is occupied by Hera, the adversary of Herakles. She is confounded both with Ashêrâ the goddess of Love, and with Astarte. Thus there was in Sparta an Aphrodite Hera (Paus. III. 13. 6). To her goats were sacrificed at Sparta, and only there, as to the Semitic Birth-goddess; and she was called ‘Goat-eater’ (Ἥρα αἰάγοφάγος, _ib._ 15. 7; Preller, _Griech. Myth._, p. 111; but I am of opinion that the goats have not the same meaning in her case as in that of Zeus). In the character of Astarte, as an evil Moon-goddess, a female Moloch or Mars, she appears when she sends the Nemean lion, the Solar heat, into the land, and on other occasions when she is put into connexion with the powers of evil (Preller, p. 109). The conception which unites opposite natural forces in the same divine person, which then appears under a modified form, could not be better expressed in architecture than it is in the above-mentioned temple of Aphrodite. The lower story is a temple of the Armed Aphrodite; the upper a temple of Aphrodite Morpho: thus the whole is a temple of the strict goddess, below of the Summer, above of the Winter. The fact that a deity of the Solar heat and the Fire is regarded as also a deity of the Sea, may be explained not only by the equal barrenness of the Desert—a sea of sand, and the Sea—a desert of water, but perhaps also by the opinion, attributed by Plutarch (_de Is. et Os._ c. 7) to the Egyptians, that the sea is not an independent element but only a morbid emanation from fire. To Morpho or Winter corresponds Hera, as one at variance with Zeus, or as a widow (Preller, p. 108). Thus then it will be clear that Delîlâ may be both the Birth-goddess (Ashêrâ) and the evil Moon-goddess (Astarte), or more accurately the Winter-goddess (Derketo). If Semiramis exhibits a combination of Ashêrâ with Astarte, then Delîlâ shows a similar combination of Ashêrâ with Derketo, who is only a modification of Astarte.

Footnote 830:

The derivation from the root _shmn_ is impossible, that from the root _shmm_ far-fetched. The simple derivation from shemes ‘sun’ appears to be rejected by Bertheau (_Buch der Richter_, p. 169) only ‘because the long narrative concerning Samson presents no reference to a name of any such signification’ (as ‘the Sunny,’ the Solar hero), and because, as he says, ‘we do not expect to find a name of this kind anywhere in Hebrew antiquity.’ But the matter appears to us now in a very different light, and the connexion with the Sun which Bertheau did not expect to find has now become clear.

Footnote 831:

That Dagon really had the form of a fish, which Movers denies, surely appears certain from 1 Sam. V. 4 (see Stark, _Gaza_, p. 249). And it would be an excess of diplomatic accuracy, such as we are not justified in ascribing to the Hebrew writer, to suppose that his only reason for writing dâgôn was that the Hebrew dâgân ‘corn’ was pronounced Dâgôn in Phenician. Moreover, such a word as ‘Corn’ (dâgân) cannot well be a proper name. The formation of proper names of men and places by the termination _ôn_ is excessively common, and requires no citation of examples.

Footnote 832:

Judges XVI, 22.

Footnote 833:

Judges XIII.

Footnote 834:

1 Sam. I.

Footnote 835:

Num. VI. 1–21.

Footnote 836:

1 Sam. I. 28.

Footnote 837:

1 Sam. II. 11, 18, III. 3, I. 11.

Footnote 838:

Amos II. 11, 12.

Footnote 839:

Lev. X. 9.

Footnote 840:

Num. VI. 6, 7.

Footnote 841:

The circumstance that this was ‘of Jahveh’ (Judges XIV. 4) is a fiction interpolated into the legend by the systematising author.

Footnote 842:

It will be seen from the above, that I am far from subscribing to the judgment on the heathen religions which has in recent times been widely diffused among philosophers and philologians. I agree essentially with the judgment of the natural mind, which always sees delusion and superstition in heathendom. But it does not follow from this that the heathens were absolutely immoral: they invested with their own morality gods who were intrinsically representations of nature only.

Footnote 843:

See Preller, _Griech. Mythol._ II. 97; Gerhard, _Griech. Mythol._ § 711.

Footnote 844:

For this assertion I must for the present refer to what I have said in an article, _Zur Charakteristik der semitischen Völker_, in the _Zeitschr. für Völkerpsychologie etc._ Vol. I. p. 328 _et seqq._ In Liebner and others’ _Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie_, V. p. 669 _et seqq._, there is a long article by Diestel, _Der Monotheismus des ältesten Heidenthums, vorzüglich bei den Semiten_. He also declares himself averse to the assumption of a primitive Monotheism, because it is destitute of all historical proof. He brings many points judiciously into the light, especially the absence of an accurate conception of Monotheism (p. 684). But when he objects to me, that in the above-quoted article (p. 330) I am too hard on the expression _Instinct_ used by Renan, inasmuch as it is to be understood as implying only an individual disposition of the religious mind, not a momentum of half-animal physical life. I must observe in reply, that I can scarcely imagine how else instinct can be understood but as a ‘half-animal momentum’; and even reason, taken as an instinct, is _eo ipso_ degraded to a momentum of half-animal physical life. And if Diestel here means by instinct a ‘disposition of the mind,’ I can see in such dispositions scarcely anything more than momenta of _half_-animal physical life. Moreover, I cannot admit any such ‘dispositions of the religious mind,’ which have the special object of their belief determined beforehand. A disposition to reasonableness in general, or to religiousness in general, does dwell in the human mind; but not a disposition so defined as to its object that a limited idea, such as Monotheism, could be _a priori_ inherent in it.

Footnote 845:

By J. Olshausen in Hirzel’s _Hiob_, p. 60 note.—But Ewald says expressly (_Ijob_, 1854, p. 126) that Rahab is everywhere _a mythological name for a sea-monster_, even where it stands for Egypt.—TR.

Footnote 846:

See pp. 73, 169.

Footnote 847:

See _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1849, III. p. 200 _et seq._

Footnote 848:

Hebrew livyâthân, nâchâs; Sanskrit Vṛtra, Ahi.

