_THE MOST PROMINENT FIGURES IN HEBREW MYTHOLOGY._
Battle and bloodshed, pursuit and suppression on the one side, love and
union, glowing desire and coy evasion on the other, are the points of
view from which the Myth regards the relations of day and night, of the
grey morning and the sunrise, of the red sunset and the darkness of
night, and their recurring changes. And this point of view is made yet
more definite by the mythical idea that when forces are either engaged
in mutual conflict, or seeking and pursuing one another in mutual love,
as one follows the other, so one must have sprung from the other, as the
child from the father or the mother; or else, being conceived as
existing side by side in the moment of battle or of heavenly love, must
be brothers or sisters, children of the same father or of the same
mother, i.e. of the phenomenon that precedes both of them alike—as the
bright day precedes the twilight and the night—or must be the parents of
the child that follows them.
Therefore, still more definitely, murders of parents or children or
brothers, battles between brothers, sexual love and union between
children and parents, between brother and sister, form the chief plots
of all myths, and by their manifold shades have produced that variety in
our race’s earliest observations of nature, which we encounter in the
thousand colours of the Myth.
The talented founders of Aryan Comparative Mythology, especially Max
Müller in the first rank, have set these themes of the myth on so firm
and unquestioned a foundation both in relation to psychology and to
philology, and have so completely introduced them to the mind of the
educated class, that I may safely omit a new exposition of this axiom of
all Mythology. I content myself with pointing once more to what was
shown in the preceding chapters, that these fundamental mythical themes
are not something specially Aryan, but lie at the bottom of the Myth of
all mankind without distinction of race, and consequently must form a
starting-point when we are about to investigate Semitic or Hebrew myths.
The task of the following chapter will therefore be to find a place in
the category of what is _common_ to the _whole_ of human kind for the
myth of the Hebrews; in other words, to prove the existence of the
myth-plots on Hebrew ground. As it is not my object to exhaust all the
materials, to present a system already perfectly worked out on every
side, or to erect a building with all its rooms and stories stuffed
full, I shall confine myself to that which, after competent and sober
philological criticism, can be acknowledged as certain and indubitable.
I hope that other investigators, who will gain from the method pursued
here a rich treasury of material, will then follow up these safe results
by gleanings of their own.
§ 1. In the designation of the Heaven the Semite starts from the
sensuous impression of _height_, and therefore forms the names denoting
it from the roots _samâ_ (shama) and _râm_, both of which express the
idea of ‘being high.’ To the latter group belongs e.g. the Ethiopic
rayam,[244] which denotes _heaven_. Both roots are combined in the
Phenician Shâmîn-rûm. One of the most prominent figures of Hebrew
mythology belongs to this category: Abh-râm the _High Father_, with his
innumerable host of descendants.[245] We have seen above that in his
view of nature the nomad begins with the sky at night. The sky by itself
is the dark, nightly, or clouded heaven; the sunshine on the sky is an
accessory. Hence it comes that in Arabic the word Sky (samâ) is very
often used even for ‘Rain;’ and the notions of _rain_ and _sky_ are so
closely interwoven that even the traces of rain on the earth are called
sky.[246] In the language of the Bongo people there is only one word for
sky and rain, hetōrro.[247] On Semitic ground the Assyrian divine name
Rammanu or Raman must be mentioned here. If this name has any
etymological connexion with the root _râm_ ‘to be high,’ as Hesychius
and some modern scholars say, though others derive it from _raʿam_
‘thunder,’ Raʿamân ‘the Thunderer,’[248] then we find here again the
primitive mythological idea that the intrinsically High is the dark
stormy sky, or, personified, the God of Storms. So also in the old
Hebrew myth the ‘High’ is the nightly or rainy sky. The best known myth
that the Hebrews told of their Abh-râm is the story of the intended
sacrifice of his only son Yiṣchâḳ, commonly called Isaac. But what is
Yiṣchâḳ? Literally translated, the word denotes ‘he laughs,’ or ‘the
Laughing.’ In the Semitic languages, especially in proper names and
epithets, the use of the aorist[249] (even in the second person, e.g. in
the Arabic name Tazîd) is very frequent where we should employ a
participle.[250] So here. Now who is the ‘He laughs,’ the ‘Smiling one'?
No other but 'He who sits in heaven and laughs’ (Ps. II. 4), whom the
mythology of almost all nations and their later poetry too likes to call
the Laughing or Smiling one. When, as Plutarch tells in his Life of
Lycurgus, that legislator consecrated a statue to Laughter (γέλως) and
Laughter enjoyed divine honours at Sparta, we are certainly not to
understand it of the laughter that plays round the lips of mortals, but
of the celestial smile with which Mythology endows the Sun, as when the
Indian singer calls Ushas (the Sun[251]) the _Smiling_ (Rigveda, VI. 64.
10). With regard to the Sun’s laughing in the Aryan mythology, we can
refer to the learned work of Angelo de Gubernatis, ‘Zoological
Mythology’ (vol. I. i. 1).
But there is a primitive connexion between the ideas ‘to laugh’ and ‘to
shine,’ which is not, as might be thought, brought about _figuratively_
by a mere poetical view, but rather, at least on the Semitic field,
established at the very beginning of the formation of speech. An
extraordinary number of the verbs which describe a loud expression of
joyousness (to shout, bellow, laugh &c.), originally denoted to shine,
dazzle, be visible, and the like; affording another confirmation of
Geiger’s thesis, that language owes its origin more to optic than to
acoustic impressions (see _supra_ p. 40). I give a series of linguistic
facts as examples to prove this assertion. The Hebrew ṣâhal signifies
both ‘to shine bright’ and ‘to cry aloud,’ and its phonetic connexion
with ṣâhar, zâhar &c., proves the priority of the optical meaning.
Similarly hillêl, which means ‘to cry out, to triumph,’ was originally
‘to be brilliant,’ as is proved by the derivative nouns hilâl (Ar.) ‘new
moon’ and hêlêl (Heb.) ‘morning star,’ and the employment of the verb
itself in Hebrew. Ṣârach, ṣerach, ṣaraḥa, denotes ‘to cry’ in the chief
representatives of Semitism; but the Arabic has also preserved the
original sense ‘clarus, manifestus fuit,’ which appears in the Hebrew
noun ṣerîach ‘a conspicuous eminence,’ or ‘a high tower.’[252] The roots
yâphaʿ (in Hiphʿîl) ‘to be bright’ and pâʿâ ‘to cry,’ are through their
etymological connexion brought into this group. The root of the Hebrew
hêdâd ‘cry of joy’ is the same from which Hadad, the name of the Syrian
god of the shining sun, can be etymologically derived. This root
undoubtedly represents a reduplicated form of the radical of the solar
name Yehûdâ ‘Judah’ (see § 14 of this chapter). The verbal root from
which nahâr (Ar.) nehârâ (Heb.) ‘daylight,’ is derived has in one Arabic
derivative form the meaning ‘to cry.’ So also ṣâchaḳ ‘to laugh aloud’
(compare ṣâʿaḳ ‘to cry’) must have originally expressed the idea of
‘being bright, clear,’ which is proper to the primitive Semitic root
ṣaḥ, ṣach. If this be admitted, it follows that the name Yiṣchaḳ as a
solar epithet was not formed by mere figurative or poetical metaphor,
but is based on the original signification of the group of roots to
which it belongs. Poetical phraseology then brought into general use
what was based on etymology.
There is nothing more universal and more generally pervading all
nature-poetry than the idea ‘Like one _laughing gaily_ the world shone,’
as the Tatar poet says of the sunrise;[253] and in Arabic poetry, which
has to be especially considered on these subjects, it is met with at
every step. In the charming Romance of ʿAntar, the cessation of night
and the break of day is dozens of times expressed by the words ‘until
the black night went off and the _laughing morning_ (al-ṣabâḥ al-ḍaḥik)
arose;’ or ‘the morning arose and smiled (ibtasama) out of dazzling
teeth.’[254] The old poet al-Aʿsha says of a blooming meadow that it
rivals the sun in laughter (yuḍâḥik al-shams);[255] and in the last
maḳâmâ of Ḥarîrî (de Sacy, 2nd ed. p. 673. 2,) it is even said that ‘the
tooth of the daybreak laughs’ (ibtasama thaġr al-fajr), i.e. becomes
visible, as the teeth of a person laughing become visible. This mythic
view has become so incorporated in the Arabic language that the word
_bazaġa_, denoting that the teeth are prominent, is also used of the
rising of the sun. In a small Arabic tract[256] by the Sheikh ʿUlwân b.
