CHAPTER I.

_ON HEBREW MYTHOLOGY._

§ 1. At the very foundation of the investigations to which this book is devoted, we find ourselves in opposition to a wide-spread assumption: that in regard to Mythology nations may be divided into two classes, Mythological and Unmythological, or in other words, those which have had a natural gift for creating Myths, and those whose intellectual capacity never sufficed for this end. It is therefore desirable to lay down clearly our position in regard to this assumption, before we advance to the proper subject of our studies.

The Myth is the result of a purely psychological operation, and is, together with language, the oldest act of the human mind. This has been shown conclusively by the modern school of mythologists who are also psychologists. Assuming then, what can scarcely be called in question, that the same psychological laws rule the intellectual activity of mankind without distinction of race, we cannot _a priori_ assume that the capacity for forming myths can be given or withheld according to ethnological categories. As there is only one physiology, and every race of mankind under the influence of certain conditions produces the same physiological functions in accordance with physiological laws, so it is also with the psychological functions, given the stimulus necessary to their production. And this stimulus acts upon mankind everywhere alike. For it is clearly proved that the Myth tells of the operations of nature, and is the mode of expressing the perception which man at the earliest stage of his intellectual life has of these operations and phenomena. These form the substance of the Myth. Consequently, wherever they act as attractions to the youthful human mind, the external conditions of the rise of Mythology are present. Not unjustly, therefore, it seems to me, has a recent psychologist spoken of the ‘Universal Presence and the Uniformity’ of myths.[42] Undoubtedly the direction of the myth will vary with the relation of natural phenomena to mankind; the myth will take one direction where man greets the sun as a friendly element, and another where the sun meets him as a hostile power; and in the rainless region the rain cannot act the same part in Mythology which it plays in the rainy parts of the earth. The manners and usages of men must also exercise a modifying influence on the subject and the direction of the Myth. As in the course of our further inquiries we shall recur to this point, I will here only refer to one example of the latter. It is well known that in the Aryan mythology, ‘the milking of cows’ is a frequently recurring expression for the shining of the sun, or as some say for the rain. In tribes which do not milk their cows, like some Negro peoples,[43] or the American natives, this mythical expression can of course not arise.

§ 2. There are two points of view, from which the Mythical faculty has been denied to certain sections of the human race—on the one side a _linguistic_, on the other an _ethnological_. As to the first, we must especially name Bleek, the distinguished investigator of the South African languages, who, in the introduction to his work on the Story of Reynard the Fox in South Africa, makes the remark that a mythological genius is peculiar to nations in whose languages a distinction of gender in nouns finds expression, whereas those whose languages possess no formal distinction of gender in nouns, have no proper mythology, but their religion stands on that original stage which is the starting-point of all human religion, namely that of the cultus of their ancestors.[44] It is obvious that this learned linguist’s distinction involves a confusion of Myth and Religion, which we shall find in the course of our subsequent investigations to be untenable. At present we will disregard this point, and only refer to the mythologies of the Finnish-Ugrian nations—peoples whose languages do not indicate any distinction of gender in their nouns. Or can it be said that the substance of the epos of Kalevala is not proper mythology? To be sure, in nations whose mind never evolved the category of grammatical gender in their languages, the myth will take such a direction as will give to the sexual idea, so charming a feature in the Aryan mythology, much less prominence. For the mode of conception which is conveyed by the distinction of ‘_die_ Sonne’ and ‘_der_ Mond,’ or ‘_hic_ sol’ and ‘_haec_ luna,’ cannot arise where this distinction is not made. But the figures of a mythology not only vary as to sex and genealogy, but act also; they are busy, they fight and kill, and the story of these actions and fights is quite independent of the gender-idea in language. Stories of them, consequently, which we call Myths, may exist even where the genius of language has opposed the distinction of gender.