Footnote 849:

The literal and only possible translation of the first three words of the verse, geʿar chayyath ḳaneh, rendered correctly in the Septuagint and Vulgate; for which the English A.V. unaccountably substitutes ‘Rebuke the company of spearmen,’ while the Prayer-book version goes even further astray.—TR.

Footnote 850:

Baʿal kûn, see Movers, I. 292.

Footnote 851:

Job IX. 8; bâmothê yâm.—TR.

Footnote 852:

Is. XIV. 14; bâmothê ʿâbh.—TR.

Footnote 853:

It will be inferred from the above reasoning, that I should be inclined to assign an early age to the writer of the Book of Job. But I can find no reason for making him older than Amos; indeed, he may have lived into the lifetime of Isaiah. I must further remark that Schlottmann (_Das Buch Hiob verdeutscht und erläutert_, pp. 69–105, especially 101 _et seqq._) has expressed ideas similar to those propounded by me, though starting from assumptions utterly different in principle. To the passages of Job which he places side by side with corresponding ones of Amos (p. 109), the following may be added: Amos V. 8 and IX. 6, ‘who calleth to the water of the (Cloud-) Sea,’ and Job XXXVIII. 34, ‘wilt thou lift up thy voice to the Cloud?’

Footnote 854:

_Prometheus_, p. 391.

Footnote 855:

Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers etc._, p. 30.

Footnote 856:

P. 392.

Footnote 857:

Preller, ib. I. 438; Kuhn, ib. p. 24, 243.

Footnote 858:

See p. 399.

Footnote 859:

See p. 425.

Footnote 860:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 251.

Footnote 861:

In English Tues-day, Wednes-day, Thurs-day, Fri-day, Satur-day, from Anglo-Saxon names of gods, Tiu or Teow, Wôden, Thunor, Frige, Sætern.—TR.

Footnote 862:

E.g. the Lady-bird, in German Marienkäfer; its Danish name, Marihöne, was, according to Grimm, anciently Freyjuhöna ‘Freyja’s hen.’ So Venus’ Looking-glass (Speculum Veneris) is also called Lady’s Glass; Pecten Veneris is Lady’s Comb. There are very numerous plants named after Our Lady, which were probably originally dedicated to Freyja or Venus, as Lady’s Mantle; Lady’s Thistle or Lady’s Milk (Carduus Marianus: ‘distinguished at once by the white veins on its leaves.... A drop of the Virgin Mary’s milk was conceived to have produced these veins, as that of Juno was fabled to be the origin of the Milky Way.’ Hooker and Arnott, _British Flora_, p. 231); Lady’s Smock (Cardamine); Lady’s Bower or Virgin’s Bower (Clematis); Lady’s Fingers (Anthyllis); Lady’s Tresses (Spiranthes or Neottia); Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium).—TR.

Footnote 863:

As this German example will not be familiar to all English readers, it is necessary to give a few words of explanation. The great Deluge (Gen. VI.-VIII.) is called in modern German _Sünd-fluth_, which seems to be Sin-flood = Flood on account of sin. But in Old High German it is written Sin-vluot and Sint-vluot, which cannot be identical with the assumed meaning of the modern word, since _sin_ (peccatum) is in Old High German _sunta_. Moreover, _sin_ is a prefix well known to most of the Teutonic languages, denoting (1) always, (2) great. In the former sense we have it in the Old English _singrene_ ‘evergreen;’ in the latter in the Anglo-Saxon _sinhere_ ‘great army.’ Hence it is assumed that the word in German altered its pronunciation when the prefix _sin_ became obsolete, being then supposed to be intended for _Sünd-fluth_, as is shown in the text. See Grimm, _Deut. Gram._ II. 554, Graff, _Althochd. Sprachschatz_, VI. 25, _Ettmüller, Lex. Anglosax._ p. 638, Vigfusson, _Icelandic English Dict._ s. v. Sí. Prof. Steinthal appears now (in a letter to the translator) to doubt whether this history of the word is tenable; but the assumption that it is so may at least be allowed, in order to retain this excellent example of the psychological progress.—TR.

Footnote 864:

See _supra_, p. 426.

Footnote 865:

Ps. XIX. 6 [5].

Footnote 866:

Judges XVI. 28: ‘Give me strength only this once, O God, and I will avenge myself with _the vengeance of one of my two eyes_ on the Philistines.’ This is the only possible meaning of the very simple Hebrew words nekam achath mishshethê ʿênay, which were misunderstood by the LXX and Vulg.; and the German and English versions have merely followed the latter.—TR.

Footnote 867:

Jer. X. 12, V. 24; Gen. VIII. 22.

------------------------------------

INDEX.

Aaron, grave of, 280–282

ʿAbd Duhmân, 73

Abel a herdsman, 110; his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition) at Ṣâliḥiyyâ, suburb of Damascus, 280; figure of the Dark Sky, 111; Jabal another form of the same, 111–2

Abraham denotes the Heaven at Night, 32; myth of his sacrifice of Isaac, 45–47; his journey to Egypt on account of a famine, when Jahveh plagued Pharaoh—a type of the later residence in Egypt, 275; his grave at Hebron, 278–280; at Berze near Damascus, 280

Abram (‘High Father’) originally denoted Heaven, 91; changed into Abraham, 230

Abram and Jacob, mythical ideas connected with these names not quite obsolete, 229

Adam, grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), on Mt. Abû Ḳu-beys, 280

Agâdâ contains mythology, 29–32; but must be used with caution, 32–34; a hermeneutic law of the A., that ‘the intensity of a word’s sense increases with the enlargement of its form,’ 339; etymologies in A., 337; given even in opposition to others in the Bible, 339

Agni, ‘fire’ and ‘God of fire,’ 367–8, 382, 386–9; hidden, and brought back by Mâtariśvan, 369–70

Agricultural civilisation, speculation on, 211–14

Agriculture, Fall of man connected with, 87

Agriculturists love the Day and the Sun, 58–60; refer the arts of civilisation to the Sun, 202

Akra (Gold Coast), people of, identify God with clouds, 224

ʿAlî b. Jaʿfar al-Razî wrote a book on the graves of the Patriarchs at Hebron, 279

