_THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATING HEBREW MYTHS._
§ 1. The method of investigation is intended to discover—how the
original myth is to be reached through the sources described in the
preceding chapter, how the primitive germ of the myth is to be freed
from the husk which in the course of its growth has been formed around
it, and further how the progress and lapse of this growth itself are to
be recognised. Then we shall be enabled to determine how stratum upon
stratum has fastened itself round the original myth until it reached
that configuration which is the concrete material of our investigation.
The development of the myth in any nation is mainly determined by two
factors, which give to this development the direction actually taken.
One group of these factors is _psychological_, the other belongs to the
_history of civilisation_.[104] The psychological factors in the
development of all myths are the same, not changing with the special
character of the people whose myths form the subject of our
consideration. For the same general laws everywhere determine the life
of the soul; no difference in them is introduced by the ethnological
life and the peculiarity of race of the people in question. There is a
psychology of mankind, or as it was called when Lazarus introduced the
science, a Psychology of Nations (_Völkerpsychologie_). This is not a
contemplation of the modes in which the intellectual life of various
nations exhibits itself as acting in opposite directions, but of the
modes in which the same laws find their expression and validity in the
intellectual life of the most various nations. But there is no special
psychology of races. On the other hand, the factors belonging to the
_history of civilisation_ are not everywhere alike, but are as various
as the historical fates of the nations among themselves are various. We
shall subsequently come back to the subject to show more fully that
myths share in the historical vicissitudes of their nation, that they
are always transformed in accordance with the stages of civilisation
which the nation itself passes through in its historical development,
and that accordingly the configuration of the myth is a faithful mirror
of the stage of civilisation at which it has taken this particular
configuration. Obviously therefore, we can duly estimate the myth
through all its stages of development only in connexion with a
comprehensive view over the historical development of the civilisation
of the nation itself. And to gain this view we must especially attend to
those phenomena which might produce an altered direction of the mind,
and thus impress a new form on the myth also. But as in the methodical
observation of the intellectual development of a nation in the course of
its history psychological points of view must again occupy the
foreground, we may assert that psychological observation must take up a
prominent position in the method of mythological investigation; for the
question will always be, What transformation does this or that
historical vicissitude produce in that which makes up the sum of the
human mind? The answer will however evidently turn out different
according to the nature of these historical vicissitudes. But there is
one special step of transformation which stands earlier than and in no
connexion with the separate history of the nation, and is produced by a
purely psychological operation. This transformation is therefore common
to all myths—so much so that most inquirers, and especially Max Müller,
make the life of the myth to begin only at this stage.
It is the stage of mental development which is signalised by a
remarkable fact in the history of language: viz., that an endless
multitude of names, bestowed upon the phenomena and processes of nature,
in virtue of various features of which there is a preponderating
consciousness at the moment of perception, gradually lose their meaning;
while some few features of the total phenomenon are retained, to
represent all those particular factors and supply comprehensive general
terms for their sum total. For example, the Sun has at first a countless
number of designations. It is not merely that, in its various aspects,
the Sun is treated as the subject of detached observation unrelated in
thought to that of other aspects of the same Sun; but the very same
aspect, on repeated notice, is regarded as something different every
time, and is accordingly denoted by other names. In other words,
borrowed from the terminology of modern psychology, no _fusion_
(_Verflechtung_) has yet been effected. Long-continued observation of
the same aspects gives consciousness of their identity under repetition,
and makes possible the fusion of their ideas. Next, by a further advance
in development, the psychological change emerges, through which the
various features of the same phenomenon cease to be essential
difference-marks in the idea, and, dropping into the background, give
place to a general conception gained by their fusion, an aggregate of
fusion (_Verflechtungsmasse_), the product of often-repeated
fusion.[105] The effect on language of this psychological change is
that, through its gradual operation, the meaning is lost from the great
majority of those expressions which arose merely because the particular
observations of the same aspect of a phenomenon, or the various features
of the same phenomenal aggregate had not yet been brought into unity by
the process of fusion or blending.
By the abandonment of the difference-marks, the sum total of all the
aspects, now regarded as forming one unity, is given over to one single
word, and a vast number of old designations, which stood in connexion
with one particular aspect or one particular condition of observation,
lose in the mind of the speaker all connexion with the physical
phenomenon in question. The multiplicity of names becomes objectless,
loses all psychological basis, and vanishes.[106] What vanishes,
however, is only the consciousness of the connexion of the multifarious
names with the physical phenomenon; in other words, the names cease in
great part to be designations of the phenomena, yet remain in existence.