§ 3. The second point of view, from which some have denied to a section of the human race the faculty and tendency to form myths, is _ethnological_. Either the Semites in general or the Hebrews specially fell a sacrifice to this view. The exclusion of the Semites from the domain of Mythology is announced most emphatically by the ingenious member of the French Academy, Ernest Renan, in the words, ‘Les Sémites n'ont jamais eu de mythologie.’[45] This arbitrary assertion is deduced from a scheme of race-psychology invented by Renan himself, which at the first glance seems so natural and sounds so plausible when described with all the elegance of style of which he is master, that it has become an incontestable scientific dogma to a large proportion of the professional world—for even the territory of science is sometimes dominated by mere dogmas—and is treated by learned and cultivated people not specially engaged in this study as an actual axiom in the consideration of race-peculiarities.[46] The foundation of this scheme is the idea that in their views of the world, the Aryans start from multiplicity, the Semites from unity; and not only in their conception of the world, but also in politics and art. On intellectual ground, therefore, the former create mythology, polytheism, science, which is only possible through discursive observation of natural phenomena; the latter create monotheism, (‘the desert is monotheistic,’ says Renan), and have therefore neither mythology nor science. ‘If it is difficult,’ justly observes Waitz, ‘to estimate the capability of single individuals well known to us, it is a far more dubious task to gauge the intellectual gifts of whole nations and races. It seems scarcely possible to find available standards for the purpose, and consequently the judgment is almost always found to be very much founded on personal impressions. The various nations stand at various times on very different stages of development, and if only actual performances permit a safe induction as to the measure of existing capabilities, then this measure itself seems not to remain the same in the same nation through the course of time, but to vary within very wide limits, especially if we are to assume in all cases that a state of original savageness preceded civilisation.’[47] In fact, the words of this cautious psychologist apply admirably to Renan’s scheme of race-psychology; for history is just what that scheme disregards. He does not observe that Polytheism and Monotheism are two stages of development in the history of religious thought, and that the latter does not spring up spontaneously,[48] without being preceded by the former stage, and that Polytheism itself is preceded by a preliminary stage, that of the mythological view of the world, which is in itself not yet a religion, but prepares the way for the rise of religion.

To form some idea of the arbitrariness of schemes founded upon some universal characteristics, we have only to glance over the literature which sprang up as soon as Renan’s dictum was uttered, either to refute it, or to work his hypothesis still further—a regular host of dissertations fighting on this side or on that.[49] On reading these, we see clearly how worthless such clever fancies are, that enable one to embrace with a stroke of the pen a domain which geographically fills more than half of the inhabited world, and chronologically stretches from the highest antiquity down to the most recent time. For even Renan’s antagonists have fallen into his radical error: they have taken one-sided schemes and characteristics, only _different_ ones from Renan’s. How passive and elastic these schemes are, shall be shown by an example of some importance, which will convince us that the inferences drawn from ethnological characteristics are never anything higher than arbitrary sleight-of-hand, which any investigator can manipulate to his own purpose. To this end we will place side by side the inferences which Renan has tacked on to his hypothesis, and a talented German’s conclusions, which also essentially take Renan’s basis as the correct starting-point. We speak of Lange, who also starts from the principle that the Semites grasp natural phenomena in combination, the Aryans in multiplicity, and that therefore the former naturally incline towards Monotheism, and the latter towards Polytheism. But let us see to what windings and deductions this dogma leads on both sides. We hear Renan say: ‘Or la conception de la multiplicité dans l’univers, c’est le polythéisme chez les peuples enfants; c’est la science chez les peuples arrivés à l’âge mûr.’[50] Quite the contrary is affirmed by the German historian of Materialism, who says: ‘When the heathen sees gods everywhere, and has accustomed himself to regard every separate operation of nature as the domain of a special demonic action, he throws in the way of a materialistic explanation difficulties a thousandfold, like the offices in the Divine household.... But Monotheism here stands in a very different relation to science.’ ‘If a uniform mode of work on a large scale is attributed to the one God, the mutual connexion of things in their origin and action becomes not only a possible, but even a necessary consequence of the assumption. For if I saw a thousand and again a thousand wheels in motion, and believed them to be all driven by one agent, then I should have to conclude that it was a piece of machinery, the minutest portion of which had its movement absolutely determined by the plan of the whole.’ [51] ‘The fact that Islâm is the religion in which that advancement of the study of nature, which we attribute to the monotheistic principle, shows itself most clearly, is connected with the peculiar talents of the Arabs, ... but also undoubtedly with the circumstance that Mohammed’s monotheism was the severest of all.’[52] Auguste Comte also draws the same inferences from the tendency of Monotheism to develop a scientific conception of the world, and makes Monotheism and Scientific treatment exert a reciprocal influence on each other.[53] To which of these opposite deductions from the same premisses shall we hold? ‘Which is right?’ every educated man will ask, and immediately infer the inadequacy of such general characterisations, and the wide room thereby opened to arbitrariness and error, in case it should be attempted to erect upon them a history of civilisation or an ethnology.