ʿAṭîyyâ of Ḥamâ, which brings forward the contest between Day and Night,
a subject not infrequent[257] in Oriental literature, in which the two
champions engage in a battle of respective excellence in prose and
poetry, there also occurs a passage suitable for quotation here. The
Night says in the course of her dispute: ‘To the string of these thy
blameworthy qualities this must yet be added—that thou art changeable
and many-coloured in thy various conditions, and not stedfast; thy
beginning contradicts thy end, and thy interior is different from thy
exterior. O what an utterly culpable quality is this, which scratches
out the face of every merit! _Thou laughest at thy rising_, when thou
rememberest weeping and mourning; and at thy extinction thou clothest
thyself in thy most gorgeous of raiments, instead of putting on mourning
garments.’ And the Day replies, in his own defence to his black
antagonist: ‘What rank takest thou in comparison with me? What is thy
gloominess and thy sombre seriousness in comparison with my _gay smiles_
(ḍaḥikî wabtisâmî)?’[258]
It is not only the clear shining sunny sky that is called by the Arab
poet ‘the Smiling;’ this attribute is applied also to other luminous
things, e.g. to the glittering _Stars_ (not to the night-sky
itself),[259] and to the Lightning, which is even called al-ḍâḥik, ‘the
Laughing.’ In the Romance of ʿAntar there frequently occurs the
expression ‘the Lightning laughed’ (al-barḳ yaḍḥak, e.g. XXIV. 65.
6).[260] Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, an excellent Arabic poet, says in an
elegy on the death of his father:
I disapprove of merriment even in the _laughing_ (_i.e._ lightning)
cloud,
And let no cloud bring me rain, except a gloomy, dark one.[261]
We have in passing treated the words ‘He who sits in heaven laughs’ in
the second Psalm as a mythical reminiscence, which originally referred
to the Sun, but then, like similar instances which we shall see, was
employed by the poet in another sense. But there is nothing to exclude
the possibility that the Laughter of him who sits in heaven may refer in
this passage not to the sweet smile of the bright sunny sky, but to the
wild raging of the Thunderer, pictured in the myths as scornful
laughter, as F.L.W. Schwartz[262] shows by many examples from classical
antiquity. This conception would also be more suitable to the context of
the passage in question in the second Psalm, where mention is made of
derisive laughter. However this be, the ‘Smiling one’ whom the ‘High
Father’ intends to slay, is the smiling day, or more closely defined the
smiling sunset, which gets the worst of the contest with the night-sky
and disappears.
§ 2. The same myth is also given as follows: ‘_Jephthah sacrifices or
kills his daughter_.’ In its later ethical or religious transformation
given in Judges XI. 29–40, it is known to everyone. This story is
especially worthy of consideration in connexion with the science of
Mythology, because a Hebrew custom similar to the mourning for Osiris or
Adonis and Tammûz was fastened on to it, as appears in v. 40; and it is
well known that these latter rites stand in a very close connexion with
physical phenomena, and with the myth which speaks of these phenomena.
What means Jephthah (Yiphtâch)? We have again an aorist form[263]
exactly similar to Yiṣchâḳ; it denotes literally ‘he opens, he begins,’
thence ‘the opener or beginner.’ For the understanding of this mythical
person we must note by anticipation that this Opener has a correlative
in the After-follower Jacob (Yaʿaḳôbh), ‘he follows his heels.’[264]
Both these expressions belong to one group of mythic conceptions; and it
is remarkable that in these designations we find mythology already
advanced to the stage which we characterised in the previous chapter as
belonging to the ideas of the Agriculturist. For these two names and the
cycle of myths coupled with them presuppose the view that in the order
of time the Day is the earlier and is followed by the Night; and the
very circumstance that the idea of time is impressed on these myths with
something of precision (see above, p. 44), also indicates a relatively
late formation of these designations and of the views that led to them.
The Opener is the Sun, which first opens the womb (see Gen. XXX. 22; EX.
XIII. 2, 12), while the Night is called the After-follower; just as in
the Rigveda (II. 38. 6) the Night follows on the heel of Sâvitri. To
establish more certainly the meaning of the name Yaʿaḳôbh it may also be
mentioned that in Arabic the participial form of the same verb, ‘ʿÂḳib,’
is exceedingly frequent in the same signification. According to
Mohammedan tradition one of the many names of the Arabian Prophet is
Al-ʿâḳib, with the sense that Moḥammed, the last of the prophets,
followed after and concluded their line.[265] We will now first return
to Jephthah, the _Opening Sun_. This conception of the Sun as Opener
receives a remarkable illustration in a passage of the Persian national
epic by Firdûsî, in which occurs an expressive echo of this mythical
view. The sun is there actually a _golden key_, which is lost during the
night.[266] As the lighting up of the sun is conceived as an
_unlocking_, so the darkness is a _locking up_. ‘Who commandeth the sun
and it riseth not, and who locketh up the stars,’ is said in Job IX. 7,
of the God who brings on darkness. The solar character of Jephthah
receives confirmation from another side, but likewise on Semitic ground.
In the version of the Phenician Cosmogony furnished by Damascius[267] it
is related, on the authority of Mochus, that the spiritual God Ulômos
begot Chrysoros τὸν ἀνοιγέα, ‘the Opener.’ The Sanchuniathon of Philo
Herennius identifies this Opener with Hephaestus, who was the first
inventor of iron implements (Tûbhal-Ḳayin of the Hebrews). Now, although
in its latest development this cosmogony does not pretend to mean
anything else than the opening of the Egg of the world,[268] there can
be no doubt that this version belongs to a very late, perhaps the last
phase of development of the myth which lies hidden in the background—a
stage at which all that makes the myth a myth is quite washed out and
changed by the prevalence of theological ideas into an artfully
systematised cosmogony. But originally nothing else can have been
understood by the Opener than the firstborn brother of the pair, Sun and
Night. Another mythic trait which we know of this Opener testifies to
his solar signification in the myths on which the Phenician cosmogony
was based. Philo Herennius’ authority, who calls the opener _Chrysôr_,
says of him: ‘He was the first man who fared in ships.’ This trait,
which is far from fitting into the frame of the portrait of Hephaestus
presents a very attractive and simple conception held by the men of the
myth-forming age. We generally find in myths of the rising and setting
of the sun, that the view which lives longest and conforms most
naturally to the nature of the phenomenon is that the rising sun ascends
out of the river or the sea, and that the setting sun sinks into the
water.
The gaudy, blabbing, and remorseful day
_Is crept into the bosom of the sea_,
as Shakespeare says,[269] or as a German poet, feeling an echo of the
meaning of the old myth, speaks still more expressively:
‘—that the sun was only
A lovely woman, who the old sea-god
Out of convenience married;
All the day long she joyously wander’d
In the high heavens, deck’d out with purple
And glitt’ring diamonds,
And all-beloved and all-admired
By every mortal creature,
And every mortal creature rejoicing
With her sweet glance’s light and warmth;
But in the evening, impell’d, all-disconsolate,
Once more returneth she home
To the moist house and desert arms
Of her grey-headed spouse.’[270]
In a Swedish popular song, a King of England has two daughters, the
elder _black as night_ (Night itself); the other, younger, _beautiful
and brilliant like the day_ (Day itself). The latter goes forward
followed by the other, who comes and throws her into the sea.[271] In
this popular story, also, the sunset is viewed as a fall into the sea;
but one new feature is here added, viz., that the two sisters fight, and
the black one, the dark Night, throws the brilliant Sun into the sea. In
the morning the Sun that had fallen into the sea rises up again out of
her night’s quarters. The Roman poet expresses the idea ‘Never did a
fairer lady see _the sun arise_,’ by the words:
Ne qua femina pulchrior
Clarum _ab Oceano diem_
Viderit _venientem_;[272]
and because the sun rises out of the water, a Persian poet[273] calls
water in general ‘the Source of Light (tsheshmei nûr).’ Connected with
these ideas is that of the so-called _Pools of the Sun_,[274] which are
assigned to the rising and setting sun alike.[275] But the morning sun
is also made to come forth out of _mud_ and _morass_ (as in Homer from
the λίμνη), as is described amongst others in the Arabic tradition.[276]
It is obvious that this conception must have first arisen in countries
whose horizon was not bounded by the sea. The same assumption must be
made with regard to another conception also, found in the African nation
of the Yorubas. These regard the town Ife as a sort of abode of gods,
_where the Sun and Moon always issue forth again from the earth in which
they were buried_.[277] No doubt this notion was formed among the
portion of the nation that lived at a distance from the sea. A
considerable part of the elements of the animal-worship which refers to
water animals may be traced back to mythological conceptions which we
have exhibited above.[278]
When in ancient times men dwelling by the sea-shore saw the heavenly
fire-ball in the evening dip into the sea, and the next morning issue
shining at the opposite point of the sea-line, what other idea could he
conceive of this but that down in the sea the sun was swallowed by a
monster which spat out its prey again on the shore (see p. 28)?—or else
that the sun undertook a voyage, starting over night?—or, as is so
beautifully expressed in the Hellenic myth, that he took a bath, so as
to shine on the sea-shore in the morning with new brightness and
purified from all dinginess?