But they have a very different value to the mind from their original
one. They become _Proper Names_; and what the sentences in which these
names figured as subjects and objects originally predicated of physical
phenomena, they now say of persons and individuals. The transition is
facilitated by the fact that the physical phenomena themselves, whose
names they were in an earlier stage of intelligence, are conceived under
the figure of human actions, as loving, fighting, persecuting, &c. We
must here observe emphatically that from this process in the history of
language the Semitic area was not excluded. In the course of the
following expositions we shall have occasion to convince ourselves that
mythological appellatives forfeited their appellative character just
like those of the Aryan myths. The Hebrew said ‘he laughs,’ ‘he hides,’
‘he trips up,’ ‘he increases,’ &c. in a strictly mythical sense; in
later times the meaning of these assertions was forgotten, and a proper
name took the place of each. What Max Müller says of Semitic speech,
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,’[107] is not true, at least of this portion of
Semitism.
Now this is the very earliest step in the transformation of the myth. As
we have seen, this transformation is conditioned only by a psychological
operation, and is therefore common to every mythology. Some scholars are
inclined to draw nothing that precedes this transformation into the
domain of myths at all, and to say that these begin only when, as Max
Müller says, _the language_ (i.e. the living consciousness of the
original signification of the multifarious names) _dies_. But we hold
that there is every reason to regard the stage at which those
expressions lived in the human mind with their original appellative
sense, as one of the proper mythic stages. That event which Max Müller
treats as the commencement of the development of the myth, indicates the
first link in the long chain of transformations which make up the
history of the myth. It is not a characteristic of the myth, that the
speaker is no longer conscious of speaking of physical phenomena. As
soon as ever he perceives physical phenomena as events in human life, he
has at once made a myth; and every name by which he designates a
physical phenomenon forms a myth. For if unintelligibility or
obsoleteness of language were a condition of a myth’s existence, then
there could be no myth when the Greek calls Hêlios the brother of
Selênê, since both these names have been retained in their original
sense, and the Greek knew that the former name meant Sun and the latter
Moon, though of Hêraklês and Helenê he had no similar consciousness
left. Similarly, it could not be a myth when the Roman said that Aurora
opens the gates of the Sun and strews roses on his way, since every
Roman knew that the name Aurora denoted the Dawn.
§ 2. It is easy to see that the first step in the formation of myths
could not be a short and quickly passing stage. If it were so, the
appellations of physical phenomena could not have become so firmly
established as to prolong their existence even after a great majority of
them had become linguistically meaningless, and to become objects of
mythical transformation. The psychological process which brought about
the identification of an object with itself must therefore have taken
place late in the development of the human mind. Men had already
expressed most various notions of the phenomena of nature and observed
them in many phases, long before they attained to the power of
identifying one such repeatedly occurring phenomenon with itself,
notwithstanding the regularity of its appearance.
One other psychological consideration, however, demands our attention
here—one among many; for a systematic presentation of all the
psychological forces with which we have to reckon in investigating myths
and the history of their growth belongs to a Philosophy of Mythology,
which it is not our intention to give here.
Among the various categories, that of Space is the earliest to become an
object of consciousness to the human soul, both in the genetic
development of the individual mind and in that of the human race. The
attachment of a notion to space is the earliest developed; indeed the
notion of a thing without the notion of space is impossible. Even beasts
distinguish things by their space. Hence L. Geiger correctly said that
Language, the origin of which also marks the first phase of the power of
thought, ‘springs from’ the organ of the discrimination of space, ‘the
Eye and Light.’ With the category of Time it is otherwise. The
discrimination of things in time is unfolded relatively later; it
postulates a more delicate degree of observation. The notion of Space
emanates from that sense, the use of which man acquires the earliest and
the most easily of all except that of touch—the sense of Sight; the
excitement of which also gives the first impulse to the formation of
language. But the notion of Time demands more than a mere sensuous
perception. We need not therefore be surprised if the notion of Space,
both in the individual and in history, is older than that of Time, nor
that, as language teaches, all the finer distinctions of opposite terms
emanate from the notion of Space,[108] and the very distinctions of Time
itself were originally conceived from the point of view of Space. To
verify this, we only need to observe the expressions still in daily use,