Now this foundation is exactly that on which Renan’s assumption of the absence of mythology from the Semites rests—an assumption which can by no means be admitted, first, because it is unhistorical; and secondly, because it would necessarily follow from it that race-distinctions differentiate the psychological bases of intellectual activity. ‘The Semites cannot form a myth,’ is a proposition the possibility of which could be allowed only if such an assertion as ‘This or that race has no digestive power, or no generative power,’ could be treated otherwise than as an _a priori_ absurdity. But it is even more remarkable that Renan, notwithstanding his conviction of the ‘uniform psychological constitution of the human race,’ in which he finds the justification of a common story of the Deluge springing up everywhere without borrowing,[54] and although he finds the gaps in the chronology of the antediluvian period of the Biblical history filled up, ‘par des noms d’anciens héros, et peut-être de divinités qu'on retrouve chez les autres peuples sémitiques,’[55] still speaks of the possibility, indeed of the necessity, that the Semitic race should be destitute of myths.

Renan’s hypothesis had to encounter many a hard battle soon after its publication. The theologians were highly pleased at what was said about the monotheistic tendency of Semitism, but thought it blasphemy for Renan to find in Monotheism _le minimum de religion_ and in Polytheism a higher and more civilised stage of religion. And philologists, historians and philosophers assailed the foundations of Renan’s pile. Steinthal subjects the notion introduced by Renan, of a monotheistic _instinct_, to acute psychological criticism. Max Müller does the same, and points to the history of the Hebrews and the other Semites, to resolve the dreams of Semitic Monotheism into their nullity. Abraham Geiger and Salomon Munk (Renan’s successor in the chair of the _Collége de France_) wish to limit to the Hebrew nation the assertion of Semitic Monotheism. Yet what is said about Mythology is not much objected to by any of these critics (with the exception of Steinthal). Indeed, one of the pioneers of modern Comparative Mythology, while combating the monotheistic instinct, takes up a position on the mythological question not very far from Renan’s own: ‘What is peculiar to the Aryan race is their mythological phraseology, superadded to their polytheism; what is peculiar to the Semitic race is their belief in a national god—in a god chosen by his people, as his people had been chosen by him.’[56]

Mythological science has at the present day ceased to hold fast to the divisions of race in relation to the formation of myths. At least it has acted so in relation to that class of nations which, though not exhibiting a single race or several closely connected races, has (_faute de mieux_) been termed the _Turanian_—a purely negative designation, which only asserts its members to be neither Semites nor Aryans. Max Müller himself wishes to see the Turanian mythology investigated by the same method which is employed in the Aryan; and he is not shaken by the result, which exhibits a striking identity between Aryan and Turanian myths. He is not shaken even by consideration of the psychological force, which must be taken into account in the first instance in the criticism and valuation of myths. ‘If people cannot bring themselves to believe in solar and celestial myths among the Hindûs and Greeks,’ says this leading investigator, ‘let them study the folk-lore of the _Semitic_ and Turanian races. I know there is, on the part of some of our most distinguished scholars, the same objection against comparing Aryan to non-Aryan myths, as there is against any attempt to explain the features of Sanskrit or Greek by a reference to Finnish or Bask. In one sense that objection is well founded, for nothing would create greater confusion than to ignore the genealogical principle as the only safe one in a scientific classification of languages, of myths, and even of customs. We must first classify our myths and legends, as we classify our languages and dialects.... But there is in a comparative study of languages and myths not only a philological, but also a philosophical and more particularly a psychological interest, and though even in this more general study of mankind the frontiers of language and race ought never to disappear, yet they can no longer be allowed to narrow or intercept our view.’[57] Thus Müller also lays especial stress upon the psychological point of view, and, whatever he concedes to race-distinctions, still takes for granted the universality of the formation of myths as a psychological postulate. He exhibits, however, the application of his principle to the Turanian only in concrete examples. The Semitic, which, as we saw above, cannot be excluded in reference to the universality of the formation of myths, is left out altogether. Yet Müller appears in respect of the Semitic to have passed beyond the position on which he stood in 1860, when writing his essay ‘Semitic Monotheism.’[58] Advancing in the footsteps of the master, a recent American mythologist, John Fiske, has drawn the Turanian into the domain of comparative mythology, and worked out a portion of the American stories collected by Brinton,[59] according to the laws of the new method,[60] while the German Schirren, and also Gerland less completely, had already subjected the Polynesian myths to a similar treatment.[61]

