history of mankind when, together with the awakening of ideas, the
first attempts only were being made at expressing the simplest
conceptions by means of a language most simple, most sensuous, and
most unwieldy. There was as yet no word sufficiently reduced by the
wear and tear of thought to serve as an adequate expression for the
abstract idea of an immaterial and supernatural Being. There were
words for walking and shouting, for cutting and burning, for dog and
cow, for house and wall, for sun and moon, for day and night. Every
object was called by some quality which had struck the eye as most
peculiar and characteristic. But what quality should be predicated of
that Being of which man knew as yet nothing but its existence?
Language possessed as yet no auxiliary verbs. The very idea of being
without the attributes of quality or action, had never entered into
the human mind. How then was that Being to be called which had
revealed its existence, and continued to make itself felt by
everything that most powerfully impressed the awakening mind, but
which as yet was known only like a subterraneous spring by the waters
which it poured forth with inexhaustible strength? When storm and
lightning drove a father with his helpless family to seek refuge in
the forests, and the fall of mighty trees crushed at his side those
who were most dear to him, there were, no doubt, feelings of terror
and awe, of helplessness and dependence, in the human heart which
burst forth in a shriek for pity or help from the only Being that
could command the storm. But there was no name by which He could be
called. There might be names for the storm-wind and the thunderbolt,
but these were not the names applicable to Him that rideth upon the
heavens of heavens, which were of old. Again, when after a wild and
tearful night the sun dawned in the morning, smiling on man--when
after a dreary and deathlike winter spring came again with its
sunshine and flowers, there were feelings of joy and gratitude, of
love and adoration in the heart of every human being; but though there
were names for the sun and the spring, for the bright sky and the
brilliant dawn, there was no word by which to call the source of all
this gladness, the giver of light and life.
At the time when we may suppose that the first attempts at finding a
name for God were made, the divergence of the languages of mankind had
commenced. We cannot dwell here on the causes which led to the
multiplicity of human speech; but whether we look on the confusion of
tongues as a natural or supernatural event, it was an event which the
science of language has proved to have been inevitable. The ancestors
of the Semitic and the Aryan nations had long become unintelligible to
each other in their conversations on the most ordinary topics, when
they each in their own way began to look for a proper name for God.
Now one of the most striking differences between the Aryan and the
Semitic forms of speech was this:--In the Semitic languages the roots
expressive of the predicates which were to serve as the proper names
of any subjects, remained so distinct within the body of a word, that
those who used the word were unable to forget its predicative meaning,
and retained in most cases a distinct consciousness of its appellative
power. In the Aryan languages, on the contrary, the significative
element, or the root of a word, was apt to become so completely
absorbed by the derivative elements, whether prefixes or suffixes,
that most substantives ceased almost immediately to be appellative,
and were changed into mere names or proper names. What we mean can
best be illustrated by the fact that the dictionaries of Semitic
languages are mostly arranged according to their roots. When we wish
to find the meaning of a word in Hebrew or Arabic we first look for
its root, whether triliteral or biliteral, and then look in the
dictionary for that root and its derivatives. In the Aryan languages,
on the contrary, such an arrangement would be extremely inconvenient.
In many words it is impossible to detect the radical element. In
others, after the root is discovered, we find that it has not given
birth to any other derivatives which would throw their converging rays
of light on its radical meaning. In other cases, again, such seems to
have been the boldness of the original name-giver that we can hardly
enter into the idiosyncrasy which assigned such a name to such an
object.
This peculiarity of the Semitic and Aryan languages must have had the
greatest influence on the formation of their religious phraseology.
The Semitic man would call on God in adjectives only, or in words
which always conveyed a predicative meaning. Every one of his words
was more or less predicative, and he was therefore restricted in his
choice to such words as expressed some one or other of the abstract
qualities of the Deity. The Aryan man was less fettered in his choice.