_Navigation_ is the explanation of this daily phenomenon which prevails
in the myth. It became so general that later among the Egyptians it was
divested of its original associations and brought into connexion with
the sun of day. In the Egyptian view the Sun’s bark sails over the ocean
of heaven:[279] Ἥλιον δὲ καὶ σελήνεν οὐχ ἅρμασιν ἁλλὰ πλοίοις ὀχήμασι
χρωμένους περιπλεῖν ἀεί, says Plutarch of the Egyptian view,[280] and
adduces Homeric parallels.[281] The Jewish Midrâsh compares the course
of the sun to that of a ship—and curiously enough to a ship coming from
Britain,[282] which has 365 ropes (the number of the days of the solar
year), and to a ship coming from Alexandria, which has 354 ropes (the
number of the days of the lunar year).[283] The solar figures, then, are
everywhere brought into connexion with the invention and employment of
navigation. The sinking Apollo is with the Greeks the founder of
navigation. Herakles receives from Helios the present of a golden bowl,
which he used to employ as a bark when he sailed across the Okeanos. The
voyage of the shining (φαί-νω) Phaeacians and Argonauts originally
signified only the same sea-passage, which the sun makes every evening.
Of Charon himself, the subterranean ferryman (whose name, Schwartz
thinks, indicates his solar significance, χαραπός) it has also been
proved that his subterranean navigation is only an eschatological
development of the solar myth.[284] Indeed, eschatology and conceptions
of the things after death and resurrection have their essential origin
in the Sun’s voyage under the sea and reappearance on the other
side.[285] The Roman Sun-god Janus is also brought into connexion with
navigation; this idea is unmistakably expressed on coins which bear the
image of the two-headed god,[286] and is especially important here
because Janus himself, as the etymology of his name declares, likewise
belongs to the series of ‘Openers.’ ‘This name was given him,’ says
Hartung, ‘because the door represents in space exactly what formed the
basis of his essence with regard to the relations of time and force. For
every beginning resembles an entrance.’[287] The most prominent figure
of the lately discovered Babylonian epos, Izdubar, and Ûr-Bêl (the Light
of Bêl, _i.e._ the Sun), both of them purely solar figures, are provided
with ships.[288] We cannot justly doubt, it is true, the historical
character of the Biblical prophet Jonah. But, from what was discussed in
the Second Chapter, this does not exclude the possibility that various
mythical features may have been fastened on this undoubtedly historical
personage, as is the case with many other persons of Hebrew history, for
example, most strikingly with David. The most prominent mythical
characteristic of the story of Jonah is his celebrated abode in the sea
in the belly of the whale. This trait is eminently solar and belongs to
the group on which we are now engaged. As on occasion of the storm the
storm-dragon or the storm-serpent swallows the sun, so when he sets he
is swallowed by a mighty fish, waiting for him at the bottom of the sea.
Then when he appears again on the horizon, he is _spit out on the shore_
by the sea-monster.[289]
Accordingly, when Chrysôr is said to have been the _first navigator_,
this must have the same meaning that it has when applied to Apollo, viz.
that the Sun, sinking and going down into the ocean, is taking a journey
by sea; or when applied to the Tyrian Herakles, the builder of the city
(building of cities we shall see to be a specially solar
characteristic), called the _inventor of navigation_;[290] or when used
of Prometheus, recounting before the descendants of Okeanos his benefits
conferred on mankind, and saying:—
βραχεῖ δὲ μύθω πάντα συλλήβδην μάθε,
πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.
Learn, in a word, the sense of all I mean:
Prometheus gave all arts to mortal men;—
without forgetting to allude to the ships:—
θαλασσόπλαγκτα δ’ οὔτις ἄλλος ἀντ’ ἐμοῦ
λινόπτερ’ εὗρε ναυτίλων ὀχήματα.
The seaman’s chariot roaming o'er the sea
With flaxen wings none other found—’twas I.[291]
Now if this trait raises the solar character of Chrysôr to a certainty,
then it cannot be doubted that his epithet the ‘Opener,’ which is
identical with the Hebrew name Yiphtâch (Jephthah) is an appellation of
the Sun—the First-born. The Sun sacrifices his own daughter. In the
evening the sunset sky is born from the lap of the sun, and in the
morning, when in place of the red sunrise (which the myth does not
distinguish from the red sunset) the hot midday sun comes forth,
Jephthah has killed his own daughter, and she is gone.
Thus we see in the myths of Abram and of Jephthah the two sides of the
same idea, each having its peculiar form and frame: the former tells of
the victory of the Night, the dark sky of night over the Sun, the latter
of that of the Dawn over the shades of Night. In Hebrew mythology the
name Enoch (Chanôkh) belongs to this series. It was very happily
explained by Ewald[292] as denoting the Beginner, _inceptor_, and is
therefore a strict synonym of Jephthah.
We meet with one other ‘Opener’ on Semitic ground, the Libyan and
especially Cyrenaic god of agriculture, whose name is preserved in the
Grecized form Aptûchos (Ἀπτοῦχος). Blau[293] has already connected the
name with the verb pâthach ‘to open,’ as opener of the ground by the
plough. We must here refer in anticipation to the following chapter,
which will elucidate the connexion in which the ancient religions put
the rise of agriculture with the personages of mythology; and such a
personage this Libyan ‘Opener’ undoubtedly is. Anyhow, we must hold fast
to the identity of Aptûchos (Ἀπτοῦχος) and Jephthah.
§ 3. The myth of the death of Isaac, and that of his later life, which
of course presupposes that he continued to live, are not contradictory
to the mythical mind. At a more advanced stage of intellectual life,
which had lost all share in and understanding of the nature-myth, and
the mythical figures became _epic persons_, this contradiction
necessitated an arrangement or harmonising process; and in this lies the
reason for the origin of the turn which occurred in the historical form
of the legend of Isaac, substituting for the accomplished homicide an
_intended_ homicide; which latter, when religious feeling began to rule
over the still existing mythic materials, became later simply an act of
pious willingness to perform a sacrifice. Such contradictions do not
present themselves distinctly to the mind of men at the stage of the
actual formation of myths. The slain Isaac appears again on the arena a
few hours after he was killed; he shews himself afresh. Some fifteen
years ago when a Christian mission penetrated to the Central-African
tribe of the Liryas, a great crowd collected round a priest, who began
to expound to them the main principles of his religion. ‘But when he
came to the attributes of God, they absolutely refused to allow that he
is very good. On the contrary, they said, he is very angry, and even
bad, for he sends death; he is the cause of dying, and sends the sun,
which always burns up our crops. _Scarcely is one sun dead in the west
in the evening, than there grows up out of the earth in the east next
morning another which is no better._’[294] In this story we see the
beginning of the transition from the formation of myths to religious
reflexion: the sun that appears in the morning in the east is a
different one from that which fell dead to the earth in the evening in
the west. Yet, though substantially it is a different one and not
identical with that of the previous day, it is still perfectly like it,
and qualitatively not distinct from it. At the mythical stage, when it
was still productive, Isaac reappearing is the same as Isaac already
killed. He appears again several times; he marries Ribhḳâ (Rebekah); and
again we meet him old and blind ‘with weakened eyes,’ sending his son
Yaʿaḳôbh (Jacob) into a foreign land, to return only after the death of
the old blind ‘Smiling’ one, with a large family, and prepared to take
up again his old quarrel with his hairy brother Esau, the hunter. The
living myth does not treat these events as following one after the
other. To work up together the various members of the group of myths
which assemble round a common centre or a common name, is not the
business of the myth proper. The _epic_ impulse first begins to act in
this direction, and gives the first incitement to the harmonising of
myths.