which can be applied to time, such as, _before_, _after_, _thereafter_,
_space of time_, _short_ or _long_ time. The Semitic is very instructive
on this point. The Hebrew shâm, originally used of place (_there_) is
found applied to time (_then_); in Arabic these two significations are
divided between thumma ‘then’ and thamma ‘there.’ Hebrew words, such as
liphenê ‘before’ and acharê ‘after,’ ḳedem, ḳadmôn, ‘old, olden time,’
bring before our eyes a very clear view of the transition from local to
temporal distinctions, when we take into consideration their original
significations. The Arabic beyna yedeyy, or beyna eydî, is also
especially instructive. This phrase signifies ‘between the hands,’ and
is used very commonly for ‘before,’ of space. But even in early
classical texts (e.g. in the Ḳorân) it passes over into the ‘before’ of
time. ‘Between the hands of the Prophet,’ thus means either _standing
before him_ as to place, or _preceding him_ in time. Now that which we
meet thus at every step in the Semitic and Aryan, is found also in the
third great stock of languages. The time-particles of the Anaric
languages often go back to relations of space; and what the German
_Zeitraum_ ‘space of time,’ and the Arabic _muddâ_ (properly
‘extension,’ but generally in the sense of a ‘period of time’) exemplify
to us, we see also e.g. in the Finnish _kausi_, which is used to express
a _piece of time_. It properly signifies a _direction or way_, in a
local sense; and the related Esthonian word _kaude_ is still used
exclusively to denote local relations.[109]
In myths also we find the conception of Space and of motion in space
predominant. A large group of names of the Dawn in the Aryan mythology
is formed by composition of adjectives with εὐρυ and its etymological
relatives, and yields variations on the notion ‘shining afar,’[110]
always bearing witness to local extension and motion. And in the Hebrew
myths a number of solar names designate the solar figures, as _going_,
_moving_, &c.[111] Even in cases where _rapid_ motion is spoken of, a
great result of such motion is not treated as attained in a _short
time_; but described rather by the _space_ that has been passed through.
On the other hand, when we consider the notion of Time, and the question
how far it is acknowledged in myths, we observe that at the earliest
mythical stage the distinction of Time is only very feebly presented. We
must demonstrate this at this place while treating of the method of
mythology. The myth makes a distinction between the bright radiant sunny
heaven and the dark heaven. Now as to this darkness, it is indifferent
whether it is the darkness of night or that of the overclouded heaven by
day. The myth notices only the phenomenon of the dark sky, darkness as a
physical fact or state, considers only _What_ is there? but does not
distinguish the _When_?—the time in which this darkness occurs. Hence in
the myth the nightly heaven and the stormy or cloudy heaven are
synonymous, since it does not distinguish day and night as alternate
periods of time, but only brightness and darkness as phenomena. Hence it
comes that even in later poetry and language the notions of _Rain_ and
_Night_ are so closely connected, that rain is more naturally thought of
in union with night than with day; therefore it is said in Arabic, ‘more
liberal than the rainy night’ (anda min al-leylâ al-mâṭirâ).[112] Not
only the rain, but the _Wind_ also, in contrast to the merry laughing
sunshine, is conceived as closely connected with the night.[113] In the
Mohammedan cosmogonic legend it is said that the rough Wind lives on the
curtain of the Darkness.[114] Hence also we see that the myth does not
distinguish between the _Morning Glow_ and the _Evening Glow_, but
denotes the phenomenon by itself, without caring whether it precedes or
follows the night. In connexion with this stands the fact that, as
Steinthal has recently briefly noted,[115] mythic thought did not attain
to the category of Causality; for this category presupposes a clear
consciousness of succession, or of one event following another in time.
Only thus can we explain myths which speak of the Dawn now as the
daughter, now as the mother of the Day. On the domain of language some
phenomena in the semasiology of Arabic words can be explained from this
fact of the development of conceptions, as e.g. when the lexicographers
translate the verb safar II. IV. to ‘pasture _early_ or _late_’: IV. V.
‘to come at the _morning_ or _evening_ glow’.[116] Except by the
operation of the above-named psychological fact, the express combination
of these two definitions of time in one word would seem to be
impossible.
But the very fact just mentioned, that it is characteristic of mythical
ideas to put one phenomenon into a family relation towards another, and
to speak of mother, brother, son, daughter, &c., furnishes the first
elements of and impulses towards the discrimination of _Succession in
time_, though the discrimination itself may at the mythic stage not yet
break forth into life. Phenomena occurring one after another or
simultaneously are conceived in the light of the most primitive
relations of the family; and when the myth-forming man speaks of father
and child, the very use of these terms rouses and encourages in his mind
a new category, that of _Succession in time_, or more definitely
_Causality_.
Another point follows naturally from this, enabling us to fix the
chronological position occupied by certain myths in relation to others.