Allâh, idea of, similar to that of Jahveh, 290–1

Amnon’s liaison with Tamar, its mythical element, 181–2

Ancestors, originally mythical figures, 229, 254, 257

Aṅgiras, mythical family of, connected with Agni, 371–2

Anschauung (_Conception_), 377

ʿAntar, the black hero, compared with the Night, 147–8

Apperception, 376

Aptûchos, of Cyrene, identical with Jephthah, 104

Arabian children educated in the tents of Bedâwî, 88

Arabs travel by night, 56; proud of Nomadism, 79 _et seqq._; their poetry always conveys the scenery of the desert, 84–8

Archer who shot an apple from his son’s head, a Teutonic legend, 442

Aryan gods, their names date from the original unity, proved by Kuhn, 363–4

Ascension to heaven, characteristic of Solar heroes, 127

Ash-tree of the world, in the sky, 366

Asher is the ‘Marching’ (the Sun), 120–2; his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition), at Kafarmandâ, 280

Ashêrâ, the ‘Marching,’ consort of Asher (and therefore the Moon), 122–3, 158

Ass, called from his red colour, 181

Ass’s Jawbone, used as a weapon by Samson; originally name of a locality, 400; similar to Onugnathos in Lakonia, 400–1; denotes the Lightning, and is therefore thrown, 402

Assyria and Babylon exerted an intellectual influence on the Hebrews during the Captivity, 319

Assyrian poetry, very similar to the Hebrew Psalms, 318

Assyrians have gradations of authority among gods as among men, 267

Aztecs adopted Toltec civilisation, 236

Babel (Babylon), confusion of tongues at, story of, arose at Babylon, 330–1, 335

Babylon and Assyria exerted an intellectual influence on the Hebrews during the Captivity, 319

Babylonian story of the Creation, very similar to the Hebrew, 323

Baghirmi, people in Central Africa, identify God with the Storm, 224

Balaam (Bilʿâm) as interpreted in the Agâdâ, 33–4

Barak, ‘Lightning,’ is made a national hero, 256; the Judge (Lightning), 430

Bedâwî, their Sun-worship, 72; they are regarded as the true Arabs, 82–4; they regard God as a great Chief or Sheykh, 266

Bedouins. See Bedâwî

Bel, in the Louvre, with ox-horns on his tiara, 179

Benjamin, ‘Son of the right side,’ 176; his sons’ names, their origin given in the Agâdâ on etymological grounds, 337; a similar story in Arabic, 339

Bernstein’s theory on the differentiation of the legends between North and South, 286

Bhṛgu-s, same as Phlegyans, Lightning, 372–3; the first man, 389

Bilhah, a Solar figure, loves or marries Jacob and Reuben, figures of Night, 171–3

Bird, denotes Lightning, 384

Black, the colour of Night, 146–9

Bochica, Solar hero of the Muyscas, author of civilisation, 204–5

Bunsen confounds religion and mythology, 12; does not admit any Hebrew mythology, 12–13

Cain, with Abel, 110–2; the ‘Smith,’ 113, and so in the Myth of Civilisation, 213–4, 217; Solar hero, 113–4, 126–7; his descendants Solar, 126 _et seqq._; progenitor of the human race, 210; grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), at Ṣâliḥiyyâ, suburb of Damascus, 280; called in Arabic Ḳâbil in assonance to Hâbil, according to a frequent practice, 347–9; although the name Ḳâyin is also known, 349

Calabar legend of the first human pair, 87

Canaan is cursed for Ham’s fault, 255; his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition), near Hebron, 280

Cats draw Freyja’s car, 342

Cat-worship of the Egyptians, Solar, 342

Caves in Canaan, traditions relating to, 278

Cherub perhaps denotes the Covering Cloud, and is of Hebrew origin, 196–7

Chiun. See _Kiyyûn_

Chrysoros the ‘Opener,’ hero of the Myth of Civilisation, 216–7

Civilisation, Myth of, 198 _et seqq._ refers the higher civilisation to the Sun, 200–6

Clouds, forms and names of, 163–5; clouds groaning, 164, weeping, 165; worshiped by nomadic Hebrews, 227; mythologically called ‘Heights of the Sea,’ 426, 443

Clouds and Serpents, Hebrew observers of, 227–8

Coalescence of psychological Motions or Combinations, 375

Colours only imperfectly distinguished and expressed in the mythic age, 141–155

Combination of psychological elements, 375

Comparative Mythology not limited by distinctions of race, 9

Conception (_Anschauung_), 377

Concubines in mythology are of opposite natures to their men, 158

Confusion of tongues at Babel (Babylon), story of, arose at Babylon, 330–1, 335

Conquered impose their superior civilisation on their conquerors, 236–40

Cow in mythology denotes the Sun, 343–4

Creation, Hebrew story of, conceived at Babylon, 323–6; established the Sabbath on a new basis, 324; Babylonian story very similar, 323

Creator, idea of a, essential conception of Jahveh, 299

Crocodile, mythologically identical with the Sun, worshiped in Egypt, 342–3

Ćyavana, son of Bhṛgu, is Lightning, 372–3, 391

Dagon, ‘Fish,’ Solar god of civilisation, 215

Dan, the ‘Moving,’ the Sun, 123–4

Darkness expressed by words meaning ‘to Cover,’ 190–4

Darkness and Blackness associated, 147–9

David’s story has features belonging to the Solar Myth: redness, beautiful eyes, throws stones, 109; he kills Goliath as Thor kills Hrungnir, 430

Dawn and Sunset expressed by the same words, 43

Dawn flies, or is a bird, 116; the name denotes ‘moving,’ 120; it is in Aramaic ṣafrâ (Arab, aṣfar), ‘golden,’ 150–1; its colour saffron, 152; changes from red to white, 152; or from white to red, 153

Dawn (or the Sun) is called the ‘Uncoverer,’ 194

Day called ‘red,’ 146; ‘white,’ 153–4; loved by Agriculturists, 58, 60

Deborah, the ‘Bee,’ i.e. the Rain-cloud, 430

Delîlâ, loved by Samson, 405; meaning of her name, 405, 406 _note_

Deluge, Biblical story of the, 319; Assyrian very similar, 320; Hebrews must have borrowed it from Babylonians, 320–2; Greek, Indian, and Persian stories of, not very ancient, 319–20