Let us take an instance. Being startled by the sound of thunder, he
would at first express his impression by the single phrase, It
thunders,--[Greek: brouta]. Here the idea of God is understood rather
than expressed, very much in the same manner as the Semitic proper
names Zabd (present), Abd (servant), Aus (present), are habitually
used for Zabd-allah, Abd-allah, Aus-allah,--the servant of God, the
gift of God. It would be more in accordance with the feelings and
thoughts of those who first used these so-called impersonal verbs to
translate them by He thunders, He rains, He snows. Afterwards, instead
of the simple impersonal verb He thunders, another expression
naturally suggested itself. The thunder came from the sky, the sky was
frequently called Dyaus (the bright one), in Greek [Greek: Zeus]; and
though it was not the bright sky which thundered, but the dark, yet
Dyaus had already ceased to be an expressive predicate, it had become
a traditional name, and hence there was nothing to prevent an Aryan
man from saying Dyaus, or the sky thunders, in Greek [Greek: Zeus
brouta]. Let us here mark the almost irresistible influence of
language on the mind. The word Dyaus, which at first meant bright, had
lost its radical meaning, and now meant simply sky. It then entered
into a new stage. The idea which had first been expressed by the
pronoun or the termination of the third person, He thunders, was taken
up into the word Dyaus, or sky. He thunders, and Dyaus thunders,
became synonymous expressions, and by the mere habit of speech He
became Dyaus, and Dyaus became He. Henceforth Dyaus remained as an
appellative of that unseen though ever present Power, which had
revealed its existence to man from the beginning, but which remained
without a name long after every beast of the field and every fowl of
the air had been named by Adam.
Now, what happened in this instance with the name of Dyaus, happened
again and again with other names. When men felt the presence of God in
the great and strong wind, in the earthquake, or the fire, they said
at first, He storms, He shakes, He burns. But they likewise said, the
storm (Marut) blows, the fire (Agni) burns, the subterraneous fire
(Vulcanus) upheaves the earth. And after a time the result was the
same as before, and the words meaning originally wind or fire were
used, under certain restrictions, as names of the unknown God. As long
as all these names were remembered as mere names or attributes of one
and the same Divine Power, there was as yet no polytheism, though, no
doubt, every new name threatened to obscure more and more the
primitive intuition of God. At first, the names of God, like fetishes
or statues, were honest attempts at expressing or representing an idea
which could never find an adequate expression or representation. But
the eidolon, or likeness, became an idol; the nomen, or name, lapsed
into a numen, or demon, as soon as they were drawn away from their
original intention. If the Greeks had remembered that Zeus was but a
name or symbol of the Deity, there would have been no more harm in
calling God by that name than by any other. If they had remembered
that Kronos, and Uranos, and Apollon were all but so many attempts at
naming the various sides, or manifestations, or aspects, or persons of
the Deity, they might have used these names in the hours of their
various needs, just as the Jews called on Jehovah, Elohim, and
Sabaoth, or as Roman Catholics implore the help of Nunziata, Dolores,
and Notre-Dame-de-Grace.
What, then, is the difference between the Aryan and Semitic
nomenclature for the Deity? Why are we told that the pious invocations
of the Aryan world turned into a blasphemous mocking of the Deity,
whereas the Semitic nations are supposed to have found from the first
the true name of God? Before we look anywhere else for an answer to
the question, we must look to language itself, and here we see that
the Semitic dialects could never, by any possibility, have produced
such names as the Sanskrit Dyaus (Zeus), Varu_n_a (Uranos), Marut
(Storm, Mars), or Ushas (Eos). They had no doubt names for the bright
sky, for the tent of heaven, and for the dawn. But these names were so
distinctly felt as appellatives, that they could never be thought of
as proper names, whether as names of the Deity, or as names of
deities. This peculiarity has been illustrated with great skill by M.
Renan. We differ from him when he tries to explain the difference
between the mythological phraseology of the Aryan and the theological
phraseology of the Semitic races, by assigning to each a peculiar
theological instinct. We cannot, in fact, see how the admission of
such an instinct, i. e. of an unknown and incomprehensible power,
helps us in any way whatsoever to comprehend this curious mental
process. His problem, however, is exactly the same as ours, and it
would be impossible to state that problem in a more telling manner
than he has done.