This circumstance, that the stories of the so-called Turanian humanity lend themselves to the comparative method of investigation quite as easily as the legendary treasure of the Aryan nations, is a proof how common to all mankind is the mythological capacity, how false it is to follow ethnological categories and assign it to one race and deny it to another; and on the other hand, how the subject-matter, the perception of which forms the ground-work of the oldest mythology, is everywhere the same—the phenomena of nature and the contests of alternating elements. For very many and various races, incapable as yet of linguistic classification, endowed with the most diverse physical constitutions, inhabiting the most differing climates from the highest northern to the furthest southern latitudes, and speaking languages the most incongruous, have taken refuge in the vast unlimited house of Turanism, until legitimate parents are found for them. Turanism is therefore the best test of the controverted universality of mythological capacity. There is then no tenable reason why, for the sake of fair-sounding but meaningless distinctions, we should introduce the Semites into history with the loss of a nose, as it were, and interpret the history of the intellectual development of that race by a principle which essentially proclaims that the Semites were not born into life as infants, and never saw the sunlight till they were men, or even old men.

§ 4. Such reflections may have determined the French Assyriologist François Lenormant quite recently, to claim mythology for the Semitic race also; although in so doing he does not mention the Hebrews at all.[62] For, notwithstanding the alluring mythological subject-matter deposited in the literature of its traditions, the Hebrew nation has always been a stepchild of mythological inquiry, and still awaits an investigator to do full justice to it. It is easy to be understood that a mistaken religious interest, which identified itself with the Biblical literature and warned off mythological inquiry with an energetic _Noli me tangere_, sharpened, it may be, with a dose of canonical or uncanonical excommunication, blockaded the passage of investigation on this path. I call it a _mistaken_ interest, because the true interests of religion are advanced, not imperilled, by the results of science. Disregarding men of the calibre of Nork and a few other inferior disciples of the school of Creuzer, we can affirm that, with the exception of a few essays, even the freest and most earnest interpreters of the Bible have examined, and do still examine, the Biblical books only as products of literature, bringing to light valuable results as to the times and tendencies of the original composition and subsequent editing of the several parts of the Canon. But on the origin and significance of the persons themselves who figure in the Biblical stories, even the freest interpreters are silent, as if the Hebrews were a people quite apart, and not to be measured by the measure of History and Psychology.

Even those who are willing to know something of Semitic myths in general resist the assumption of Hebrew myths. No one has defined his position on this point so unambiguously as Baron Bunsen, who has thought so much and so profoundly on religious matters. It is really extraordinary that this immortal man, who exerted so stimulating an influence on the studies of his young friend Max Müller, and who welcomed the latter’s pioneer-essay ‘Comparative Mythology’ with ‘especial pleasure’ at the ‘pure popular poetry of the feeling for nature,’ exhibited so little comprehension of the aims of the new direction given to mythological studies by Müller. His view of the connexion of the Aryan mass of mythology is consequently very confused. This is especially to be regretted, because the displacement of the true point of view in mythical speculation, and the continual concessions to Creuzer and Schelling, hindered him from making permanently useful the philosophical labour expended on the understanding of the Egyptian theology. Bunsen did not separate Religion from Myths, and consequently he sees what he calls Consciousness of a God in a genealogised and systematised Mythology. It is therefore not surprising that he advanced no further than his predecessors in relation to the Hebrew myths. He speaks of the ‘spirit of the Jewish people, historically penetrated through and through with aversion to mythology,’[63] and concentrates his thoughts on this theme in the sixth, seventh, and eighth of the theses in which he exhibits the relation of the Egyptian mythology to the Asiatic. According to these, ‘the Bible has no Mythology; it is the grand, momentous, and fortunate self-denial of Judaism to possess none.’ As if a myth—which Bunsen himself had called ‘_pure_ popular poetry of the feeling for nature’—were an abomination, a defilement of the human mind, a sinful act voluntarily performed, which the Elect can _deny themselves_! On the other hand, ‘the national sentiment mirrored in Abraham, Moses, and the primeval history generally from the Creation to the Deluge, and the expression of it, are rooted in the mythological life of the East in the earliest times,’ and ‘in the long period from Joseph to Moses, there have been interwoven with the life and actions of this greatest and most influential of all the men of the first age [Abraham] and the history of his son and grandson, many ancient traditions from the mythology of those tribes from whose savage natural life the Hebrews were extracted, to their own good and that of mankind and for higher ends.’[64] According to this there are Myths belonging to the Hebrews, but not Hebrew Myths—only borrowed ones, obtained from ‘Primeval Asia.’