Deuteronomy, expresses a compromise between Priests and Prophets with a leaning towards the Prophets, 307–8

Differentiation of Hebrew national legends after the political separation, 275–87

Dinah, the ‘Moving,’ i.e. the Sun, 123–5

Dionysus strikes wine and water out of the rock, as a Solar hero, 429; called Liknites, ‘in a cradle,’ 389

Divine names, Hebrew and Phenician, 246–7

Division of the kingdom, 275–7

Dragon (Serpent) denotes Rain, 224–6

Dragon of the Storm, Semitic, 423; and see _Rahabh_

Dual deities, male and female, among Semites, 16

Dualism in sexual connections, 182

Dualism, religious, occurs in savage tribes as well as in Îrân, 15

Dyu, _nom._ Dyaus, 67

Easter, heathen goddess, 431

Eden, story of, arose at Babylon, 324–6; ‘Garden of Eden’ denotes a pleasure-garden in Joel before the Captivity, 325, but has a fuller meaning to the Prophets of the Captivity, 325–6

Edom, the ‘Red,’ solar epithet, 209; subsequently called Esau, the ‘Worker,’ 214, 217

Elijah, Solar hero, produces drought, 167–8; a typical Jahveist, 305–6; precursor of the great Day of Jahveh, 271–2

Elôhîm, originally polytheistic, but became monotheistic, 270–1; idea of Elôhîm opposed by Jahveistic Prophets, 297–8

Elôhîm or Êl, names compounded with, and similar ones compounded with Jahveh, 292–3

Elohistic documents Jahveistic in character, only using ‘Elôhîm’ for the Patriarchal age, 313

Elohistic writings subsequent to the compromise with Jahveism, their piety, 314–5

Enoch, Solar hero, 127–8

Ephraim, a geographical name derived from Ephrâth (Beth-lehem), 175, 283–5

Esau, hairy, signifies the Sun with his rays, 136–8; red, 139–40

Etymologising in legends, secondary and not original, 331–5; yet fables are invented to account for names, 332; etymologies assigned which are quite unsatisfactory, 333–4

Euhemerus, his system of mythology, regarding gods as human promoters of civilisation deified by posterity out of gratitude, 201

Eve, or the ‘Circulating,’ an epithet of the Sun, 210; grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), at Jeddâ, 280

Exodus, story of, contains mythic elements, 23, 28

Eye, an image of the Sun, 106–10

Ezekiel, prophet of the compromise between Priests and Prophets in the Captivity, 307, 317

Fall of man connected with Agriculture, 87

Feronia (like Phoroneus) originally a Lightning-bird, 385, 428

Figurative language conceals myths, 26–7

Figures of speech, apparent, often preserve something historical, 29

Fire, given by nature, 365; produced by boring, 366, 380–1; observed in the sky, which was believed to be the origin of the earthly fire, 366

Fire-myth analysed, 376–82

Foxes, represent Solar heat, 398; Samson tied firebrands to their tails and sent them into the Philistines’ corn, 398; similar Roman usages, 398

Fratricide accompanies mythical founding of cities, 113

Freyja, her car drawn by Cats, 342; converted in Christian times into Virgin Mary, 431–2

Gad, like Jupiter, the star of Fortune, 176

Gaza, gates of, carried off by Samson, a disguised myth of a descent to the nether-world, 403–4

Gazelle, designation of the rising sun, 178–9

Gazelles, golden, at Kaʿbâ at Mekka, 178

Geiger, L., his researches on the faculty of distinguishing colours, 141

Gender-distinctions in nouns, supposed by Bleek to encourage formation of mythology, 2–3

Genealogies invented through national hatred, 358–9; concocted by national pride or for other reasons, 357–8

George, Saint, kills a dragon—a general Aryan Myth, 431

German gods’ names preserved in names of days of the week, 431

German heathen practices in Christian times, 430–2

Getube, in an Ojibwa legend, has twelve children, 174

Gideon, the ‘Smasher,’ is made a National hero, 256

Gold, called sulphur-coloured and red, 142–4

Greeks love Agricultural life, 80; preserve traces of Nomadism, 70–1

Gynaeocracy, 76

Hagar, the ‘Flying,’ i.e. the Sun, 119

Haggai expresses the compromise between Priests and Prophets, 308

Hair in mythology denotes Rays of sun or moon, 137–40

Hajnal, ‘dawn,’ in Hungarian, denoted originally ‘white,’ 351

Ham is made ancestor of the Canaanites, 255; his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition), in the district of Damascus, 280

Hamor, father of Shechem, called ‘Ass’ from the red colour, which is Solar, 181

Heaven, called the ‘High’ in the Semitic languages, 91

Hebrew Mythology became Jahveistic, 433–4; its existence denied by Bunsen, 12–3

Hebrew Myths did not grow into religion, 248–9; but generally became history, 249, 255

Hebrew national consciousness, its effect on the Myth, 251–4

Hebrew national individuality aroused, 259

Hebrew political centralisation confirmed Monotheism, 268

Hebrews (ʿIbhrîm), the ‘Wanderers,’ 53; show sympathy with Shepherds as against Agriculturists, 86–7; adored the Serpent in the Desert, 226; adopted the Solar religion of Canaan, 227, 240–2; their history begins with the conquest of Canaan, 232; remained Nomads some time after leaving Egypt, 232; abandoned Nomadism on passing the Jordan, 233; took social and political institutions from the Phenicians, 242; forgot the fact of their original polytheism and set back the origin of Jahveism to Abraham or even Adam, 433; _compared_ but did not _identify_ heroes with the Sun, 443

Hebron, legends of the Patriarchs localised at, 278–80; therefore chosen by David for his residence, 280

Heimdall (the Sun) has the point of his horn in Niflheim, 179

Helios converted by Modern Greeks into Ilias (Elijah), 128

Hephaestos originally identical with Prometheus and Agni, 390

Herakles, original Aryan Sun-god, 417; he kills a lion, 395–6, 399, a feature which appears to be borrowed from the Semites (the Aryan Sun-god kills a Dragon), 418; as also the story of Foxes with firebrands attached to their tails, 419; he dies, but Iolaus wakes him to new life on Olympos, 446