We will linger a few minutes longer with Isaac.
He loves and marries Rebekah, or as she is called in the Hebrew text,
Ribhḳâ. The Dutch historian of religions C.P. Tiele sees in this name an
appellation of the fruitful, rich _earth_,[295] a view which is
partially supported by the etymology of the word. ‘The laughing sky of
day or the Sun-god (surely originally only the Sun?) is united in
marriage with the fatness and fruitfulness of the earth.’ This
conception of the myth, notwithstanding its etymological correctness,
has little to recommend it to my feeling, but I cannot propose any
better in its stead. I only add, that if Tiele’s conception is correct,
we shall certainly understand better the feature of the myth which makes
‘the Laughing one’ (Isaac) of his two sons prefer Esau (who will be
proved to be a solar character), while the mother’s love attached itself
more to Jacob. Esau is a mythical figure homogeneous with Isaac; but the
fruitful earth is more closely connected with the dark rainy sky, as a
kindred and homogeneous phenomenon.
Another notable point in the myth of Isaac is blindness. ‘And when Isaac
was old, his eyes became too dim to see’ (Gen. XXVII. 1). It is an idea
peculiarly mythical (which found an echo in poetry), to regard the Sun
as an Eye, which looks down with its sharp sight upon the earth. In the
Egyptian monuments and in the Book of the Dead the Sun is often
represented as an eye, provided with wings and feet. To the same
conception are also due the so-called mystic eye which is often met with
on Etruscan vessels of clay, and the part played by the eye in the
representation of Osiris.[296] The sun is called in the Malacassa
language _masovanru_, and in Dayak _matasu_, both of which expressions
denote _oculus diei_.[297] In the Polynesian mythology the sun is the
left eye of Tangaloa, the highest god of heaven, hence the Eye of
Heaven.[298] The sun accordingly possesses also the attributes of the
eye. Thus in the Hebrew poetry we meet with the _Eyelashes_[299] (i.e.
rays) of the Dawn, ʿaphʿappê shachar (Job III. 9, XLI. 10), as in the
Greek with ἁμέρας βλέφαρον (Soph. _Ant._ 104),[300] and in the Arabic
with ḥawâjib al-shams. This notion has so completely become an idiom of
the Arabic language, where the mythical force of the ‘sun’s eyelashes’
has retired into the background, that we even find the singular: ‘the
sun’s eyelash is risen,’ (ṭalaʿa ḥâjib al-shams) or ‘set’ (ġâba ḥâjib
al-shams).[301]
Among more recent poets Shakespeare is most familiar with the expression
_eye, eye of heaven_, as descriptive of the sun:
Though thy speech doth fail,
One eye thou hast to look to heaven for grace;
The sun _with one eye_ vieweth all the world.
_King Henry VI._ Pt. I. I. 4.
Or with taper light
To seek the beauteous _eye of heaven_ to garnish.
_King John_, IV. 2.
All places that the _eye of heaven_ visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
_King Richard II._ I. 3.
When the _searching eye of heaven_ is hid
Behind the globe and lights the lower world,
Then thieves and robbers range abroad unseen.
_King Richard II._ III. 2.
Hence also the Dawn is spoken of as _looking about_:—
Who is this that looketh forth as the morning?
_Song of Songs_, VI. 10.
At the theological stage the mythical view was subjected to several
alterations. The holy book of the Parsees[302] calls the sun the _Eye of
Ahuramazda_. Many regard the name ʿAnamelekh, who from 2 Kings XVII. 3
was a deity of the inhabitants of Sepharvaim (the Babylonian Sipar of
the cuneiform Inscriptions), expressly designated in the national
documents a solar town,[303] as contracted for ʿÊn ham-melekh, i.e. _Eye
of the Sun-god Melelkh_, and so probably the sun itself.[304] Even in
the speech of a late Hebrew prophet (Zech. IV. 10) we find the same
view, somewhat modified: ‘_These seven are the eyes of Jahveh_, that run
over the whole earth.’ Here Jahveh’s eyes are undoubtedly to be referred
to the sun, and the number seven allows us to think of the seven days of
the week.[305] Similarly, it is said in the Atharvaveda IV. 16. 4 of the
messengers of Varuṇa; ‘descending from heaven they traverse the whole
world, and _inspect the whole earth with a thousand eyes_.’[306] To the
same tendency we must attribute names of places such as _ʿÊn Shemesh_,
‘Sun’s Eye,’ (e.g. Josh. XV. 7), and the Egyptian Heliopolis, Arabic
ʿayn shams;[307] which suggests the obvious conjecture that the Hebrew
ʿIr ha-cheres ‘city of the sun’ was originally and more correctly ʿÊn
ha-cheres. The emendation affects only the final consonant ר.[308]
The Indian singer (Rigveda I. 164. 14), says that the sun has a sharp
sight, and the same idea is preserved in a relic of Hebrew mythology,
which has attached itself to an historical person. Of King David, an
historical hero, it is written among other features borrowed from the
myth of the Solar hero (to which also must belong the idea that he takes
the life of his _giant_ adversary by _hurling stones_), that 'he was
ruddy, with beautiful eyes, and a good sight, admônî ʿim yephê ʿênayim
we-ṭôbh rôʾî' (1 Sam. XVI. 12). The red colour itself which is praised,
since the narrator evidently wishes to characterise David’s
handsomeness, shows us that these traits cannot have been invented
directly for the hero of this story; for it can scarcely be proved that
the Hebrews in ancient times considered reddishness an element of
beauty. But the red colour is admirably fitted to figures of the solar
myth, as we shall have further occasion to observe in the course of this
chapter. With this are connected the beautiful eyes and the good sight,
which are certainly taken from the mythical description of the blazing
midday sun. They are the relics of a mythic cycle only preserved in
fragments, and have been tacked on to the portraiture of an historical
hero, who had, like the Solar hero, to fight with a hostile giant. When
the sun appeared at noon with a red glow at its highest point in the
heaven, the men of old said ‘The Red one is looking down on the earth
with his perfect eyes and sharp sight.’ And he viewed the diminution of
the solar rays and heat as a weakening of his sight, which ended at
sunset with total blindness. Samson (Shimshôn), the hero whose solar
character Steinthal has raised above all doubt, ends his heroic career
by being made blind. In the Greek mythology the significance of one-eyed
and blinded persons is exhibited with equal clearness.[309] This
mythical idea is very clearly reflected in language. In Arabic, for
example, iṭlachamma or iṭrachamma signifies both _oculos hebetiores
habuit_ and _obscura fuit_ [nox]. The verb aġdana, from which aġdan is
derived, which is used of suffering from certain eye-diseases, expresses
the idea of darkness, and the word inchasafa unites the two meanings _to
be eclipsed_ (of the moon) and _to lose one’s sight_. Hence the
expression, al-leyl aʿwar, ‘the night is one-eyed.’[310] It becomes
clear from all this what is the meaning of the mythical words, ‘And when
Isaac was old, his eyes became too dim to see.’ It may also be mentioned
here that Shakespeare calls night the _eyeless_:—
Thou and eyeless night
Have done me shame.
_King John_ V. 6.
§ 4. The battle of the Day with the Night is still more frequently
represented as a _quarrel between brothers_. At the very threshold of
the earliest Biblical history we meet a brothers’ quarrel of this kind,
the source of which is the nature-myth, spread out among all nations of
the world without exception. It is not difficult to prove that Cain
(Ḳayin) is a solar figure, and that Abel (Hebhel) is connected with the
sky dark with night or clouds. Here, as everywhere, investigation must
of course be guided by the nature of the personages in question, by the
matter of the story, and by the appellative signification of the names.
Cain is an agriculturist, Abel a shepherd. We have demonstrated in the
preceding chapter that agriculture always has a solar character, whereas
the shepherd’s life is connected with the phenomena of the cloudy or
nightly sky. Shepherds in mythology are figures belonging to the dark or
overclouded sky; whereas huntsmen and agriculturists are solar heroes.
