CHAPTER VIII.

_MYTHOLOGY._

Since all antediluvian traditions meet in Noah, and are transmitted through him, there is an _à priori_ probability that we shall find all the antediluvian traditions confused in Noah. I shall discuss this further when I come to regard him under the aspect of Saturn.

As a consequence, we must not expect to find (the process of corruption having commenced in the race of Ham, almost contemporaneously with Noah) a pure and unadulterated tradition anywhere; and I allege more specifically, that whenever we find a tradition of Noah and the Deluge, we shall find it complicated and confused with previous communications with the Almighty, and also with traditions of Adam and Paradise.

But inasmuch as the tradition is necessarily through Noah, and in any case applies to him at one remove, it does not greatly affect the argument I have in hand. There is a further probability which confronts us on the outset, that in every tradition, with the lapse of time, though the events themselves are likely to be substantially transmitted, they may become transposed in their order of succession. We shall see this in the case of Noah and his posterity. The principal cause being, that the immediate founder of the race is, as a rule, among all the nations of antiquity, deified and placed at the head of every genealogy and history. "Joves omnes reges vocârunt antiqui." Thus Belus, whom modern discovery seems certainly to have identified with Nimrod, in the Chaldean mythology appears as Jupiter, and even as the creator separating light from darkness (Rawlinson, "Ancient Monarchies," i. 181; Gainet, "Hist. de l'Anc. et Nouv. Test.," i. 120). But Nimrod is also mixed up with Jupiter in the god Bel-Merodach. In more natural connection Nimrod--("who may have been worshipped in different parts of Chaldea under different titles," Rawlinson, i. 172)--_Nimrod_ appears as the _father_ of _Hurki_ the moon-god, whose worship he probably introduced; and, what is much more to the point, he appears as the father of Nin (whom I shall presently identify with Noah); whilst in one instance, at least, the genealogy is inverted, and he appears as the _son of Nin_. Thus, too, Hercules and Saturn are confounded, just as we find Adam and Noah confounded ("many classical traditions, we must remember, identified Hercules with Saturn," _vide_ Rawlinson, i. 166). Also in Grecian mythology Prometheus (Adam) figures as the son of Deucalion (Noah), and also of Japetus (Japhet); and so, too, Adam and Noah, in the Mahabharata, are equally in tradition in the person of Manou (_vide_ Gainet, i. 199), and in Mexico in the person of the god Quetzalcoatl (_vide infra_, p. 326).

Before, however, pursuing the special subject of this inquiry further, it appears to me impossible to avoid an argument on a subject long debated, temporarily abandoned through the exhaustion of the combatants, and now again recently brought into prominence through the writings of Mr Gladstone, Dr Dollinger, Mr Max Müller, and others--the source and origin of mythology.[126]

[126] This chapter was written before the publication of Mr Cox's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations." It will be seen, however, that I indulge the hope that much that is seductive, and much even that is systematic, in Mr Cox's view, will be found to be compatible with the line I have indicated.

Now, here, I am quite ready to adopt, in the first place, the opinion of L'Abbé Gainet, that every exclusive system must come to naught, "que toutes les tentatives qu'on ai faites pour expliquer le polythéisme par un système exclusif tombent à faux et n'expliquent rien."

Yet, whilst fully admitting an early and perhaps concurrent admixture of Sabaism,[127] I consider that the facts and evidence contained in the pages of Rawlinson will enable us to arrive at the history of idolatry by a mode much more direct than conjecture. The pages of Rawlinson prove the identity of Nimrod and Belus, and his worship in the earliest times. On the other hand, there has been a pretty constant tradition[128] that Nimrod first raised the standard of revolt against the Lord; and the erection of the tower of Babel seems to show a state of things ripe for idolatry. Here recent discovery and ancient tradition concur in establishing hero-worship as among the earliest forms of idolatry. But further, the Arab tradition of Nimrod's apotheosis, analogous to the mysterious and miraculous disappearance of Enoch (_vide infra_, p. 192), suggests how hero-worship might become almost identical with the worship of spirits, which L'Abbé Gainet inclines to think the first and most natural mode. If there was a tradition among them that one of their ancestors was raised up to heaven,[129] why may they not have argued, when their minds had become thoroughly corrupted, that their immediate ancestor, the mighty Nimrod, had been so raised? and when one ancestor was deified the rest would have been deified in sequence, or according to their relationship to him. What, again, more likely than that, when through the corruptions of mankind the communications of the Most High ceased, they should turn to those to whom the communications had been made, at first perhaps innocently in intercession, and, as corruption deepened, in worship?[130]

[127] Philo. _apud_ Eusebius, who has transmitted the Phoenician tradition (_vide_ Bunsen's "Egypt," iv. 281), seems to me to indicate the mode in which it came about in the following words--"Now Chronos, whose Phoenician epithet was El, _a ruler of the land_, and subsequently after his death, _deified_ in the constellation of Kronos (Saturn)," &c. As to Saturn, _vide_ ch. x.