Heroic age, in Book of Judges, contains mythology, 20–1

Hind, a designation of the rising sun, 178–9

History, mythic features attach themselves to, 22–3

Honey, in Samson’s riddle, 394–7

Horns denote the Sun’s rays, 179

Horváth and Vörösmarty’s Hungarian Myths, 252

Hûd, prophet, his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition), 283

Huythaca, ‘the Moon,’ wife of Bochica, Solar hero of the Muyscas, whom she opposes in his promotion of civilisation, 204

Hyksôs adopted Egyptian culture, 236

Ichneumon, mythologically representing the Night, worshiped in Fayûm, 343

Idea (_Vorstellung_), 377

Ife, a town of the gods of the Yorubas, 100

Immortality, belief in, characterised the Jahveistic Prophets, 305

Indians, traces of Nomadic myths among, 67–70

Interlacing of psychological Combinations, 376

Iokaste, the ‘Evening-glow,’ mother and wife of Oedipus, 187

Îrân, traces of Nomadism in, 68–9

Iranian (Persian) theological ideas influence the Hebrews in and after the Captivity, 326–9

Irej, ancestor of the Iranians, his sufferings a type of the subjugation of his race, 258

Isaac, the ‘Laugher,’ originally the Sun, 92–96; myth of the sacrifice of, 45–7, 104–6; his grave at Hebron, 278–9

Isâf and Nâʾilâ, two Arabian idols (Soil and Rain), 182–3

Isaiah, the second, the Prophet of the Captivity, 307

Isis, the horned, 179

Islâm not favourable to Nomadism, 86

Israel, i.e. the Hebrew nation, _created_ by Jahveh, 299

Issachar, called an Ass, a Solar figure, 177 _note_, 181

Istar, Babylonian goddess, is the Moon, 158–9

Jacob, the ‘Follower,’ i.e. the Night, the Dark Sky, 97; fights with a man who cannot conquer him (the Dawn), 140; struggles with Laban, ‘White,’ and Esau, ‘Red’ (Solar figures), 133–5, 140–1, 156; his name changed to Israel, 230; identified with Israel, 256; his grave at Hebron, 278–9

Jacob’s Blessing (Gen. XLIX.) contains remains of descriptions of mythical figures, 177

Jacob’s family, the Moon and Stars, 173; his twelve sons were not originally named, 174; some belong to the original myth, 175; some names are later, ethnographical or geographical, 175

Jael, ‘Wild Goat,’ i.e. Cloud, 430; is made a national hero, 256

Jahveh, the specially Hebrew name of God (Elôhîm being used by the Canaanites), its origin in the idea of Nationality, 272; idea of, 290; Mohammedan idea of Allâh similar, 290–1; name Jahveh known before the Separation, 292; the idea first introduced by the Prophets, 294–9; indicates a Creator, 299–301; ‘I am who I am,’ 300–1; National God of the Hebrews, 301; who hated foreign vice, 303–4; but also cosmopolitan, 302–3; not an esoteric religion, 304–5; friendly to both North and South and favourable to their reunion, 305–8

Jahveh, names compounded with, and similar ones compounded with Elôhîm (Êl), 292–3

Jahveism reforms ancient legends for moral ends, 312; adopted by the sacerdotal party in the Captivity through a compromise effected with the Prophets, 307–8; came to be supposed to be primitive, 433

Jahveistic documents show a very thorough-going Jahveism, 313; their peculiar prophetic phraseology, 314

Janus, connected with navigation, 102; has one bearded and one smooth face, 137

Japanese Myths of Civilisation, 207

Japheth. See _Jepheth_

Jawbone, used by Samson. See _Ass’s Jawbone_

Jelâl al-Dîn al-Suyûtî, his Kitâb al-awâʾil, 212

Jemshîd, Solar hero, author of Iranian Civilisation, 202–3; establishes castes, 203; is brought to ruin by Zohak, 203

Jepheth, a Solar figure, 132

Jephthah, myth of his killing his daughter, 96–7; his name mythical, its meaning, 97, 104

Joktan, denotes the Sedentary people, 54

Jonah, features of the Solar myth attached to him, 102

Joseph (the Rain), born of Rachel (the Cloud), 166, 175; his contest with Zalîchah, 168; with his brothers the Possessors of arrows, i.e. the Sun’s rays, 168–9; his bow is the Rainbow, 169–70; his story was worked out by the Northerns in his favour against the Southerns with their Judah, 285–6; taken by the Northerns as their hero and ancestor at the separation, 278

Jubal, Solar hero, inventor of music, 130

Judah, his connexion with Tamar, a Solar legend, of Sun and Fruit, 180–2; an ethnographical name, 175, 179–83

Judges (Shôpheṭîm), Hebrew, legends of, suffered no theocratic transformation, 287–8; were preserved mainly in the Northern kingdom, 289

Judges, Phenician magistrates (Suffetes), 242–5

Ḳâbil and Hâbil, Arabic for Cain and Abel, 347–9

Kâfir, ‘Infidel,’ its original meaning, 193

Kalypso and Kalyke, the ‘Covering Night,’ 192

Kenite origin of name Jahveh asserted by Tiele, 293

Khitem dynasty adopted Chinese civilisation, 236

Kiyyûn (Chiun), the star, worship of, by the Hebrews, 220

Kuhn’s _Herabkunft des Feuers_ reviewed by Steinthal, 363

Kulyatu, Solar hero of the Voguls and author of Civilisation, 207

Kutub al-awâʾil, ‘Libri Principiorum,’ 212

Ḳuzaḥ, Semitic (Arabic) Cloud-god, 73–4, 423

Lamb, white (a Cloud), adored by the Arabs, 223

Lamech. See _Lemech_

Laughter, words denoting, originally meant to ‘shine bright,’ 93; of the morning or the sun and the stars, 94–6