The heaven at night is a great tent or a group of tents, with a great
piece of pasture close by, where the herds (the clouds) are driven to
feed. In German, to be sure, the expression _Himmelszelt_ (heaven’s
tent) is also used of the heaven by day, but this is a generalisation of
the original limitation to the nocturnal and cloudy sky. This limitation
is still acknowledged in the Hungarian language, where _sátoros éj_ is
said, ‘the tented (provided with many tents) night;’ e.g. by Vörösmarty
at the commencement of the second canto of his national epic ‘Zalán
Futása’ (the Flight of Zalán). And in Arabic, ‘Night spread out its
tent, and there arose thick darkness,’ is quite a familiar
expression.[311]
The shepherd Abel (Hebhel) is accordingly a figure of the dark sky. This
is proved also by the signification of the name. For it denotes neither
_childlessness_, as some try to explain it by the help of Arabic, and on
the supposition that the first parents anticipated their son’s future
fate on giving his name, nor simply _son_, being explained from the
Assyrian. The Hebrew language itself is adequate to establish the proper
signification. The word denotes in Hebrew a ‘breath of wind;’[312] and
the wind stands in connexion with the dark sky. Another modification of
the same appellation is known to Hebrew mythology. As in other classes
of language _h_ and _y_ may interchange dialectically, so here beside
Hebhel (Abel) we have Yâbhâl (Jabal). This latter appellation is
etymologically either identical with the former, or if not, at least its
mythological identity can scarcely be questioned. Yâbhâl (from whence
comes mabbûl, ‘body of water,’ hence of the Deluge) signifies Rain (like
Indra). Rain and Wind are both attributes of the dark sky and the
night-sky. In Arabic the verb ġasaḳa denotes both the darkness of the
sky, and the rain, and (what exactly suits the mythical circle of ideas)
the flowing of milk from the udder. The rain is to the men of the
myth-creating age a milking of the cloud-cows, which the shepherd leads
out to pasture by night on the heavenly meadows. The verb aġḍana, of
which Freytag, following al-Jauharî, gives only the meaning _perpetuo
pluit coelum_, is known to the classical lexicographer of Arabic
synonyms also in the sense _it is dark night_. Similarly, aġḍafa denotes
both _obscura, atra fuit nox_ and _ad pluviam effundendam paratum et
dispositum fuit coelum_. In poetry also rain is often attached to night:
an old poet quoted by Ibn al-Sîkkît says,[313] ‘A dark night, during
which a drenching rain pours down upon the streets.’[314]
The identity of Abel and Jabal appears conspicuously in another
circumstance. Abel is introduced as a Herdsman. In the system of the
harmonising genealogy of Genesis, in which Jabal appears some
generations later, he is described as the ‘_Father of those that dwell
in tents and with cattle_’ (Gen. IV. 2, 20). Both features or rather
this identical feature told of both these Patriarchs, have a foundation
and are equally true. But in the method of the critical school of
Biblical exegesis these two accounts involve a contradiction which it is
attempted to solve, either by the usual supposition of different
narrators, or by minutely pressing the literal meaning of words and
setting up delicate distinctions. The acute Knobel, for instance,
pretends to know that 'Even Abel had kept cattle, but only small cattle,
and these only in his own district; Jabal invented the moving about with
cattle from one district to another.[315] It concerns us not to know how
far Jabal extended the area of his pasture, and within what narrow
limits Abel confined his: our assumption of the mythological identity of
the two designations solves the inconsistency without any resort to
minute distinctions.
Equally clear is also the Solar character of the name Cain (Ḳayin). This
word, which, with other synonymous names of trades, occurs several times
on the so-called Nabatean Sinaitic inscriptions,[316] signifies
_Smith_,[317] maker of agricultural implements, and has preserved this
meaning in the Arabic ḳayn[318] and the Aramaic ḳinâyâ, whilst in the
later Hebrew it was lost altogether, being probably suppressed through
the Biblical attempt to derive the proper name Cain etymologically from
ḳânâ ‘to gain.’ In Hebrew therefore it appears only as the name of the
first fratricide and of his duplicate Tubal-cain (Tûbhal-ḳayin), the
brother of Jabal, who is called the founder of the smith’s trade (Gen.
IV. 22), and stands to Cain in very much the same relation as Jabal does
to Abel.
Cain is accordingly the same mythological figure as Hephaestus and
Vulcan with the Greeks and Romans. But there are some other points which
determine his Solar character. First, there is the characteristic that
after the murder of his brother he built the first city, and called it
Enoch (Chanôkh, Gen. IV. 17). We have seen above, and I shall show still
more clearly in the treatment of the Myth of Civilisation, that in the
myths of all peoples the Solar heroes are regarded as the founders of
city-life, and that a fratricide often precedes the building of the
city. The agricultural stage, which is connected with the Solar worship,
overcomes the stage of nomadic life, which holds to the dark sky of
night or clouds; and, after conquering the herdsmen, the surviving
agriculturists build the first city. It will not surprise us if the
solution of the question raised by F. Lenormant, ‘pour en suivre toutes
les formes depuis Cain bâtissant le première ville Hanoch après avoir
assassiné Abel, jusqu'à Romulus fondant Rome dans le sang de son frère
Remus,’[319] proves the consistency and universality of the ideas of
mankind at the mythic stage in reference to this point. Whether the
connexion of the zodiacal figure of the Twins with this feature of the
myth is so close as this acute French scholar imagines, is an
independent question. The account of Cain as the first builder of a city
is accordingly a testimony to his Solar character. But far more
important testimony is afforded by the characteristic feature in the
story of Cain, that after the commission of the crime that fratricide,
laden with the curse of Jahveh, has to be ‘a fugitive and a vagabond in
the earth’ (Gen. IV. 11). We will pause a little at this mythic feature,
and passing beyond Cain, consider it in connexion with a larger group of
myths which exhibit the same.[320]
§ 5. The word which preeminently denotes the Sun in the Semitic
languages, and which, when the abundant synonyms produced by mythology
to designate the Sun had vanished, drove all other names of the Sun into
the background, viz. the Hebrew shemesh and the corresponding words in
the cognate languages, has been proved to descend from the etymological
basis of the idea of rapid motion, or busy running about. This original
sense gives the point of connexion with the Aramaic terms shammêsh ‘to
serve’ and shûmshemânâ ‘an ant.’[321] The same function which language
exhibits in the most prominent name of the Sun is also repeatedly shown
in mythology.
The myth views the Sun from the point of view of his rapid course,
hastening and continuous motion, or steady march forwards.
Like a bridegroom coming out of the bridal chamber,
Who exults like a hero to _run a course_.
Ps. XIX. 6 [5].
Hence fiery, rapid horses are attributed to the Sun both in the
classical mythology and in Indian and Persian,[322] and no less so in
the Hebrew. The latter may be inferred from the fact that in the Hebrew
worship in Canaan there were horses dedicated to the Sun. King Josiah,
the zealot for Jahveh, was the first to abolish this worship (2 Kings
XXIII. 11). And Heinrich Heine gives the jesting couplet:—
Phoebus lashed his steeds of fire
In the Sun’s own cab with ire.[323]
To the same mythical conception must be referred the _Wings_ assigned to
the Sun or the Dawn, which are mentioned very frequently in the
classical mythology.[324] Just as the Egyptians and the Assyrians[325]
in their monuments express this aspect of the sun by the picture of a
winged solar disc, so the Hebrews, although they did not give expression
to their ideas in monuments and imitations which might have been
preserved to the present time, have in the extant fragments of their
poetical literature left behind them confirmation of the fact that they
conceived of the Sun and the Dawn in the same way. As they called the
wind ‘winged,’ so that the monotheistic singer imagines Jahveh as
‘flying on the wings of the wind’ (Ps. XVIII. 11 [10]), so he binds
wings also to the rapidly increasing light of the Dawn:—
If I take the wings of the Dawn,
And go down at the uttermost parts of the sea.[326]
Ps. CXXXIX. 9.