In the cosmical theory there is analogy as to the process of deification--"In the Phoenician cosmogonies, the connection between the highest God and a subordinate male and female demiurgic principle is of frequent occurrence" (Bunsen, iv. 447). It would seemingly be more in fitness with a cosmical theory to find direct adoration of the principle, without evidence of any previous or concurrent process of deification.

Mr W. Palmer ("Egyptian Chronicles," i. 37) says--"But when we find the rulers of the first two periods in the Chronicle, its xiii. gods and viii. demigods, answering closely to the two generations of the antediluvian and post-diluvian patriarchs in number, and therefore also in the average length of the reigns and generations; and when we know, besides, as we do, that the Pantheon of the Egyptians and other nations, which they said had all borrowed from them, was peopled, in part at least, _with deified ancestors_--for even the heavenly luminaries, and the _elements_, and _powers of nature_, and _notions of the true God still remaining_, or of angels and demons, so far as they were invested with humanity and sex, _were identified with human ancestors_; we cannot doubt that Kronos," &c.

[128] "Venator contra Dominum," St Augustine; "Cité de Dieu," xvi. ch. iv.; Pastoret, "Hist. de la Legislation."

[129] Gen. v. 24, says only--"And he walked with God, and was seen no more: because God took him." (_Vide_ also John iii. 13.) There might still have been the belief and tradition (according to appearances) that he was so raised. (Compare 4 Kings ii. 11, and Ecclesiasticus, xliv. 16.)

[130] I believe, however, that the apostasy in the Hamitic race generally was much more direct; and I entirely agree with Bryant that it must have resulted at an early period in a systematic scheme of mixed solar and ancestral worship. Therefore, in any Hamitic tradition, we shall not be startled at finding (even in the commemorative ceremonies of the Deluge) evidence of solar mythology inextricably blended with ancestral traditions. We, however, are only concerned with the ancestral traditions, and in so far as we can discriminate them, Mr Cox's evidence of solar mythology will form no barrier to our inquiry.

In the preceding page I have quoted a passage from Sanchoniathon, which seems to indicate the mode in which the mixed system arose; but there "Cronos" (Noah) is deified in the planet Saturn. As a rule, however, we find him deified in the sun (Bryant, ii. 60, 200, 220). Ham, however, is sometimes also deified in the sun; and in cases where Ham is so deified, it is not unlikely that we shall find the patriarch relegated to Saturn.

L'Abbé Gainet, in another part of his work, draws attention to the worship of ancestors in China, and asks whether the idols of Laban had reference to more than some such secondary objects?

It will be recollected that it was precisely the extent to which this veneration was to be considered culpable which was the subject-matter of the unfortunate disputes between certain religious orders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (_vide_ Huc's "Chinese Empire," and Cretineau Joly's "Hist. de la Com. de Jesus," vol. iii. chap. iii., and vol. v. chap. i.) Indeed, among the Semitic races it may never have degenerated into idolatry. Still it appears to me that weight should be attached to this tendency, more especially in primitive times, when the recollection of ancestors who had been driven out of Paradise, to whom direct revelations had been made, and who were naturally reputed to have been "nearer to the gods" (Plato, Cicero[131]), would have been all in all to their descendants. Then, again, as we have just seen, there was the tradition among them of one man who had been carried up into heaven, and accordingly, when hero-worship culminated in the deification of man, we are not surprised to find it taking the form of this apotheosis as in the identification of Nimrod and Enoch.

[131] "Quoniam antiquitas proxime accedit ad deos."--_De Legibus_, ii. 11.

This tendency to idolatry through hero-worship seems to me so natural and direct, that I think, apart from the facts _à priori_, I should have been led to the conclusion that it was the actual manner in which it was brought about.[132] It is not denied, on the other hand, that there always has been a tendency to nature-worship also; and, indeed, there is probably a stage during which every mythology will be found to have come under its influence. But the inclination at the present moment is unmistakably to an exclusive astral or solar system. The point of interest which excites me to this inquiry is simply to determine the value of the historical traditions which may lie embedded in these systems; and I shall be content to find them, whether or not they form the primary nucleus, or whether only subsequently imported into, and blended with, solar mythology. It is easy to conceive how a mythology embodying historical traditions could pass into an astral system. In this case incongruity would not startle; but it is difficult to imagine a pure astral system which would not be too harmonious and symmetrical to admit of the grossness, inconsistency, and incongruity to which the process of adaptation would inevitably give rise, and to which hero-worship is inherently prone. As Mr Gladstone says (Homer,