delivered either in the ancient or in the more recent books of the
Bible. And I hope it will not be thought to savour of mere paradox,
if the result of my search into the text of Homer shall be to exhibit
the religion of the Greeks, in the heroic age, as possessed of more
resemblances to a primitive revelation, than those religions of the
East from which they must have borrowed largely, and which we presume
to have stood between them and the fountain-head.
We have doubtless to consider the Greeks, as to their religion, in
three capacities: first, as receivers of the remains of pristine
tradition; secondly, as having imported, along with it, from abroad
the depraved forms of human fable; thirdly, as themselves powerful
inventors, working upon and adding to both descriptions of material.
But, before we conclude that the religion of Homer must needs be
farther from that of the patriarchs than the religions, as we now read
them, of Persia, Assyria, or Egypt, we ought to be assured that the
editions, so to speak, in which we study those religions, are older
than the Homeric poems. Whereas, with respect to the great bulk of the
records at our command, this, I apprehend, is the very reverse of the
truth.
~_Messianic traditions of the Hebrews._~
There is, however, one source to which we may legitimately repair, as
next in authority to the Holy Scriptures themselves with respect to the
forms of primitive tradition: I mean the earliest and most authentic
sacred literature of the Hebrews. Not that in kind it can resemble
the sacred records; but that it is at least likely to indicate what
were the earliest forms of development, and the initial tendencies to
deviation.
Since that nation became unhappily committed, through its chief
traditional authorities, to the repudiation of the Redeemer, a sinister
bias has operated upon its retrospective, as well as upon its present
and prospective theology. There are nevertheless three depositaries
of knowledge from which we may hope to learn what were the views,
entertained by the ancient Hebrews themselves, with regard to the
all-absorbing subject of the Messianic traditions.
In the first place it would appear, from the very nature of the
prophecies of the Old Testament, that there must, in all likelihood,
have existed along with them a system of authoritative contemporary
exposition, in order that holy men might be enabled to derive from them
the consolation and instruction which, apart from their other purposes,
they were divinely intended to convey. The highly figurative character
and frequent obscurity of their language supports, if it does not
require, this belief: and the constant practice, attested by the later
Scriptures, of public explanation of the sacred Books, including the
Prophets, in the synagogues of the Jews, brings it as near as such a
case admits to demonstration.
These expositions of the Sacred Text began, as it appears, to be
committed to writing about the time of the Babylonish captivity;
when the Chaldee tongue became the vernacular, and the old Hebrew
disappeared from common use. They were collected in the Paraphrases
or _Targumim_: and the fragments of the oldest of them, which had
consisted of marginal notes, were consolidated into a continuous Targum
by Onkelos, Jonathan, and others[46].
[46] Schöttgen’s Horæ Hebraicæ et Talmudicæ, vol. ii. De Messiâ, Præf.
ss. 3.4.12. and B. I. c. iii. 2, 3.
Apart from the Targumim, the sacred literature of the Jews appears,
from the time of the captivity onwards, to have run in two main
channels. One class of teachers and writers rested chiefly on the dry
traditionary system condemned by our Saviour in the Gospels, and gave
less and less heed, as time went on, to the doctrine of Scripture, and
of their forefathers, concerning the Messiah. In the second century
after Christ, this traditionary system was reduced by the Rabbi Jehuda
into a volume called the Mischna. And in the sixth or seventh, there
was composed a larger work, the Gemara or Talmud, which purported
in part to comment on the Mischna, and which also presented a more
extensive and more promiscuous collection of Rabbinical traditions. In
the midst of the ordure of this work, says Schöttgen, are to be found
here and there certain pearls[47].
[47] Schöttgen Præf. 17. B. I. c. iii. 7, 8. and Rabbin. Lect. B. I. c.
5.
Parallel with this stream of chiefly spurious learning, there was a
succession of pious writers, who both searched the Scriptures, and
studied to maintain and propagate the Messianic interpretations of
them. Of this succession the Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai was the great
ornament; and by his disciples was compiled, some sixty years after
his death, or about A. D. 170, the work termed the Sohar, which is so
Christian in its sense, as to have convinced Schöttgen that Simeon
was himself a Christian; although, perhaps from not being understood,
he was not repudiated by the Jews[48]. Upon this work was founded the
Cabbalistic or mystical learning.