I have exhibited Bunsen’s position at some length, because, with all his advanced ideas on the essence and significance of Mythology, he still to this day dominates the minds of those who, while admitting the possibility of Semitic Mythology, are up in arms against the existence of Hebrew myths.

§ 5. Nevertheless, I hope it is clear from the above that Hebrew mythology is _a priori_ possible. The following chapters will give occasion to prove in what this existence consists. It will then appear that the Hebrew myths, necessarily owing their existence to the same psychological operation as the Aryan or the so-called Turanian, must consequently have the same original signification as these. Hence the figures of Hebrew mythology denote the very natural phenomena whose appellations lie before us in those figures’ names. These names, however, are _not symbolic_,[65] but are antiquated appellatives of the natural phenomena denoted by them, just as the words, _Sun_, _Moon_, _Rain_, &c. This must be distinctly proclaimed, as some who misunderstand the modern method of Mythology pervert it in a false and antiquated way by the introduction of symbolism.

We must also beware of confounding the original Myth with Religion or, still worse, with the Consciousness of God. This confusion is the source of most of the erroneous estimates and notions of Mythology, which even the latest methods of investigating myths has not entirely removed. The very earliest activity of the human intellect can only work upon what falls immediately under the cognisance of the senses, and upon what through its frequency and the regularity of its return prompts men most readily to speech. Such things are the daily natural phenomena, the change of light and darkness, of rain and sunshine, and all that accompanies these changes. What primitive man spoke on these things, is the Myth. It is psychologically impossible that the earliest activity of the human mind should have been anything else but this. We cannot speak of a consciousness of God, a _sensus numinis_, as existing in the earliest Mythological period. Not till later, when some process in the history of language gives the ancient myths a new direction, do they turn into either History or Religion. The latter always arises out of the materials of Mythology, and then finds its historical task to be to work itself upwards into independence. Then, while the mythology out of which it sprang is growing less and less intelligible, and therefore also less and less expressive, Religion must in the progress of its development sever its connexion with Mythology, and unite itself with the scientific consciousness, which now occupies the place of the mythological.

How Mythology becomes Religion is shown most clearly by _Dualism_. Nothing can be less correct than the belief that the dualistic system of religion had from its very origin an ethical meaning. This, as well as the limitation of Dualism to Irân and Babylon,[66] is refuted by the frequent occurrence of the dualistic conception of the world among the most various savage peoples.[67] The ethical significance of Dualism is decidedly secondary; it is the form of development of the main theme of all mythology, the relation of light to darkness, proper to a higher stage of culture. Many mythological fancies, and especially the Sun’s voyage by ship in the nether world, became religious eschatological ideas when the mythical meaning itself was lost from the mind, and gave rise to new ideas of life in the nether world, resurrection, ascent to heaven, &c.; this was first established in reference to the old Egyptian mythology.[68] So also Dualism as it appears in Irân is a myth that has taken an ethical sense. This is best seen in the facts that the northern Algonquins, with whom Dualism is almost as fixed a principle as in Irân, call the good and evil principles respectively Sun and Moon, and that among the Hurons the Evil principle is the grand-mother of the Good:[69] the Night is the mother or grand-mother, or, in general, the ancestress of the Day. Here religious dualism has not quite put off the character of its origin in Mythology. On the other hand, the Iranic system at a very early age (that of the Avesta) elevated Dualism into the region of pure morals, and yet at a later (the epic period) formed out of the original myth the localised story of the war of Zohak against Ferîdûn.[70]

That Dualism as a religious conception is a further development of the myth, and not first excited by the moral problem of the strife of the good against the evil, becomes evident also from the consideration of a peculiar form of dualistic religion which we find in many Semitic nations. We here frequently find a deity regarded as male, who has a corresponding female to represent, as it were, the reverse side of the same natural force, and then the two forces unite to produce a natural phenomenon. So, for instance, Sun and Earth, Baal and Mylitta, the factors of procreation. This likewise is a dualistic tendency, in which however the two deities are not represented as mutually hostile. We are justified in placing this phenomenon in the chapter on Dualism, because two such deities in the course of history are often joined together into one.[71] Now this side of dualistic religion can be traced back only to Mythology as its source and point of departure. The Hebrew myth of Judah and Tamar, which we shall consider further on (Chap. V., § 14), exhibits a mythical prototype of such dualistic views of religion.