Leah, the ‘Weary,’ is the Night when the sun is weary, 162

Legends, Hebrew, affected by the political separation of North and South, 277–89

Lemech (Lamech), Solar hero, kills his son, 129

Lengthened forms of words have greater intensity of meaning than simple, according to the Agâdâ, 340

Lenormant claims Mythology for the Semites, 11

Levi, ‘Serpent,’ i.e. Rain, 183–7

Leviathan (livyâthân), ‘Serpent,’ either Lightning or Rain, 184–6; Storm-Dragon, 423, 425

Levites oppose the Solar worship of the Golden Bull, 226

Leviticus, Book of, expresses the compromise between Priests and Prophets, with a leaning towards the Priests, 308

Life, treated in mythology as identical with fire, 367, 371

Lightning, identified with a bird—eagle, hawk, or woodpecker, 366; which again might be transformed into a tree—rowan, ash, 366–7

Lightning-Bird represents both Fire and Man, 366, 368, 384–6, 389

Lion, Semitic symbol of Summer-heat, 396–7

Livyâthân. See _Leviathan_

Localisation of myths, 278–85

Loḳmân, identified with Balaam, 33, 34 _note_ 100

Longevity, characteristic of Solar heroes, 356; and therefore of Noah to the Arabs and Ethiopians, 356–7

Lot, ‘Night,’ and his daughters, a Solar myth, 189–95

Lot’s daughters denote the Glow of morning or evening, 194; their names, 194–5; they are made mothers of Moab and Ammon, 254

Love, especially incest, common in mythology, 187

Malachi, expresses the compromise between Priests and Prophets, 308

Mama Oello and Manco Copac, sons of the Sun, teachers of civilisation in Peru, 208

Manchu dynasty adopted Chinese civilisation, 236

Manco Copac and Mama Oello, sons of the Sun, teachers of civilisation in Peru, 208

Manna reminds us of the Nectar and Mead of the gods, 429

Mary, the Virgin, succeeds in Christian times to the functions of Freyja, Holda and Bertha, 431–2, 443

Mâtariśvan brings back Agni or fire to men, 369; is identical with Prometheus, 370–3

Meʿônenîm and menachashîm, 227

Mexican Solar and Lunar Chronology, 65

Milcah is the Moon, 158

Milk and honey, characteristic of a Solar land, 28–9

Moḥammed approved the Nomadic life of shepherds, 81

Mohammedans, how they transformed foreign legends, 354–6

Monotheism favourable to the growth of science, according to Lange and Comte, against Renan, 6–7; exclusive, and prompted by the Hebrew National spirit, 269; supposed to be primeval and to have preceded Polytheism—an untenable proposition, 261, 421; supposed to have been given by Divine revelation—untenable, 420

Monotheistic ‘Instinct,’ refuted by the example of the Semites, 260

Moon, worship of, earlier than Sun-worship, 71–6; three phases, 204–6; turns red (châphar) through shame, 351–2

Moon-goddess, her names, 158–60

Moorish architecture derived from life in the Desert, 85

Mormons speak of God as the great ‘President,’ 266

Moses, in the myth, resembles Prometheus, 23, 391–2; is like a Sun-god in general, 428–9; has horns, denoting a nimbus of rays, 179; is put in the water in a chest when an infant like Perseus, etc., 428; kills an Egyptian and flies, like a Solar hero, 429; stretches his hand with the staff over the sea (originally the sea of Clouds) and divides it, 429; his grave, 281–2

Motion, psychological term, 375

Müller, J.G., of Basle, thinks the Hebrews originally spoke a distinct language, and afterwards adopted that of Canaan, 239–40

Music invented by Solar heroes, 130

Muyscas of Bogotà, their Myth of Civilisation, 204–5

Myth, its beginning and its end, 50; prior to Religion, 51

Mythical names not used as human names, 229

Mythological faith and worship still live as superstition etc., 364

Mythology, precursor of Religion, not itself religion, 5; common to all mankind, 10; begins with perception and description of physical phenomena, 39; is transformed into allegory when the original meaning of the names is forgotten, 39; turns into Religion, 218 _et seqq._; and must produce Polytheism, 262; denied by Bunsen to the Hebrews, 12–3

Myths represent the daily phenomena of nature, 14; outlive the stage of Civilisation which produced them, 77 _et seqq._; are interpreted in a theocratic sense, of pious servants of God, 273; do not interest the Prophets, 309–10; are converted from a polytheistic to a monotheistic form, 420

Names of persons preserve myths, 24–5

Naphtali, ‘with plaited locks,’ denotes the Dawn, 178–9; grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), at Kafarmandâ, 280

National sentiment transforms Myths, 253

National spirit promoted an exclusive monotheism among the Hebrews, 269–72

Nationalisation of Hebrew Myths, 257

Nations, table of (in Gen. X.), revised at Babylon, 329–30

Naziritism, 410–14

Nehushtan, the (brazen?) Serpent, 184; adored, 226

New Druids, 252

Night, loved by Nomads, 51–7; used by them in reckoning time and distances, 61–3; precedes Day in the Nomad’s chronology, 62; is blind, or has lost an eye, 110; has wings to _cover_, 117; is called a ‘Coverer’ and has a black covering, 190–4; is called Black, 146, and compared to ink, 148, and to a ‘Sudûs’ (a greenish garment), 149–50

Night-sky and rain worshiped by the Arabs, 219–21

Nimrod, the ‘Hunter,’ i.e. the Sun, 31–2, 135–6

Nimrûd, Arabic story of, identical with that of Oedipus, 188–9

Ninka-Si, Accadian horned goddess, Solar, 179

Noah, inventor of Agricultural implements, a figure of the Sun at noon, 130–1; second progenitor of the human race, 210; why he is made the hero of the Deluge-story, 322; noted among the Arabs and Ethiopians for longevity, 356–7

Nomads love Night and Rain, 54–7, 60; reckon distances and time by nights, 61–3; have no history, 231

Normans adopted French language and transplanted it to England, 236

North and South separated into two kingdoms, 275–7; effect of separation on national legends, 277–89

Oannes, the Sun, in the Assyrian and Babylonian mythology, Hero of Civilisation, 214–5, 224

Oedipus, Solar hero, his story, 187

Olave, Saint, succeeds to the office of Thor in pursuing and destroying giants, 431