[48] Schöttgen Præf. 12-15. B. I. and II. c. ii. c. iii. 6, 7. Rabb.
Lect. I. c. vi.
From these sources may be derived many Messianic ideas and
interpretations that were current among the ancient Jews.
Of them I proceed to extract some, from the work of Schöttgen, which
may throw light upon the interior system of the Homeric mythology in
its most important aspects.
1. First and foremost, these traditions appear to bear witness to the
extraordinary elevation of the Messiah, and they fully recognise his
title to the great Tetragrammaton[49].
[49] Schöttgen, I. i. 1.
2. Next, that introduction of the female principle into the sphere
of deity, which the Greeks seem to have adopted, after their
anthropophuistic manner, with a view to the family order among the
Immortals rather than as a mere metaphysical conception, appears to
have its prototype in the Hebrew traditions.
When in the Holy Scriptures we find wisdom personified in the feminine,
we regard this only as a mode of speech, though as one evidently
tending to account for the sex of Minerva. But the Jewish traditions
went far beyond this[50]. The two natures of our Lord would appear
from the Sohar to have been distinguished under the figure of mother
and daughter. The Schechina, or ‘glory of God,’ is of the feminine
gender: and the relation of His divinity to His humanity is set forth
under the figure of a marriage. He is therefore called mother and
matron; _temporibus futuris omnes hostes tradentur in manus Matronæ_,
as Schöttgen renders the Sohar[51].
[50] Schöttgen, I. i. 3.
[51] Ibid. I. i. 12, 18.
The Λόγος, or Word of the Lord, is also shown to have been, according
to the genuine traditions of the Jews, a common expression for the
Messiah. The relation thus exhibited is in marked analogy with that
between Minerva and Jupiter. This expression of the Targums of Jonathan
and Onkelos is also in correspondence with the language of Philo, De
Confusione Linguarum, pp. 255, 267[52].
[52] Ibid. I. i. 2.
4. The ideas of sonship and primogeniture[53] are likewise recognised
among the titles of the Messiah, according to the Sohar and other
Jewish authorities. We shall have to inquire what Homeric deities there
are, who, by the distinction between their mode and time of birth, and
that of others, may appear to represent these characteristics.
[53] Ib. I. i. 5, 9.
5. The Lord of Hosts, or Zebaoth[54], is another title of the Messiah:
and we may therefore expect, in any traditionary remnant found
elsewhere, to discover some strong and commanding martial development.
[54] Ib. I. i. 6.
6. The Messiah was preeminently conceived of by the Jews as being the
Light[55]. This property is in immediate connection with the idea of
the Λόγος. It cannot fail to be observed, how vividly such an idea
is represented in the ancient name Φοῖβος attaching to Apollo, and
probably also in that of Λυκηγένης or ‘light-born.’ The same idea
appears in the characteristic epithet Γλαυκῶπις, as it is now rightly
interpreted, for Minerva. This indeed is not merely an epithet, but it
forms one of her titles: as in Il. viii. 406.
[55] Ibid. II. Loc. Gen. xiii. xciv. _et alibi_, and I. iii. 10, 23.
7. Again, the name Metatron[56] is one of those properly applied to
the Messiah by the Jews. It is supposed to have denoted originally the
sense of the Latin word _metator_, as having reference to the guiding
of the Israelites through the desert, and the marking or measuring out
of their camps there. But it appears to have acquired afterwards the
sense of Mediator, as implying that the Messiah was the organ, through
whom the counsels of the Most High God took effect upon man.
[56] Schöttgen, I. i. 30.
8. The performance of miracles was to be a peculiar mark of the
Messiah[57].
[57] Ibid. III. Thes. iii. 2.
9. Another was the conquest he was to achieve over Satan, and the
liberation of the dead from the grave and from the power of hell[58].
[58] Ibid. III. Thes. ii.