Footnote 1:

Especially Max Müller’s essay on _Comparative Mythology_ (_Chips_ etc., II. 1), and the ninth in the second series of his _Lectures on the Science of Language_; and Cox’s introductions to his _Manual of Mythology_, _Tales of the Gods and Heroes_, and _Tales of Thebes and Argos_.

Footnote 2:

Both in England and in France the attempt has been made with much taste to introduce the results of comparative mythology in the instruction of youth; in England by Rev. G.W. Cox in his _Tales of the Gods and Heroes_, _Tales of Thebes and Argos_, _Tales from Greek Mythology_, _Manual of Mythology in the form of question and answer_, 1867, and _Tales of Ancient Greece_, 1870, the last two of which have just been translated into Hungarian, and published by the Franklin Society; in France by Baudry and Delerot (Paris 1872). Still more recently the results of comparative mythology have also been summarised in two excellent books for children by Edward Clodd, _The Childhood of the World: a simple account of Man in Early Times_, 1873, and _The Childhood of Religion; embracing a simple account of the birth and growth of Myths and Legends_, 1875.

Footnote 3:

This psychological uniformity of all races of men is independent of the question of the monogenetic or polygenetic origin of races. The psychological uniformity of different races is especially conspicuous when we observe and compare individuals of the separate races in infancy, when the distinctions produced by history, education, instruction, etc., are not yet present (see Frohschammer, _Das Christenthum und die moderne Naturwissenschaft_, Vienna 1868, p. 208.) When we are considering the growth of mankind in general, the stage when myths are created corresponds to the infancy of the individual.

Footnote 4:

_Das Beständige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer Veränderlichkeit_, Berlin 1868, p. 78.

Footnote 5:

François Lenormant, _Essai sur la Propagation de l’Alphabet phénicien dans l’ancien monde_, Vol. I. (2nd ed., Paris 1875), p. 17.

Footnote 6:

Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I. 6.

Footnote 7:

On these two see Pfleiderer, _Die Religion, ihr Wesen und ihre Geschichte_, II. 8.

Footnote 8:

The title is 'Conférence de la Fable avec l’Histoire sainte, où l’on voit que les grandes fables, le culte et les mystères du paganisme ne sont que des copies altérées des histoires, des usages et des traditions des Hébreux.'

Footnote 9:

Edward Wilton in the _Journal of Sacred Literature_, 1849, II. 374 _et seq._

Footnote 10:

Dr. Vollmer’s _Wörterbuch der Mythologie aller Völker_, newly revised by Dr. W. Binder, with an Introduction to Mythological Science by Dr. Johannes Minckwitz, 3rd ed., Stuttgart 1874.

Footnote 11:

See the Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_, 1875, no. 169, p. 2657.

Footnote 12:

_Primitive Culture_, I. 22.

Footnote 13:

See Virchow in the _Monatsbericht der königl. preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften_, January 1875, p. 11.

Footnote 14:

_Origin of Civilisation_, 3rd ed., p. 330, quoting Sibree’s _Madagascar and its People_, p. 396.

Footnote 15:

_Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie_, pp. 62, 63. This is the idea to which Max Müller refers in noticing the lectures of the philosopher of Berlin, in his _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 145.

Footnote 16:

See his _Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Alterthum, vorzugsweise zur Ethik und Religion der Griechen_, second edition, Leipzig 1875, especially p. 272 _et seq._

Footnote 17:

Flach, _Das System der Hesiod. Kosmogonie_, Leipzig 1874; see _Literar. Centralblatt_, 1875, no. 7.

Footnote 18:

_Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries_, p. 32, note 2.

Footnote 19:

_The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 302.

Footnote 20:

Sayce in the _Academy_, 1875, p. 586.

Footnote 21:

The _Academy_, 1875, no. 184, p. 496. The promoters of the _Theological Translation Fund_, by whom Kuenen’s _Religion of Israel_ was published, Dr. J. Muir of Edinburgh, who wrote some letters to the _Scotsman_ on the Dutch Theology, and to a certain extent Bishop Colenso, besides many others who have not avowed their views so publicly, indicate the progress of opinion in England.—TR.

Footnote 22:

See _Literar. Centralblatt_, 1875, no. 49, p. 157.