ʿOmar, Chalif, approves of the Bedâwî, 82

Opener, frequent designation of the Sun, 97–8

Origins, legends of, 211–3

Orion, 426–7, 446

Orpheus, son of the Sun, author of Civilisation, 208

Osterhase (Easter Hare) indicates the swiftness of the goddess Ostara, the Sun, 118

Participle passive used for active in Hebrew, 350–1

Patriarchal stories, sources for discovery of Mythology, 19

Patriarchs, their names mythical, referring to phenomena of Nature, 18; are made types of Elohistic piety, 274; years and cycles of years in their history, elaborated at Babylon, 329

Perez and Zerah (Pharez and Zarah), Solar figures, 183

Perizzites, their name denotes the ‘Wanderers,’ 53

Persian antagonism to the Arabs gives a tone to legends in the Shâhnâmeh, 258

Persian (Iranian) theological ideas influence the Hebrews in and after the Captivity, 326–9

Persians, false genealogies invented by or for them, 357–8

Pharez. See _Perez_

Phenicians, their civilisation prevailed for long in Africa, but yielded to the Arabian, 237; their influence on the tribes of Canaan and the Hebrews, 235, 240

Phenix, mythical designation of the Sun, 344

Philo Herennius, his report on Sanchuniathon, 215–7

Phlegyans, identical with Bhṛgu-s, 373

Phoroneus, at Argos, brought fire like Prometheus, 368; was originally epithet of the Lightning-bird, 385

Phut [Pûṭ] denotes the ‘Runners,’ 53

Picus, ‘Woodpecker,’ a Lightning-bird, 368; is the first man, 389

Pillar of Cloud, belongs to the worship of the Night-star, 222–3

Pleiades, 426

Poetry of the Arabs always conveys the Scenery of the Desert, 84–5

Polytheism and Monotheism, successive stages of religious thought, 5

Polytheism results from Mythology and necessarily precedes Monotheism, 262; tends, through a unifying process, to Monotheism, 263; shows a monotheistic tendency when one god is supreme over others, 264; mythical, in Israel, exhibited in the Prophets and Poets, 421–30

Pools of the Sun, in which his heat is cooled, 340–1

Pramantha, the boring-stick to produce fire, 370, 387; Moses’ staff the same, 391, 428

Pramati, son of Ćyavana, son of Bhṛgu, identical with Prometheus, 391

Prometheus, inventor of Navigation, 103; his name, corresponding to Sans. _Prâmâthyu-s_, from _pramantha_ ‘boring-stick,’ 370; connexion of the name with μανθάνω, 374–5; identical in function with Mâtariśvan, 371; a Titan (enemy of the gods) and yet benefactor of men, 389–91; created man, 389

Prometheus, legend of, Steinthal’s Essay on, 363–92

Proper names in Mythology originally appellative, 37–8

Prophets introduced the real _idea_ of Jahveh, 294–308; do not care for Myths, 309–10, nor the Patriarchal history and Moses, 310–1

Psychological Terminology, 375–6

Psychology, a necessary factor of Mythology, 35–7

Pyrrha, the ‘Red,’ mother of mankind, 210

Quails, connected with Apollon and Diana, as well as with Moses, 429

Rachel, the ‘Sheep,’ i.e. the Cloud, 162–5; weeps for her children, i.e. pours down Rain, 165; bears Joseph, the ‘Rain,’ 166, 175; her grave, 283

Rahabh, the Storm-Dragon, 422–6; denotes Egypt, 423

Rain with the dark rainy sky loved by Nomads, 54–7; the child of the Cloud or the Sky, 166–7; called a Serpent, 185–6; worshiped by the Nomadic Hebrews, 227; attributed by the Mohammedans to the Stars, 221

Rainbow is called Joseph’s Bow, 169–70

Red, for a light colour in general, 141; the colour of Day, 146

Reduplicated forms have, according to the Agâdâ, a greater intensity of meaning than unreduplicated, 340

Religion, developed out of Mythology, 218 _et seqq._; takes its form partly from _political_ analogies, 264–8

Religion, founders of, born from Virgins, 208–9

Renan says the Semites have no Mythology, 4; is mistaken in asserting that Arabic absorbs only dialects related to itself, 237–9

Reuben, the ‘Twilight,’ takes to himself Bilhah, a Solar heroine, 171–3; his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition), at Jahrân, 280

Riddle proposed by Samson, 394–7

Roman Calendar, 65–6

Rowan, a Lightning-tree, 366–7

Sabbath, established on a new basis by the story of Creation, 324

Sacrifice, human, condemned by Jahveism in the rewritten story of the sacrifice of Isaac, 312

Ṣafrâ, (in Aramaic), ‘Dawn,’ its etymology, 150

Sage (German), 393 _note_

Samson, a Sun-god, 21–2, 407–10; his name Shimshôn from Shemesh, ‘Sun,’ 408; like other Sun-gods, flies after victory, 399, and is pernicious to the Philistines, destroying their corn by foxes, 398, and is given to sexual pleasure, 404; is attacked by a lion, 394, and kills him, 398; solution, 396–9; his heroism with the ass’s jawbone, 400; was said, in a myth now lost, to have gone down to the netherworld, 404; his death, 406, 446; is said in the narrative to be a Nazirite, but this is a late addition to the story, 413; motive for it, 445; compared with the other Judges, is seen to be mythical, 414–5, but is admirably described, 415–6

Samson, legend of, Steinthal’s Essay on, 392–446

Samuel, a typical prophet, 306; a Nazirite, 410–2

Sanchuniathon’s account of Phenician Mythology, 215–7

Sandan or Sandon, Assyrian and Lydian Sun-god, kills a lion, 396–7

Sarah, the ‘Princess of heaven,’ i.e. the Moon, 158

Scarabeus, worship of the, 343

Seraph, mythical name of a dragon, 197

Serpent (livyâthân and rahabh) denotes Lightning and Rain, 27–8; Rain, 224–6

Serpents crushed by Herakles, 184

Seth, grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), in the valley of Yahfûfâ, in Antilibanus, 280