'The rain,' he says (p. 79), 'is represented, in all the primitive
mythologies of the Aryan race, as the fruit of the embraces of Heaven
and Earth.' 'The bright sky,' says AEschylus, in a passage which one
might suppose was taken from the Vedas, 'loves to penetrate the earth;
the earth on her part aspires to the heavenly marriage. Rain falling
from the loving sky impregnates the earth, and she produces for
mortals pastures of the flocks and the gifts of Ceres.' In the Book of
Job,[101] on the contrary, it is God who tears open the waterskins of
Heaven (xxxviii. 37), who opens the courses for the floods (ibid. 25),
who engenders the drops of dew (ibid. 28):
'He draws towards Him the mists from the waters,
Which pour down as rain, and form their vapours.
Afterwards the clouds spread them out,
They fall as drops on the crowds of men.' (Job xxxvi. 27, 28.)
[Footnote 101: We give the extracts according to M. Renan's
translation of the Book of Job (Paris, 1859, Michel Levy).]
'He charges the night with damp vapours,
He drives before Him the thunder-bearing cloud.
It is driven to one side or the other by His command.
To execute all that He ordains
On the face of the universe,
Whether it be to punish His creatures
Or to make thereof a proof of His mercy,' (Job xxxvii. 11-13.)
Or, again, Proverbs xxx. 4:
'Who hath gathered the wind in His fists? Who hath bound the
waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of
the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son's name, if
thou canst tell?'
It has been shown by ample evidence from the Rig-veda how many mythes
were suggested to the Aryan world by various names of the dawn, the
day-spring of life. The language of the ancient Aryans of India had
thrown out many names for that heavenly apparition, and every name, as
it ceased to be understood, became, like a decaying seed, the germ of
an abundant growth of mythe and legend. Why should not the same have
happened to the Semitic names for the dawn? Simply and solely because
the Semitic words had no tendency to phonetic corruption; simply and
solely because they continued to be felt as appellatives, and would
inevitably have defeated every attempt at mythological phraseology
such as we find in India and Greece. When the dawn is mentioned in the
Book of Job (ix. 11), it is God 'who commandeth the sun and it riseth
not, and sealeth up the stars.' It is His power which causeth the
day-spring to know its place, that it might take hold of the ends of
the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it (Job xxxviii. 12,
13; Renan, 'Livre de Job,' pref. 71). Shahar, the dawn, never becomes
an independent agent; she is never spoken of as Eos rising from the
bed of her husband Tithonos (the setting sun), solely and simply
because the word retained its power as an appellative, and thus could
not enter into any mythological metamorphosis.
Even in Greece there are certain words which have remained so pellucid
as to prove unfit for mythological refraction. Selene in Greek is so
clearly the moon that her name would pierce through the darkest clouds
of mythe and fable. Call her Hecate, and she will bear any disguise,
however fanciful. It is the same with the Latin Luna. She is too
clearly the moon to be mistaken for anything else, but call her
Lucina, and she will readily enter into various mythological phases.
If, then, the names of sun and moon, of thunder and lightning, of
light and day, of night and dawn could not yield to the Semitic races
fit appellatives for the Deity, where were they to be found? If the
names of Heaven or Earth jarred on their ears as names unfit for the
Creator, where could they find more appropriate terms? They would not
have objected to real names such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or
[Greek: Zeus kydistos megistos], if such words could have been framed
in their dialects, and the names of Jupiter and Zeus could have been
so ground down as to become synonymous with the general term for
'God.' Not even the Jews could have given a more exalted definition of
the Deity than that of Optimus Maximus--the Best and the Greatest;
and their very name of God, Jehovah, is generally supposed to mean no
more than what the Peleiades of Dodona said of Zeus, [Greek: Zeus en,
Zeus estin, Zeus essetai o megale Zeu], 'He was, He is, He will be, Oh
great Zeus!' Not being able to form such substantives as Dyaus, or
Varu_n_a, or Indra, the descendants of Shem fixed on the predicates
which in the Aryan prayers follow the name of the Deity, and called
Him the Best and the Greatest, the Lord and King. If we examine the
numerous names of the Deity in the Semitic dialects we find that they
are all adjectives, expressive of moral qualities. There is El,
strong; Bel or Baal, Lord; Beel-samin, Lord of Heaven; Adonis (in
Phenicia), Lord; Marnas (at Gaza), our Lord; Shet, Master, afterwards
a demon; Moloch, Milcom, Malika, King; Eliun, the Highest (the God of
Melchisedek); Ram and Rimmon, the Exalted; and many more names, all
originally adjectives and expressive of certain general qualities of
the Deity, but all raised by one or the other of the Semitic tribes to
be the names of God or of that idea which the first breath of life,
the first sight of this world, the first consciousness of existence,
had for ever impressed and implanted in the human mind.