With these great gifts and powers was associated an assemblage of the
most winning and endearing moral qualities. ‘The Schechina (or Messiah)
is the image of God; as He is gentle, so is She: as He is gracious, so
is She: as He is mighty, so is She mistress over all nations: He is
truth, She is faith: He the prophet, She the prophetess: He the just,
She the just: He the king, She the queen: He wise, She wisdom: He
intelligent, She His intelligence: He the crown, She the diadem[59].’
[59] From the translation of the Sohar by Sommer, in Schöttgen, III.
iii.
The central idea of these old traditions, as we conceive it, and as it
stands apart from simple theism, was that of redemption by means of a
person clothed in the attributions of humanity, but also invested with
the nature and powers of Godhead. Of these two sides of the tradition,
one was exhibited in the Word or Wisdom of God, and the other in the
Seed of the woman. The first is appropriated to Minerva, and the second
in the main to Apollo. But as the divine and human could not in the
tradition long continue completely harmonized and united, so neither
are they wholly severed. The Wisdom assumes a human configuration: the
Seed of the woman does not cease to be divine. Now Pallas and Apollo
preserve, relatively to one another, the place of their prototypes in
these two cardinal respects. As the tradition of the Λόγος was more
immediately divine, so Pallas is more copiously invested with the
higher powers, prerogatives, and offices of deity. On the other hand,
as the deliverance was to be wrought out by the immediate agency of the
Seed of the woman, so Apollo is more human, and is invested with the
larger and more varied assemblage of active endowments, appertaining to
the health, welfare, safety, purification, and chastisement of mankind.
And one main reason of the anthropomorphous character of the Greek
mythology as a whole may very probably be found in the fact, that it
was an old and a pure tradition which first gave to men the idea of God
in human form; the idea which, when once more purified, became that of
Emmanuel, God with us[60].
[60] Matt. i. 23.
The personages of the Homeric Theo-mythology who might most reasonably
be distinguished as having their basis in tradition are:
1. Jupiter.
2. Minerva.
3. Apollo.
4. Diana.
5. Latona.
6. Iris.
7. The Titans and kindred traditions.
8. Ἄτη, the Temptress.
Of these, Jupiter is so mixed a conception, and has such important
relations to the whole genesis of the Greek mythology, that I place
him in another class, and postpone the attempt to give a view of his
person and offices until we have gone through the deities, in whom the
traditional element is less disguised and also less contaminated.
~_Minerva and Apollo the key._~
And of these I commence with Minerva and Apollo, not only because they
are the most dignified, but also as they are the most characteristic
representatives of the class, and because it is in their persons that
we may best test the amount and quality of the evidence in support of
the assertion, that a traditional basis for the religion of the heroic
age of Greece is still traceable in the poems of Homer.
Again: it is the effect of this evidence in general both to separate
Minerva and Apollo by many important differences from the general mass
of the Olympian deities, and likewise to associate them together in a
great number of common signs and properties.
For these reasons I shall begin by considering them jointly: and I
believe that in a just comprehension of their position lies the key to
the whole Homeric system.
The lines of description for these two deities will, however, cross and
recross one another. Their strong and pervading essential resemblances
do not preclude much diversity of detail; and it will not unfrequently
be found to happen, either that a given sign, perhaps even one of
peculiar elevation, and thus of traditive origin, is found in one of
the two and not in the other, or else that such a sign is developed
more fully in one than in the other, or that the properties of an idea
are divided between them, as if it was felt that, where the one was,
the other must in greater or less measure be.
It will also be remembered that I do not aim at including, even in this
detailed discussion, all that is ascribed by Homer to his Apollo and
his Minerva; but only at exhibiting, with such fulness and clearness as
I can, the distinctive character which on the whole they may be said
to possess in common, and which I believe to constitute both the most
curious, and by far the most important feature of the whole Homeric
Theo-mythology.
The signs which appear to mark these great deities of tradition, and
which accompany them with a deliberate consistency through the poems,
present themselves with various bearings. Some affect their position in
the Olympian system, others their individual characters; and lastly, a
third class appertain to their dealings with man, and to their place
and power in regard to the sphere of nature both animal and inanimate.
Or more briefly, we may regard them in their Olympian relations, their
personal characters, and their terrestrial aspects. We will begin with
the first of these three divisions.