If in a myth we find the fact of the temporal succession of a phenomenon
treated as important, or see that a following event is in its very name
described as such in relation to what preceded it, then we can justly
draw the conclusion that a myth of this form belongs to an advanced
stage of development, and that in determining the time of its origin we
must choose a later period than we should for myths in which no
conscious notion of time is visible. We shall have occasion to insist on
this inference when we come into the presence of such mythic expressions
as Yiphtâch _Jephthah_, i.e. the ‘Opener,’ and Yaʿaḳobh _Jacob_, i.e.
the ‘Follower.’
§ 3. What has to be said on the _historical_ aspect of the method of
mythical investigation follows from the mode in which the myth grows
under the influence of historical factors. If, after the first
transformation of the myth occasioned by a purely psychological process,
there are factors which immediately cause its further development, it is
of course the business of mythic investigation to find out those
transformative forces which have fastened themselves on a previous stage
of development. Beginning therefore from the latest aspect of the myth,
we have to follow it further and further up, to arrive by help of the
thread of historical research at a knowledge of the process of
historical development which operated on the myth and caused the
transformation. Thus we ascend step by step to the point at which the
above-described psychological process caused the individualising of the
mythic figures. From this point it is only a step to the original
formation of the myth, at which the appellations proper to the mythic
figures are not proper names but appellative nouns. It is easy to see
that, while investigation takes a retrograde course, beginning with the
latest form of the myth and going back to arrive at its original form,
exposition will take the contrary direction and pourtray its historical
transformation in the natural order of growth, beginning with the
primitive form discovered by analysis, and demonstrating successive
transformations by the aid of history.
It is advisable, before we proceed to the materials of Hebrew mythic
investigation, to elucidate the course of this historical method by a
well-known example.
Let us take the story which is presented in Genesis, chap. XXII.
Abraham, the forefather of the Hebrew people, at the behest of Elôhîm,
is about to offer his only son Isaac as a sacrifice, but is prevented by
an angel of Jahveh, who shows him a ram entangled in the thicket, which
he may offer as a sacrifice to Jahveh instead of his son. The various
religious tendencies connected with the two Divine names, Elôhîm and
Jahveh are scarcely so prominent in any part of the Pentateuch as in the
small passage under consideration. We see here the divergence of the
religious ideas on both sides in reference to the value of _human
sacrifice_. Not yet fully released from the Canaanitish system, the
early Elohistic religious tendency as yet regards it as an
unobjectionable performance. Jahveism abominates it, and is satisfied
with the _temper_ which is ready to sacrifice—the _intentio_; though
this may very well be brought to express itself in the substituted
sacrifice of a beast or something else. Hence our story makes Elôhîm
demand the human offering, and Jahveh recommend the substitution.[117]
The present form of the legend is accordingly the product of the
religious polemic waged by the Prophets against the popular view of
religion which still clung to the Canaanitish system; and the apologists
of the Jahveistic idea intend to show by it the advance which their own
religious views had taken beyond those of earlier times.[118] The
divergent ideas held by these two Hebrew religious parties on human
sacrifice are also to be seen in the legislative portions of the Bible.
In these we can distinguish passages in which the sacrifice of the
first-born of beasts is not clearly discriminated from the
sanctification of the first-born child, from others in which the latter
has already gained a merely theocratic meaning and is put in connexion
with the deliverance of the people out of Egypt. Therefore, what is
deeply impressed on these passages of legislation, viz. the battle
between the Canaanitish religious tendency and the national Hebrew idea
of Jahveh according to the Prophets, finds a memento in the conformation
of the existing very late myth of the sacrifice of Isaac. It has the
same purpose as the passage of Deuteronomy (XII. 31), in which the
polemic against human sacrifice as a religious institution of the
Canaanites comes most prominently forward: ‘Thou shalt not do so unto
Jahveh thy God; for every abomination to Jahveh which he hateth have
they done unto their Elôhîm; for even their sons and their daughters
they have burned in the fire to their Elôhîm.’ This polemic tendency in
the service of the Jahveh-idea, and the religious views attached to it,
gave the myth in question the form in which it is known to us. But that
cannot be the original form. Stripped of its Jahveistic coating, the
myth remains in the following form: ‘Elôhîm demanded from Abraham the
sacrifice of his only son, and Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac
for Elôhîm.’ But again, the myth could take this form only in a time
when the religious idea of Elôhîm had already gained such full life in
the Hebrew people as to impel them to sacrifice what was dearest to
them. When the myth had this form, accordingly, there was in Canaan
already a monotheistic religion, the centre of which was Elôhîm the
object of adoration, while the ancestors of the Hebrew people were his
pious servants and favourites. This coating also must be stripped off,
if we wish to trace the myth analytically to its primitive form. When we
have stripped off the religious coating, we have still not yet
penetrated to the central germ; for, independently of any religious
tendency, Abraham remains as Patriarch, as a national figure; and this
brings us into the historical epoch when the Hebrew people, attaining to
a consciousness of national peculiarity and opposition to the
surrounding Canaanitish peoples, constructed their own early history.