Footnote 23:

_Biblische Mythologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments_, 2 vols., Stuttgart 1842; _Etymologisch-symbolisch-mythologisches Realwörterbuch für Bibelforscher, Archäologen und bildende Künstler_, 4 vols., Stuttgart 1843–5.

Footnote 24:

I have not succeeded in obtaining a sight of Schwenk’s _Mythologie der Semiten_, published in 1849; but Bunsen’s condemnation of it in _Egypt’s Place in Universal History_, IV. p. 363, made me less anxious to get it.

Footnote 25:

_Naturgeschichte der Sage. Rückführung aller religiösen Ideen, Sagen, Systeme auf ihren gemeinsamen Stammbaum und ihre letzte Wurzel_, 2 vols., Munich 1864–5.

Footnote 26:

In Vol. II. of his _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, translated and appended to this volume.

Footnote 27:

_Der Semitismus_, in _Zeitsch. für Völkerpsychologie etc._, 1875, VIII. 339–340.

Footnote 28:

It would be unfair not to mention the Dutch Professor Tiele as a worker on this field. In his _Vergelijkende Geschiedenis der oude godsdiensten_, Vol. I.: _De egyptische en mesopotamische godsdiensten_ (Amsterdam 1872) he has occasionally inserted explanations of Hebrew myths, to which I have referred at the proper places.

Footnote 29:

II. 421 _et seq._; see his _Rivista Europea_, year VI. II. 587. Cf. his review of the German edition of this work in the _Bollettino italiano degli studj orientali_, 1876, I. 169–172.

Footnote 30:

In reference to this I may refer to the eloquent expressions of Steinthal in his lecture _Mythos und Religion_, p. 28 (in Virchow and Holtzendorff’s _Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge_, Bd. V. Heft 97).

Footnote 31:

_Mythologie der Ebräer in ihrem Zusammenhange mit den Mythologien der Indogermanen und der Ægypter._ Nordhausen 1876.

Footnote 32:

_Ausland_, 1874, p. 961 _et seq._, 1001 _et seq._

Footnote 33:

The above-named work was published immediately after the conclusion of this Introduction.

Footnote 34:

_Die Erzväter der Menschheit: ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung einer hebräischen Alterthumswissenschaft._ Leipzig, Fues 1875.

Footnote 35:

Ibn Yaʿîsh’s Commentary on the Mufaṣṣal, p. 74 (of the edition now being published by Dr. Jahn of Berlin). See _Fables_ de Loqman le Sage (éd. Dérenbourg), Introduction, p. 7.

Footnote 36:

I may refer on this point to Von Grutschmid’s excellent critique on Bunsen’s attempt to explain Athene as Semitic, in the former’s _Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients_, Leipzig 1858, p. 46.

Footnote 37:

Stade (_Morgenländische Forschungen_, p. 232) justly insists on the good Hebrew character of the names occurring in the Hebrew stories, even against the false supposition of the original Aramaic character of the Hebrew people.

Footnote 38:

_Zeitsch. d. D.M.G._, 1871, XXV. 139; see Lepsius, _Einleitung zur Chronologie der alten Ægypten_, I. 326.

Footnote 39:

See Ibn Yaʿîsh’s Commentary on the Mufaṣṣal of Zamachsharî, p. 47, in which the name of the constellation al-ʿAyyûḳ (Auriga, ‘The Hinderer’) is imported into this story, as hindering al-Dabarân from coming up with his beloved.

Footnote 40:

al-Meydânî, Majmaʿ al-amthâl (ed. of Bûlâḳ), II. 209.

Footnote 41:

See Nöldeke in Schenkel’s _Bibellexikon_, 2nd ed. IV. 370.

Footnote 42:

_Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, 1869, VI.

Footnote 43:

Theodor Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, II. 85.

Footnote 44:

W.H.I. Bleek, _Reynard the Fox in South Africa_, 1864, pp. xx-xxvi. See Max Müller’s _Introduction to the Science of Religion_, London 1873, p. 54.

Footnote 45:

_Histoire générale et Système comparé des Langues sémitiques_, p. 7.