Jahveh ‘makes the Dawn _flying_’ (literally _for flight_), as the
prophet Amos (IV. 13) says. The prophet speaks in this verse of the
regular phenomena of nature, not of exceptional physical changes, which
would allow us to take ʿêphâ as _obscuration_, as in Job X. 22; it is
therefore best to keep to the sense of _flying_. Joel (II. 2) says, ‘As
the Dawn, spreading out her wings over the mountains.’[327] Accordingly
the Dawn or the Sun is a bird, and the Persian expression murġ-i-saḥar
‘Bird of the Dawn’ becomes intelligible. When the sun sets, the runner
has stumbled and fallen to the ground; or the bird gliding through the
air has lost its power of flight and fallen into the sea. Hence comes
the use of ‘to fall’ of the setting sun: _cadit sol_, and in
Homer:[328]—
Ἐν δ’ ἔπες’ Ὠκεανῷ λαμπρὸν φαὸς Ἢελίοιο,
ἔλκον νύκτα μέλαιναν ἐπὶ ζείδωρον ἄρουραν.
And in Arabic they say of the setting of the sun, wajabat al-shams, or
habaṭat al-shams,[329] verbs which are synonymous with waḳaʿa, ‘to
fall.’ We then understand (passing again to Hebrew) Isaiah’s exclamation
(XIV. 12), ‘How art thou _fallen_ from heaven, _Light-bringer, son of
the Dawn_!’
As the rising Dawn is said to spread out her wings, so the setting
evening sun _drops_ her[330] pinions, bends her wings downwards. This
expression, a relic of the mythic view, is retained in the Arabic
language. The Arab says of the setting sun, janaḥat; but although this
verb according to the lexicons denotes _inclinavit_ in general, yet
there can be no doubt that this _inclinatio_ was originally something
special, namely the bending of the wings, from whose name janâḥ, indeed,
the above denominative verb is formed. Ḥassân b. Thâbit,[331] a poet
contemporary with Moḥammed, says, ‘The sun of the day bent herself (i.e.
bent her wings) that she might set’ (wa-ḳad janaḥat shams-al-nahâri
litaġribâ). But when wings are attributed to the Night, the basis of the
conception is quite different from that which gives wings to the Sun or
the Dawn. In this case the thought is of covering and hiding.[332] In
this sense are to be understood such phrases as kâna-l-leyl nâshiran
ajniḥat al-ẓalâm, ‘Night unfolded the wings of darkness,’ or kâna-l-leyl
ḳad asbala ʿala-l-châfiḳeyni ajniḥat al-ẓalâm, ‘Night had thrown down
over the ends of the earth the wings of darkness.’[333] The frequent
expression fî junḥ or jinḥ al-leyl certainly belongs to this category.
Lexicographers who translate the word junḥ _pars noctis_, even on the
authority of native lexicons, e.g. al-Jauharî, who explains it as ṭâʾifâ
minhu ‘a portion of it,’[334] are mistaken. It must rather signify
‘under the wings of Night,’ which is also supported by the fact that,
besides junḥ al-leyl, fî junḥ al-ẓalâm is also found,[335] where _wings_
only can be understood.[336]
From all this it is easy to perceive that the solar figures of the myth
are brought into connexion with the idea of swiftness, flight, and
constant marching forwards; for rapid motion is one of the chief
attributes of the Sun which naturally present themselves to the eye and
the mind. From this mythical view of the rapid running of the Sun may
also be explained a feature in the German mythology which Holtzmann[337]
leaves unexplained. ‘The _Osterhase_ [Easter-hare],’ he says, ‘is
inexplicable to me; probably the hare is the animal of Ostara [the
goddess]; on the picture of Abnoba a hare is present.’ If Ostara, as
Holtzmann proves, is the sun or the sunrise, then the hare is easily
explained as indicating the quick-footed sun. The connexion of ideas
required to bring the hare into connexion with this view is one that
needs no proof. In the hieroglyphs also, when there is free choice among
various phonetic signs (e.g. with the vowel _u_), the figure of the hare
is generally chosen when the word expresses a rapid motion.[338] So the
Red Indians, in calling their Kadmus a great white hare, may have been
influenced (independently of the false popular etymology of the word
_michabo_[339]) by the conception of the Sun as a swift-footed
hare.[340]
Abraham and his wife Sarah (the princess or queen of heaven—the Moon as
we shall see) expel Hagar (Gen. XVI. 6). The Moon is jealous of Hagar.
What does Hagar signify in this Hebrew myth? The cognate Arabic language
offers the most satisfactory basis of interpretation of this name.
Hajara, the root of the name Hâgâr, denotes ‘to fly,’ and yields the
word hijrâ, ‘flight,’ especially known from the flight of Moḥammed from
Mecca to Medina. The mythic designation Hâgâr is consequently only one
of the names of the Sun in a feminine form. The battle of the two
figures of the night-sky against Hagar is again that inexhaustible theme
of all mythology, the battle of Day with Night. With respect to this
particular name the Arabic language gives us still further light. While
ġaṭasha denotes both ‘to be dark’ and ‘to move slowly,’ the hot noonday
sun is described by the Arabs by the participle of the verb from which
we have explained the name Hagar, _al-hâjirâ_ or _al-hijîrâ_ ‘the flying
one.’ That this is not mere chance, but is connected with the mythical
order of ideas from which we deduced the designation Hâgâr for the Sun,
is further confirmed by the word barâḥi or birâḥ, also denoting ‘flight’
(from the Hebrew and Arabic root _brḥ_ ‘to flee’), and yet belonging to
the nomenclature of the Sun.
The case is the same with the ‘fugitive and vagabond’ life of Cain;
after the conquest of Abel the Sun wanders from place to place, and
leads a life of unrest and motion till night comes. A reminiscence of
the solar significance of Cain is even found in the Agâdâ, which makes
the sign granted for the safety of Cain to consist in the brightening of
the sun; or, according to another interpretation, in a horn, which grew
up on him from the moment of the promise.[341] It is well known that the
sun’s rays were mythologically called _horns_,—a meaning which the
language preserved.
§ 6. With this group of Solar figures of the Hebrew mythology which are
exhibited as _wandering_ or _rapidly marching forward_,[342] I also
class some others whose names alone lead us to recognise this
mythological character. First and foremost we must consider a word which
has been retained in the language beyond the mythical stage: the Hebrew
shachar, Arabic saḥar, ‘morning, dawn.’ This word is doubtless connected
with the verb sâchar, which denotes constant moving, wandering.[343] The
Arabic sâḥir ‘magician’ is the same word as the Hebrew sôchêr
‘merchant,’ both signifying originally those who are always travelling
about from place to place. The Hebrew verb shachêr ‘to seek’ relates
originally to the _movement_ of one who has lost something and goes
about looking for it. Although in the course of this chapter I shall
devote a special connected disquisition to Jacob’s sons, yet I must here
pick out a few beforehand to incorporate them in the class of solar
figures whose characteristic feature is that here discussed. To this
class belongs e.g. Âshêr, the name of a son of Jacob by his concubine
Zilpah. The name cannot be explained (according to Gen. XXX. 13) as the
‘Happy,’ or ‘Bringer of Happiness,’ since this signification of the root
(‘to be happy’) is only secondary to the fundamental meaning—applied,
not original. Language does not form originally expressions for ethical
notions of this kind, any more than the notion itself rises without
contact with something sensual, which may subsequently be transferred to
the ethical. The Arabic words for similar ideas spring up in a similar
way, e.g. muṣliḥ ‘successful’ denotes properly ‘one who _penetrates_
through something,’ &c. The root of Âshêr, in Hebrew âshar, in Arabic
athara (whence athar ‘a trace’), originally denoted _to march, go
forwards_ (Prov. IX. 6); intensively ashshêr, _to make_ some one _go
forward, to lead_, and as a noun, ashûr ‘way, path.’ From the same root
comes also the relative pronoun asher, which originally signified
_place_, (compare the Aramaic athar ‘place’); but we know that
expressions which serve as exponents of the category of _relation_, both
in time and space, generally start from the conception of space, as is
clearly seen in the Hebrew shâm, indicating originally the idea of
place, ‘there’ but also transferred to the expression of the idea of
time, ‘then.’[344] We see the same quite as clearly in the employment of
the Aramaic athar in the combination bâthar (from ba-athar) to denote
_after, afterwards_, properly _on the spot_.[345]
To this fundamental meaning of the root âshar ‘to march, go forward’ is
added the secondary application ‘to be happy,’ properly ‘to advance
prosperously.’ But the old mythical designation Âshêr is connected with
the original sense: since at the time when this mythical word was first
spoken the verb had not yet obtained its secondary sense, nor could yet
obtain it, as ethical ideas were still non-existent. Accordingly Âshêr
signifies ‘he who marches on,’ and is simply a solar name. Thus the
ancient Hebrew called the Sun, when he noticed the continual change of
his place on the horizon, and observed his constant movement. ‘Through
Asher,’ it is said, in a fragmentary hymn on Asher in Gen. XLIX. 20,
‘his bread is fat; he gives dainties for a king;’ for the sun is to the
agriculturist the beneficent element that hastens the ripening of his
crops.