Shamgar, Solar hero, another form of Samson, 429–30

Shechem, a name of the Morning, 25–6; converted into a prince of the Hivvites, 254

Shem, the ‘Lofty,’ denotes the Heaven, 132

Shôpheṭîm (Judges), Phenician magistrates, 242–5

Sinai, consecrated to Sin, the Moon, 160

Sinflut became Sündflut—psychological process, 441–2

Solar heroes found cities, 113, 127; remarkable for longevity, 356

Space the earliest category understood by man, 40–2

Stars worshiped by Nomadic Hebrews, 219–30

Steinthal, H., Essay on the original form of the legend of Prometheus, 363–92; on the legend of Samson, 392–446

Stork, brought fire and brings children to earth, 367

Sudûs (sundus), greenish, the colour of Night, 149–50

Sukkôth (Tabernacles), Feast of, connected with worship of Stars and Rain, 220–2

Sulphur, red, Arabic phrase for something impossible, 143

Sun, passes through the sea at night, 28, 99–104; loved by Agriculturists, 58, 60; called in Mythology the ‘Marching,’ ‘Running,’ 114–22; called the ‘Uncoverer,’ 194; regarded as an Eye, 106–10, as a Well, his light being the water, 345; as a Wheel, 381; represents Fire in heaven, and is the source of light and growth, 378; his rays described as a moisture, whether water, milk or wine, 345–7; his three phases, 204–6; his colour, 353–4, saffron, 151, grey, 153, white, 154–5; turns pale through shame, 351–2; synonyms of, become obsolete, 218; pools and whips for, 340; his sons are authors of Civilisation, 208

Sunset and Dawn expressed by the same words, 43

Tabernacles (Sukkôth), Feast of, connected with the worship of Stars and Rain, 220–2

Tâj al-Dîn b. Ḥammûyâ, al-Sarachshî, on ‘Origins,’ 212

Tamar, the ‘Fruit,’ her liaison with Judah, and with Amnon, 180–2

Tannîn, ‘Extended dragon,’ i.e. Rain, 423, 427; Crocodile, and Egypt, 424–5

Tent of heaven denotes the sky by night, 111

Theocracy, a league between Religious and National ideas, 273

Thor, converted in Christian times into St. Olave, 431

Thunder is a groaning or roaring of the clouds, 164–5

Time, a category not understood till after Space, and expressed in language by the same terms, 40–3

Tôrâ, formed of chuḳḳâ and dâbhâr conjoined, 315

Tribes, Hebrew, named earlier than Jacob’s sons, 176

Tubal-cain and Jabal, duplicates of Cain and Abel, 111–3, 130

Union, sexual, its significance in Mythology, 171–3

Uriah, grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), 280

Usurpers, other Gods besides Jahveh, according to Hartmann, 269–70

Vaivasuta, son of the Sun, Indian legislator, 208

Varuṇa and Οὔρανος the ‘Coverer,’ 190

Vedic myths so primitive as to explain themselves, 364

Virgins made to conceive by the Sun’s rays are the mothers of founders of legislation and religion, 208–9

Voguls, their Myth of Civilisation, 207

Vörösmarty and Horváth’s Hungarian Myths, 252

Vorstellung (_Idea_), 377

Wa-jeeg-e-wa-kon-ay, in an Ojibwa legend, repels evil spirits, 174

Wamasai people in East Africa identify God and Rain, 224

Waraḳ (in Ethiopic), ‘gold,’ and connected words, 144–6

Week, 65; of five days among the Chinese, Mongols, Azteks, and Mexicans, 66; of eight days in Old Calabar, 66

Well, an image of the Sun, its water being the rays, 345

Wheel, epithet of the Sun’s chariot, 210

Whips of the Sun, to drive him along his course, 341

White, light-coloured in general, 141; the colour of Day, 152–3

Wings assigned to the Sun and Dawn, 115–7

Wives, legitimate, in Mythology are homogeneous with their husbands, 158

Woodpecker (Picus), personification of Lightning, i.e. Fire, 366, and of Man, 368, 389

Years and cycles of years in Patriarchal history, elaborated at Babylon, 329

Yereḳ (in Hebrew), ‘Grass,’ its etymology, 145

Zalîchâ, the ‘Swift-marching,’ Solar heroine, her contest with Joseph (Rain), 168

Zarah. See _Zerah_

Zebulun, the ‘Round,’ the Setting Sun, 177–8

Zechariah expresses the compromise between Priests and Prophets, 308

Zerah and Perez (Zarah and Pharez), Solar figures, 183

Zeus has ram’s horns, 179

Zillah, the ‘Night,’ mother of Tubal-cain, 130

Zilpah, ‘Marching,’ 125-6

Zipporah, grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), 280

Zûzîm, a nomadic tribe, 53

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

------------------------------------------------------

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. LONDON, _March_ 1876.

GENERAL LIST OF WORKS

PUBLISHED BY

MESSRS. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

* * * * *

PAGE

ARTS, MANUFACTURES, &c 26

ASTRONOMY & METEOROLOGY 17

BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS 7

CHEMISTRY & PHYSIOLOGY 24

DICTIONARIES & other BOOKS of REFERENCE 15

FINE ARTS & ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS 25

HISTORY, POLITICS, HISTORICAL MEMOIRS, 1 &c.

INDEX 41 to 44

MENTAL & POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 8

MISCELLANEOUS & CRITICAL WORKS 12

NATURAL HISTORY & PHYSICAL SCIENCE 19

POETRY & the DRAMA 36

RELIGIOUS & MORAL WORKS 29

RURAL SPORTS, HORSE & CATTLE MANAGEMENT, 37 &c.

TRAVELS, VOYAGES, &c. 32

WORKS of FICTION 35

WORKS of UTILITY & GENERAL INFORMATION 39

HISTORY, POLITICS, HISTORICAL MEMOIRS, &c.

------------------

_The History of England from the Accession of James II._

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DICTIONARIES and OTHER BOOKS of REFERENCE.

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ASTRONOMY and METEOROLOGY.

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NATURAL HISTORY and PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

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CHEMISTRY and PHYSIOLOGY.

_Miller’s Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical._

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