Footnote 46:

Two instances will suffice to show how Renan’s hypothesis became the common property of educated people. It is treated as fully made out, both by Roscher, the German political economist, and by Draper, the American naturalist and historian of civilisation. The former says: ‘Life in the desert seems to be an especially favourable soil for Monotheism. It wants that luxuriant variety of the productive powers of nature by which Polytheism was encouraged in remarkably fruitful countries, such as India’ (_System der Volkswirthschaft_, 7th ed., Stuttgart 1873, II. 38). The latter: ‘Polytheistic ideas have always been held in repute by the southern European races; the Semitic have maintained the unity of God. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as a recent author has suggested, that a diversified landscape of mountains and valleys, islands, rivers, and gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a multitude of divinities. A vast sandy desert, the illimitable ocean, impresses him with an idea of the oneness of God’ (_History of Conflict between Religion and Science_, London 1875, p. 70). This view has also passed into Peschel’s _Völkerkunde_, and Bluntschli also, in his lecture on the ancient oriental ideas of God and world in 1861, echoed Renan’s hypothesis of 1855.

Footnote 47:

_Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, I. 297.

Footnote 48:

On the other side, Renan says (_Hist. gén._ 4th ed., p. 497) ‘Cette grande conquête (the recognition of Monotheism) ne fut pas pour elle (i. e. for the Semitic race) l’effet du progrès; ce fut une de ces premières aperceptions.’

Footnote 49:

Much of this literature has been unnoticed, as e.g. a late pamphlet by Léon Hugonnet: _La civilisation arabe, défense des peuples sémitiques en réponse à M. Renan_, Geneva 1873.

Footnote 50:

_Histoire générale_, p.

Footnote 51:

_Geschichte des Materialismus_, 1st ed., 1866, p. 77. See 2nd ed., 1873, I. 149.

Footnote 52:

Ib. p. 83. See 2nd ed., p. 152.

Footnote 53:

_Cours de Philosophie Positive_, éd. Littré, Paris 1869, V. 90, 197, 324.

Footnote 54:

_Histoire générale_, p. 486: ‘L’unité de constitution psychologique de l’espèce humaine, au moins des grandes races civilisées, en vertu de laquelle les mêmes mythes ont dû apparaître parallèlement sur plusieurs points à la fois, suffirait, d’ailleurs, pour expliquer les analogies qui reposent sur quelque trait général de la condition de l’humanité, ou sur quelques-uns de ses instincts les plus profonds.’

Footnote 55:

Ib. p. 27.

Footnote 56:

Max Müller, _Chips from a German Workshop_, I. 370.

Footnote 57:

_Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 390 _et seq._

Footnote 58:

In _Chips_, &c., I. p. 341.

Footnote 59:

In _The Myths of the New World_, New York 1868. See Steinthal’s criticism of this collection in the _Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie and Sprachwissenschaft_, 1871, Bd. VII.

Footnote 60:

_Myths and Myth-Makers_, Boston 1873, p. 151 _et seq._

Footnote 61:

In the sixth vol. of Waitz’s _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, where I obtained information about Schirren’s works.

Footnote 62:

_Les premières civilisations_, Paris 1874, II. 113 _et seq._

Footnote 63:

_Gott in der Geschichte_, I. 353; a passage which, with a large part of the volume, is omitted in the greatly abridged English translation.

Footnote 64:

_Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte_, V. ii. 18–19 (English tr. IV. 28–29).

Footnote 65:

Even old Plutarch observed in reference to the then favourite explanation of the myths _ex ratione physica_: Δεῖ δὲ μὴ νομίζειν ἁπλῶς εἰκόνας ἐκείνων (i.e. of the sun and moon) τούτους (Zeus and Hera), ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐν ὕλη Δία τὸν ἥλιον καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν Ἥραν ἐν ὕλῃ τὴν σελήνην (_Quaestiones Romanae_, 77). See Cicero, _De Nat. Deorum_, III. 24: Longe aliter rem se habere, atque hominum opinio sit: eos enim, qui dii appellantur, _rerum naturas_ esse, non _figuras deorum_.

Footnote 66:

Spiegel still does this up to a recent date in his _Eranische Alterthumskunde_, II. 19.

Footnote 67:

See Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II. 287 _et seq._

Footnote 68:

The story of Osiris and Typhon _e.g._ originally personified the vegetative life of nature and the struggles incident to it, but was afterwards transferred to the destinies of the human soul. See Ebers, _Durch Gosen zum Sinai_, Leipzig 1872, p. 477.

Footnote 69:

Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, III. 183.

Footnote 70:

See Roth in the _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_, 1848, II. 217; Albrecht Weber, _Akademische Vorlesungen über indische Literaturgeschichte_, Berlin 1852, p. 35.

Footnote 71:

See Kuenen, _The Religion of Israel_, London 1874, I. 226.