This simple and, I hope, obvious explanation throws light on another
expression in Hebrew mythology, which stands in the closest connexion
with Asher. I mean the feminine form derived from the masculine sun, the
appellation Ashêrâ, on which Biblical interpreters and antiquaries have
had so much to say. Ashêrâ, as the feminine form of Âshêr, denotes what
the Hebrews regarded as the marriage-consort of the Sun. We know this of
the Moon, as I hope to show more fully in speaking of Sarah. Ashêrâ is,
therefore, an old Hebrew name of the Moon. In those passages of the Old
Testament which speak of the idolatry of the Hebrews in Canaan, Asherah
is named with Baal (the Sun-god): ‘The vessels that were made for Baal
and for Asherah and for all the host of heaven’ (as though for Sun,
Moon, and Stars), 2 Kings XXIII. 4; ‘And the children of Israel did that
which was evil in the sight of Jahveh, and forgat Jahveh their God, and
served Baal and Asherah,’ Judges III. 7. They probably served Asherah
too at the altar of Baal (see Judges VI. 25); but this is quite in the
spirit of the Canaanitish and Mesopotamian religious practice. One mode
of doing homage to the supreme God was to offer sacrifices and build
temples to his subordinate deity, just as any honour conferred on the
Satraps conduced to the greater excellence of the ‘King of kings.’ This
view is very general on the votive tables with cuneiform inscriptions;
so e.g. in an inscription in the Temple of Mugheir: ‘_In honore_ SIN
_domini deorum coeli et terrae, regis deorum ... templum_ Iz _deae
magnae condidi et feci_.’
Asherah is accordingly the _Wandering one_, and the moon is here made
feminine. A masculine word for the Moon, which, being common to all the
Semitic dialects (unlike the later, lebhânâ), must be one of the oldest
Semitic names for _moon_, viz. yârêach, expresses the same idea; for it
is derived from the noun ôrach, ‘a path, way,’ and stands for ôrêach
with the initial hardened[346] (like yâchîd ‘only,’ with initial y, yet
echâd ‘one;’ and yâshâr ‘straight,’ connected with the root under
discussion, âshar ‘to go forwards’). In Job XXXI. 26, the epithet
hôlêkh, ‘marching,’ is applied to the moon. Therefore the two plural
forms ashêrîm and ashêrôth are not identical (the former denoting
_objects of worship_, and the latter as ‘femininum vilitatis’ declaring
them to be in the opinion of the writer _objects of abomination_);[347]
but the masculine form is derived from the singular Âshêr, and the
feminine from the singular Ashêrâ.
§ 7. To the same series belong also the names Dân and Dînâ, which latter
is only a feminine to the first, and occurs again as a proper name in
Arabic.[348] It would be erroneous to regard the verb dîn ‘to judge’ as
the etymon: for this would give no solution of the question concerning
the nature and signification of the designations under review. Then, as
the Hebrew language itself offers no satisfactory _points d’appui_, we
are fully entitled to look for information to the cognate idioms. I
believe that the fundamental idea contained in the group of consonants
_Dn_ is extant in the Assyrian, where it expresses the idea of
_going_;[349] whence the Arabic dâna ‘to approach,’ the secondary dana,
and the adjective dunya, which denotes the near and visible world, in
opposition to al-âchirâ, the life beyond.[350] Consequently, Dân and
Dînâ must denote ‘he or she who marches on, or comes nearer,’ or ‘goes’
in general, synonymous with Âshêr, i.e. the Sun. In Arabic also
al-jâriyâ ‘who goes’ is one of the many names of the Sun which are
enumerated by Ibn al-Sikkît in his Synonymical Dictionary of the Arabic
Language.[351] Whilst of Dan no actual myth has reached us, and
etymology alone gives us any help in discovering his mythical character,
of Dinah on the other hand the chief source of our knowledge of Hebrew
antiquity has preserved a more material statement, telling of the love
of Shechem for Dinah and their ultimate union, and of the immediately
following murder of Shechem by Jacob’s sons. These are the features
which come under our view when we draw out the mythical kernel from the
mass of epical description surrounding it (Gen. XXXIV). From the
arguments of the Second Chapter the connexion of the noun shekhem with
the verb hishkîm may surely be treated as removed beyond all doubt, as
well as the fact that this word is a designation of the Morning-dawn. I
will add at this place, to complete what was discussed at p. 26, that
the Hebrew word shekhem seems to be etymologically connected with the
Arabic thakam, which signifies ‘way.’ Like most Hebrew words denoting a
_way_, this word shekhem must stand in connexion with the verbal idea of
‘marching forwards’—either by the verb being a _denominative_ (like the
German _bewegen_ from _Weg_), or inversely by the noun being a
_deverbal_. The changes of consonants which we find here are in
accordance with the law of the Semitic languages, namely:
Arabic ث th Hebrew שׁ sh Aramaic ת t, th
ﺛﻝﺍﺜة שְׁלשָׁה shelôshâ תְּלָתָא telâthâ
thalâthâ
ﺛوﺮ thaur שׁוֹר shôr תּוֹרָא tôrâ
Therefore also:
ﺛكم thakam = שְׁכֶם shekhem ——
The longing love of the Dawn for the Sun and her union with him—the same
theme which Max Müller in his essay on ‘Comparative Mythology’ has so
ingeniously traced in Indian and Hellenic myths—was told also by the
Hebrews; only that the Hebrew inverted the relation. When the Dawn
vanished and the Sun began to shine bright in the sky, the Hebrew said
of the union between the Dawn and the Sun that the Dawn snatched up the
Sun to himself and was united with her. Not long afterwards followed the
vengeance taken by the sons of Jacob (the night-sky), who, enraged at
the abduction of their sister, murder the ravisher and deliver her. This
is only the disappearance of the Sun, while the evening glow comes
forward, again independent, to inaugurate the dominion of the
Night.[352] The myth makes no distinction between the morning and the
evening glow, but treats them as identical phenomena. Therefore Shekhem
is made a son of the Ass (Chamôr); and there is no doubt that chamôr
(ass) has here the mythic significance which accompanies that animal
whenever it appears in the Aryan mythology.[353]
Zilpah also, the mother of Asher, is to be classed in the same group.
Any one who has cast even a superficial glance on the real meaning of
the myths of the Aryan nations, as now discovered and recognised, must
have noticed the peculiarity that the mythical relation of child to
parent does not always indicate a succession of what should precede and
what follow, but that the child is not unfrequently only a repetition of
the father or the mother, and is therefore to be considered identical
with them.[354] The present is a case of this kind. Âshêr is only a
repetition of his mother. The designation Zilpâ, the explanation of
which has been sought in vain in Hebrew—for the meaning ‘a drop’ can
hardly be maintained—finds a smooth and ready interpretation in Arabic,
where zalafa, as well as _zlp_, _zlb_ in Assyrian,[355] denotes ‘to
march on.’ So that Zilpâ also is ‘she that marches forward.’ Another
‘marcher forward’ is preserved by Arabian tradition, viz. Zalîchâ. She
is unmistakably a solar figure, and her name (_zlch_ has the same
signification ‘to march forward’) is perhaps even formally
connected[356] with that of Zilpâ, with whom she is identical. The
battle of the Sunshine with the Rainy Sky is the amorous contest of the
beautiful Zalîchâ (or, as the name is commonly but erroneously
pronounced, Zuleychâ) with Yôsêph ‘the Multiplier.’ Now, having been led
into the above digressions by the explanation of Cain’s flight, we
return to Cain again.
§ 8. We have just alluded to the fact that in the Hebrew mythology the
figures presented as children are frequently only _repetitions_ of one
of their parents.[357] This observation is found to be confirmed in the
case of the posterity which the Biblical genealogy in Gen. IV. derives
from Cain. Some of the descendants of Cain are quite as much solar
figures as their ancestor himself; and in an age which had advanced
beyond the stage of the formation of myths, and even beyond the
after-sentiment of mythology, this identity occasioned the idea that
these figures must stand in a genealogical connexion with the ancestor.