~_Their rank in the Olympian system._~
1. Their position in the Olympian system, if we are to adopt the common
genesis of the Olympian system, is one of hopeless and unaccountable
solecism.
The gods of Olympus are arranged generally in two generations. If we
put Apollo and Minerva out of view, then, with the exception of a deity
like Dione, introduced to serve as a mere vehicle of maternity, and
inferior in weight, if not in rank, to her own offspring, the majesty
and might of Olympus, following the order of nature, are entirely in
the elder of these generations, and reside with Jupiter, Juno, Neptune,
and Aidoneus or Pluto. The greater spheres have been shared among
these divinities; nothing, except what is secondary, remains for the
rest. But the position of Apollo and Minerva is in no respect inferior
to those of the elder gods, save Jupiter alone: in many points it is
higher; it has approximations to the very summit, which they have
not; nay, in particular points, Jupiter himself is exceeded. It is so
entirely different as a whole from that of the other deities of the
second generation, that we must seek out a cause for the difference.
Now it cannot be made to depend, at least in the case of Apollo, on the
paramount magnitude of any one of his functions, such as the bow, the
lyre, or even the gift of divination. It would have been natural to
anticipate that war, which is the business of Mars, might have made a
greater deity than divination, had both started from the same point. In
later times, perhaps, it did so; but in Homer the inferiority of Mars
is immeasurable. Now if we cannot account for this and other cases of
inferiority to Apollo in the heroic age by function, we must, I think,
of necessity look for it in difference of origin.
2. Although the relation of Apollo and Minerva to Jupiter places them
in the generation next to his, (all the Homeric divinities alike are
subject to the condition of being conceived to have a beginning,) yet
there are marked differences in antiquity between these two, and all
the other deities who, like them, stand as children to Jupiter: while
the simple fact, that they stand as his children, is precisely what the
ancient traditions would have led us to expect, with a difference which
we find represented in the respective modes of their derivation from
him.
Of the other deities of the same generation, there are some so recent,
as Greek deities, that their childhood is made matter of record: there
is not one who bears any mark that will throw him back to the period
when the Pelasgians ruled in Greece, like Jupiter as the father of the
old Hellic houses and the Dodonæan worship, or Neptune as the parent
of Neleus and of Actor; or indeed that in any manner suggests great
antiquity. But now let us look at Minerva and Apollo. That Minerva was
born from the head of Jupiter, is a legend which I apprehend signifies
that, in the oldest mythology, she had no mother: that, even if not in
the Olympian order, yet in the history of her worship she was prior
to Juno. She would otherwise have been the daughter of Juno, or of
some other mother; and the sole parentage of Jupiter is a proof, that
the tradition she represented was in vogue before motherhood among
the Immortals was invented. So strictly is this true, that, as the
constructive process went on, a mother was found for Minerva under
the name of Metis[61]; who was at the same time placed as the oldest
among the wives of Jupiter. In Homer, whether Tritogeneia is to be
interpreted head-born[62] or not, it is indubitable that Minerva has no
mother named, and is not the child of any known female divinity: and
the sole parentage of Jupiter appears to be declared with sufficient
clearness in the expostulation of Mars to Jupiter[63];
[61] See Hes. Theog. 886-900. Apollod. i. 3, 6.
[62] Hes. Theog. 924.
[63] Il. v. 880.
ἐπεὶ αὐτὸς ἐγείναο παῖδ’ ἀΐδηλον.
This is the only sense, so far as I can see, that can properly be given
to the word αὐτός.
Apollo, on the other hand, is the son of Λήτω or Latona. For her name
there appears to be but one satisfactory meaning, and it is this; that
her origin was before the memory of man, that is, before the period
within which the Greek mythological system had been constructed.
It cannot fail to be remarked, that the relation between the mythical
origin of Apollo and that of Minerva exhibit a difference entirely
analogous to that found in the traditions which they represent
respectively; and which would give to Apollo a mother, but to Minerva
none. In both, however, we may here trace a strong resemblance to the
Messianic traditions of Holy Scripture and of the Jews.