But do these names prove that the people who invented them had a clear
and settled idea of the unity of the Deity? Do we not find among the
Aryan nations that the same superlatives, the same names of Lord and
King, of Master and Father, are used when the human mind is brought
face to face with the Divine, and the human heart pours out in prayer
and thanksgiving the feelings inspired by the presence of God?
Brahman, in Sanskrit, meant originally Power, the same as El. It
resisted for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last it
yielded like all other names of God, and became the name of one God.
By the first man who formed or fixed these names, Brahman, like El,
and like every name of God, was meant, no doubt, as the best
expression that could be found for the image reflected from the
Creator upon the mind of the creature. But in none of these words can
we see any decided proof that those who framed them had arrived at the
clear perception of One God, and were thus secured against the danger
of polytheism. Like Dyaus, like Indra, like Brahman, Baal and El and
Moloch were names of God, but not yet of the One God.
And we have only to follow the history of these Semitic names in order
to see that, in spite of their superlative meaning, they proved no
stronger bulwark against polytheism than the Latin Optimus Maximus.
The very names which we saw explained before as meaning the Highest,
the Lord, the Master, are represented in the Phenician mythology as
standing to each other in the relation of Father and Son. (Renan, p.
60.) There is hardly one single Semitic tribe which did not at times
forget the original meaning of the names by which they called on God.
If the Jews had remembered the meaning of El, the Omnipotent, they
could not have worshipped Baal, the Lord, as different from El. But as
the Aryan tribes bartered the names of their gods, and were glad to
add the worship of Zeus to that of Uranos, the worship of Apollon to
that of Zeus, the worship of Hermes to that of Apollon, the Semitic
nations likewise were ready to try the gods of their neighbours. If
there had been in the Semitic race a truly monotheistic instinct, the
history of those nations would become perfectly unintelligible.
Nothing is more difficult to overcome than an instinct: naturam furca
expellas, tamen usque recurret. But the history even of the Jews is
made up of an almost uninterrupted series of relapses into polytheism.
Let us admit, on the contrary, that God had in the beginning revealed
Himself the same to the ancestors of the whole human race. Let us then
observe the natural divergence of the languages of man, and consider
the peculiar difficulties that had to be overcome in framing names for
God, and the peculiar manner in which they were overcome in the
Semitic and Aryan languages, and everything that follows will be
intelligible. If we consider the abundance of synonymes into which all
ancient languages burst out at their first starting--if we remember
that there were hundreds of names for the earth and the sky, the sun
and the moon, we shall not be surprised at meeting with more than one
name for God both among the Semitic and the Aryan nations. If we
consider how easily the radical or significative elements of words
were absorbed and obscured in the Aryan, and how they stood out in
bold relief in the Semitic languages, we shall appreciate the
difficulty which the Shemites experienced in framing any name that
should not seem to take too one-sided a view of the Deity by
predicating but one quality, whether strength, dominion, or majesty;
and we shall equally perceive the snare which their very language laid
for the Aryan nations, by supplying them with a number of words which,
though they seemed harmless as meaning nothing except what by
tradition or definition they were made to mean, yet were full of
mischief owing to the recollections which, at any time, they might
revive. Dyaus in itself was as good a name as any for God, and in some
respects more appropriate than its derivative deva, the Latin deus,
which the Romance nations still use without meaning any harm. But
Dyaus had meant sky for too long a time to become entirely divested of
all the old mythes or sayings which were true of Dyaus, the sky, but
could only be retained as fables if transferred to Dyaus, God. Dyaus,
the Bright, might be called the husband of the earth; but, when the
same mythe was repeated of Zeus, the god, then Zeus became the husband
of Demeter, Demeter became a goddess, a daughter sprang from their
union, and all the sluices of mythological madness were opened. There
were a few men, no doubt, at all times, who saw through this
mythological phraseology, who called on God, though they called him
Zeus, or Dyaus, or Jupiter. Xenophanes, one of the earliest Greek
heretics, boldly maintained that there was but 'one God, and that He
was not like unto men, either in body or mind.'[102] A poet in the
Veda asserts distinctly, 'They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varu_n_a, Agni;
then He is the well-winged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One the
wise call it many ways--they call it Agni, Yama, Matari_s_van.'[103]
[Footnote 102: Xenophanes, about contemporary with Cyrus, as quoted by
Clemens Alex., Strom. v, p. 601,--[Greek: eis theos en te theoisi kai
anthropoisi megistos, oute demas thnetoisin homoiios oude noema].]