Accordingly, the national coating has now to be thrown off; and then
Abraham meets us as a (so to say) cosmopolitan figure—not yet
transformed into the likeness of one nation, but still as a person, an
individual. This stage of mythic development brings us to the
psychological process which caused the mythological _persons_ to come
forth at the beginning; and behind this stage we find the original form
of the myth: ‘Abram kills his son Isaac’ At that primitive stage these
expressions naturally signified no more than the words imply. ‘אַבְרָם
Abh Râm, the _Lofty Father_, kills his son יִצְחָק Yiṣchâḳ, the
_Laugher_.’ The Nightly Heaven and the Sun, or the Sunset, child of the
Night,[119] fell into a strife in the evening, the result of which is
that the Lofty Father kills his child; the day must give way to night.
In the above example we have endeavoured to give a short sketch, less of
the progress of development of the Hebrew myth, than of the method by
which, observing the most prominent forces in the historical development
of the intellectual life of the Hebrews, we can rise by analysis from
the latest form of the myths to the original. Having reached this, we
must confide ourselves to the guidance of the Science of Language; for
that particular source for mythic inquiry which was treated in § 5 of
the preceding chapter has chiefly to do with the primitive form of the
myth. The myth is accompanied through all its stages of development by
the same constant terms of language: these are, accordingly, the oldest
matter for investigation on the mythological field.
Thus, taking it all together, the Method of mythic investigation turns
on three hinges: 1. Psychology, 2. History, 3. Science of Language.
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Footnote 104:
‘Die andere _culturhistorisch_.’ I am obliged to render this
convenient adjective by a circumlocution, as ‘civilisation-historical’
would be too cumbrous and hardly intelligible.—TR.
Footnote 105:
I must refer those readers who are not sufficiently familiar with the
terminology to Steinthal’s _Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft_, Berlin
1871, vol. I., where all this is fully discussed in the section
_Elementare psychische Processe_.
Footnote 106:
But it is to be observed that some of the expressions produced by
Polyonymy [multitude of names] survive the process of fusion and
remain with the original signification; thus e.g. several names for
Moon in Hebrew. On such names Synonymy, a secondary function of
conscious speech, then performs its work.
Footnote 107:
_Chips_, First Series, pp. 356, 361.
Footnote 108:
On the Pronoun Wilhelm von Humboldt’s essay, _Ueber die Verwandtschaft
der Ortsadverbien mit dem Pronomen_, Berlin 1830, still deserves
study. See also what is said below (Chap. V. § 6) on Âshêr.
Footnote 109:
Budenz, in the Hungarian review _Magyar Nyelvőr_ (‘Guardian of the
Hungarian Language’), 1875, IV. 57.
Footnote 110:
Max Müller, _Chips_, II. pp. 93–106.
Footnote 111:
See Chap. V § 5, 6.
Footnote 112:
_Kitâb al-aġânî_, I. 133. 19. Compare _al-Meydânî_, ed. Bûlâḳ, II.
262. 4.
Footnote 113:
Both wind and rain are placed in connexion with the night in the
_Dîvân of the Huḏailites_, ed. Kosegarten, p. 125, v.5: taʿtâduhu
rîḥu-sh-shimâli biḳurrihâ * fî kulli leylatin dâjinin wa-hutûni, ‘the
Northwind blows over it with his coldness every cloudy rainy night.’
Footnote 114:
Yâḳût’s _Geogr. Dictionary_, I. 24. 2.
Footnote 115:
_Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie_, &c. 1874, VIII. 179.
Footnote 116:
See Böttcher’s article on this group of roots in Höfer’s _Zeitschrift
für die Wissenschaft der Sprache_ (Greifswald 1851), III. 16.
Footnote 117:
See especially the lucid exposition of Dr. Abr. Geiger, in his _Das
Judenthum und seine Geschichte_ (2nd edit.), I. 51.
Footnote 118:
In other countries also human sacrifices have been abolished by a
reform of religion, and sacrifices limited to beasts and vegetables;
e.g. in Mexico, where the reform is attributed to Quetzalcoatl. See
Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, IV. 141.
Footnote 119:
The Sunset is child of Night only if we keep before our eyes the
mythical identity of the Morning and Evening Glow, according to § 2 of
this chapter.
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