3. These deities have a great variety of functions, of which the
secondary forms, or the executive applications, are delegated to
others, of less power and pre-eminence, but still also in most cases
strictly Olympian gods. These satellite-divinities it may be convenient
to designate by the name of Secondaries.
~_The Secondaries of Minerva._~
The Secondaries of Olympus are so important a class, that they deserve,
as a class, a distinct consideration.
They are as follows:
First, for Minerva, in her great characters as goddess of wisdom, of
war, of polity, and of industrial art.
In the first, Mercury is her Secondary: for both are presiding
divinities or patrons of that calculating faculty applied to conduct,
which, on the side of virtue, reads as prudence, and which in its
degenerate form is craft (κέρδεα or κερδοσύνη).
In treating the god Mercury, with respect to this capital particular,
as a secondary of Minerva, I do not mean that he is nothing else:
but that the traditions about Hermes were found capable of, and were
allowed to bear, such a form, that it is impossible to describe fully
the function of the one deity without including something that is also
annexed to the other, or to draw any clear line between them.
In later times Mercury at Athens was, according to Müller[64], a
Secondary also to Apollo, charged with the exoteric and material parts
of several among his functions. And in Homer it seems probable, that
his office with respect to the dead ought to be viewed as ministerial
to that of Apollo.
[64] Müller’s Dorians, II. vi. 56.
In the next of her great offices, as goddess of war, Mars is a
Secondary to Minerva; and he is absolutely nothing more. It may be
enough in this place to refer to what will be said of him in the next
Section.
The Minerva of polity, the λαοσσόος, ἀγελείη, and ἐρυσιπτόλις, is
represented by Themis as a Secondary: whose name betokens her character
as a simple personification of the idea of political and social rights,
reflected from earth upon the Olympian life.
In the last of the four functions, Vulcan is her Secondary. It is
true that the traditions do not exactly square. He is something more,
because he is the element of fire, as well as the workman who operates
by it: and he is also something less, because he has no concern with
tissues, which fire has no share in creating, and which in Greece,
but not in Egypt[65], were exclusively the business of women. But the
relation between the two is indisputable: nor is it less plain that
in that relation he fills, taken generally, the place of Olympian
workman, she of a presiding mind operating upon man. And again, she is
the goddess of construction; he has relations only with one particular
department of it.
[65] See the curious passage in the Œdipus Coloneus, 336-41.
~_The Secondaries of Apollo._~
Next for Apollo, in his characters, first, of the Healer, and secondly,
of the Bard, with that of the Seer or Prophet.
In the first of these he is, so to speak, assisted by a pure Secondary,
Paieon; who disappears from the later and less refined Greek mythology,
and is replaced by an Æsculapius, reflected from the purely human
Asclepius of Homer. Paieon is a simply executive officer, and exercises
his gift, or as we should now say practises, exclusively, as does
Vulcan, except on special occasions, for the benefit of the Olympian
community; while the original possession of the gift, and the power of
distributing it, is with Apollo.
There is a further and more subtle relation between this deity and
Apollo, indicated by the use of the name παιήων for the hymn of
victory[66]. Whatever be the ground of this usage, it supplies another
point, in which Paieon reflects Apollo the god of help, and so far
tends to exhibit Apollo as also the god of victory. Paieon heals by the
use of his hands, like an ordinary surgeon; Apollo without personal
presence, and without the use of second causes, in answer to prayer[67].
[66] Il. xxii. 391.
[67] Il. xvi. 527-9.
In the second of his great offices, the Muses are the derivative
deities, who conjointly form a Secondary divinity to Apollo.
Their relation to him, and the combination in themselves of the plural
with the singular, are very curious. His immediate concern is with
the lyre, theirs with the voice. They sometimes appear as one; for
instance, in the first verse of each of the poems: sometimes as many;
for instance, in the invocation before the Catalogue. Even their action
is so combined, that what at one time they do as one, at others they do
as many. It is the Muses who maim Thamyris: it is the Muse, who greatly
loves Demodocus, who lays upon him the burden of blindness, but endows
him with the gift of song: and again, who instructs and loves the
tribe of Bards in general[68].
[68] Il. ii. 594, and Od. viii. 63 and 480.