[Footnote 103: 'History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' by M. M., p.
567.]
But, on the whole, the charm of mythology prevailed among the Aryan
nations, and a return to the primitive intuition of God and a total
negation of all gods, wore rendered more difficult to the Aryan than
to the Semitic man. The Semitic man had hardly ever to resist the
allurements of mythology. The names with which he invoked the Deity
did not trick him by their equivocal character. Nevertheless, these
Semitic names, too, though predicative in the beginning, became
subjective, and from being the various names of One Being, lapsed into
names of various beings. Hence arose a danger which threatened
well-nigh to bar to the Semitic race the approach to the conception
and worship of the One God.
Nowhere can we see this danger more clearly than in the history of the
Jews. The Jews had, no doubt, preserved, from the beginning the idea
of God, and their names of God contained nothing but what might by
right be ascribed to Him. They worshipped a single God, and, whenever
they fell into idolatry, they felt that they had fallen away from God.
But that God, under whatever name they invoked Him, was especially
their God, their own national God, and His existence did not exclude
the existence of other gods or demons. Of the ancestors of Abraham and
Nachor, even of their father Terah, we know that in old time, when
they dwelt on the other side of the flood, they served other gods
(Joshua xxiv. 2). At the time of Joshua these gods were not yet
forgotten, and instead of denying their existence altogether, Joshua
only exhorts the people to put away the gods which their fathers
served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt, and to serve the
Lord: 'Choose ye this day,' he says, 'whom you will serve; whether the
gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the
flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as
for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.'
Such a speech, exhorting the people to make their choice between
various gods, would have been unmeaning if addressed to a nation which
had once conceived the unity of the Godhead. Even images of the gods
were not unknown to the family of Abraham, for, though we know nothing
of the exact form of the teraphim, or images which Rachel stole from
her father, certain it is that Laban calls them his gods (Genesis
xxxi. 19, 30). But what is much more significant than these traces of
polytheism and idolatry is the hesitating tone in which some of the
early patriarchs speak of their God. When Jacob flees before Esau into
Padan-Aram and awakes from his vision at Bethel, he does not profess
his faith in the One God, but he bargains, and says, 'If God will be
with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me
bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my
father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God: and this
stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all
that thou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth unto thee'
(Genesis xxviii. 20-22). Language of this kind evinces not only a
temporary want of faith in God, but it shows that the conception of
God had not yet acquired that complete universality which alone
deserves to be called monotheism, or belief in the One God. To him who
has seen God face to face there is no longer any escape or doubt as to
who is to be his god; God is his god, whatever befall. But this Jacob
learnt not until he had struggled and wrestled with God, and committed
himself to His care at the very time when no one else could have
saved him. In that struggle Jacob asked for the true name of God, and
he learnt from God that His name was secret (Genesis xxxii. 29). After
that, his God was no longer one of many gods. His faith was not like
the faith of Jethro (Exodus xxvii. 11), the priest of Midian, the
father-in-law of Moses, who when he heard of all that God had done for
Moses acknowledged that God (Jehovah) was greater than all gods
(Elohim). This is not yet faith in the One God. It is a faith hardly
above the faith of the people who were halting between Jehovah and
Baal, and who only when they saw what the Lord did for Elijah, fell on
their faces and said, 'The Lord He is the God.'