The same psychological process which in the employment of language
produces a specialisation or limitation in the sense of words originally
synonymous, is at work here also, forming from the numerous synonyms of
mythology genealogies, in which identical designations, after their
substratum has been personified, become his sons, grandsons, and
great-grandsons. Thus among Cain’s descendants none but solar figures
are to be found. In the demonstration of this fact, I limit myself to
those names which can be interpreted without at all forcing their
meaning. The very first, Enoch (Chanôkh), the son of Cain, from whom he
names the first city he built, is of pure solar significance. We have
above already, with Ewald, put his name in the class in which the Sun is
presented as the ‘Opener.’ The solar character of Enoch admits of no
doubt. He is brought into connexion with the building of towns—a solar
feature. He lives exactly three hundred and sixty-five years, the number
of days of the solar year; which cannot be accidental.[358] And even
then he did not die, but ‘Enoch, _walked_ with Elôhîm, and was no more
[to be seen], for Elôhîm took _him away_.’ In the old times when the
figure of Enoch was imagined, this was doubtless called Enoch’s
Ascension to heaven, as in the late traditional legend. Ascensions to
heaven are generally acknowledged to be solar features. Herakles among
the Greeks, Romulus the city-founder among the Latins, and several
heroes of American mythology,[359] agree in this. The same feature also
often attaches itself even to historical persons—e.g. to the legend of
the Prophet Elijah, the ‘hairy man’ who ascends to heaven on ‘a chariot
of fire and horses of fire,’[360] indeed this as well as other mythical
features has been better preserved in the case of this favourite hero of
Israelitish prophecy than in that of the former purely mythical
personage.
Wachsmuth[361] expressed a conjecture that the old Greek god Helios, who
drives round the vault of heaven on a fiery chariot, has a share in the
phenomenon, so frequent in modern Greece, that the prophet Ilias (Elias
or Elijah) is especially venerated on mountain-tops. The temples and
altars of Helios in ancient times were similarly situated on high hills;
and the casual similarity of sound between Ilios and Ilias, together
with the identity of the myths concerning each, in this case caused the
old heathen worship to be preserved and transferred to the name of the
Biblical prophet. But this certainly cannot have taken place, as Otto
Keller lately flippantly declared in a lecture on the ‘Discovery of Troy
by Henry Schliemann,’ 'from a sort of childish attention to the wants of
great Prophet, inasmuch as the people wished to make the fiery journey
as easy as possible for him, and therefore made him mount the chariot at
the nearest point to heaven.[362]
Enoch (Chanôkh) is introduced in another version of the genealogy (Gen.
V. 18), as son not of Cain but of Jered, who is separated by five
generations from Seth, Adam’s third son. But this genealogy has but
little importance for mythological investigation; indeed its two chief
original creations (Seth and Enos), do not belong to mythology at all.
The feeling of a later time rebelled against deriving all mankind from
the hated fratricide who bore the curse of God, and thus gave rise to
the two interpolated patriarchs and the Seth-genealogy, which runs
parallel with that of Cain: moreover, in proof of the honourable origin
of mankind, the son of Seth was made the author of the worship of
Jahveh, which is said to have begun in his time. The Seth-genealogy,
which answered better to the feeling and the ethical need of mankind,
then utterly expelled the Cain-genealogy. The author of the Book of
Chronicles, who knows only Adam, Seth, Enos, &c. as first-fathers, seems
either not to have known or intentionally to have ignored the other
genealogy, and keeps strictly to that in Gen. V. It is remarkable that
even in the Seth-genealogy among the ancestors of Enoch a Cainan (קֵינָן
Ḳênân) is named—a word which will be recognised by everyone who knows
the laws of the Semitic formation of words as a so-called nunnated form
of the word קַיִן Ḳayin, so that the two are really perfectly
identical.[363]
Let us continue the consideration of Cain’s descendants. One prominent
figure is Lemech.[364] An obscure song, which he declaims before his two
wives, has given the interpreters much trouble with regard both to its
language and to its subject; and legend has made free with this song, as
it has with anything problematical. For us here this only is important,
that the song contains a self-accusation on the part of Lemech before
his wives, of having killed his own child. As Jephthah killed his
daughter, so the myth spoke of Lemech as a similar solar hero who killed
his child. The Sun today kills her child, the Night, whom she bore
yesterday evening. Among the children of Lemech we actually find Jabal
(Yâbhâl), of whom we have already spoken at length as denoting the Rainy
Sky. No doubt the ancient myth spoke of Jabal as the son who was
murdered by his solar father Lemech. Accordingly, the genealogy does not
continue the line of Jabal. Next to him his brother Jubal (Yûbhâl),
inventor of musical instruments, the Hebrew Apollo, is mentioned. It is
to solar gods such as Apollo, and heroes, that the invention of music, a
product of the settled mode of civilised life, was everywhere
attributed. But his name seems to have been chosen only on account of
its assonance to Jabal (a favourite practice with the Semites), and not
to belong to the ancient myth, but to owe its origin to the later legend
of civilisation.
That the brothers Tubal-cain and Jabal are only a repetition of Cain and
Abel I think I have already made evident. It must here be added that the
mother of Tubal-cain, the solar man, is named Zillah (Ṣillâ), ‘she who
_covers_, _overshadows_’—the Night, mother of the Sun or of the Day. The
Seth-genealogy concludes with one who is called son of Lemech—Noah
(Nôach), the founder of improved agriculture, who ‘gave men rest from
their work and the toil of their hands proceeding from the earth which
Jahveh cursed’ (V. 29). What else can this mean, but that Noah invented
agricultural implements? The Seth-genealogy accordingly disputes the
invention of these by Cain or Tubal-cain, and gives to the etymology of
the name Nôach, which really does denote ‘rest,’ an application which
makes it as impossible for it to belong to the ancient myth as for the
names Shêth and Enôsh. Noah is a regular hero of the legend of
civilisation; and the larger part of what the myth tells of him is a
product of the victory of Solarism, i.e. of agricultural life. He is the
first vine-grower, and a new ancestor of the human race, since all
mankind is derived from his three sons. The regular operation of the
laws of nature (Gen. VIII. 22), and social order and legality, are also
brought into connexion with him. The protection and forbearance, secured
to the beasts by the Nomad, ceases; the Agriculturist subdues the
beasts. But, on the other hand, with him begins the protection and
security of human life (Gen. IX. 2–5). Yet side by side with this legend
of civilisation we have in connexion with Noah a true _old_ solar myth,
which well deserves attention. After the introduction of
vine-cultivation Noah once makes overfree use of his discovery and gets
drunk; and in that condition ‘uncovers himself—takes off his clothes
(Gen. IX. 21). Only this last feature has any mythological interest; for
the previous one, which was attached to this germ, belongs to another
and later stage of formation of legends, since nothing could be told of
intoxication till the free use of wine was known and practised. The word
Nôach denotes 'him who _rests_.’ While the Sun of Day is called ‘he who
_goes_, _runs_, _wanders_,’ the Evening Sun, preparing to set, is ‘he
who _rests_.’ ‘Noah uncovers himself:’ after setting, the Sun is
shrouded in a covering which darkens his light, but in the morning he
throws off the clothes and becomes visible, spreading light and
brightness abroad. In a hymn to Ushas, the Dawn, the ancient Indian poet
says that she ‘uncovers her bosom’ (Rigveda, VI. 64. 2, 10). If the
intoxication is also to be accounted for, then this prominent
circumstance must describe the reeling motion with which the Sun,
exhausted by his long course, staggers towards his repose. The Agadic
tradition has preserved another element of the Noah-myth. The wicked
black son Ham (Châm), emasculates his father (Sanhedrîn, 70 a). The
emasculation of the Sun, when the Sun is male, is an expression of Aryan
mythology denoting the weakening of his rays before and at sunset.[365]
The black son, the Night, overcomes and emasculates his father, takes
all power from his rays and drives him to ruin.
§ 9. Thus we find Cain’s posterity to be repetitions of their ancestor,
mere solar figures of the old myth, brought by an unmythological age
into a genealogical connexion with the wandering and fratricidal solar
hero. It is the genealogy of the solar figures to which the data of the
legend of civilisation are attached; for the agriculturist always puts
civilisation into conjunction with the sun.[366] But besides this solar
pedigree, we possess also a nomadic one, starting from the myth of the
dark Night-sky—the genealogy of Abram (Gen. XI 10 sq.), which begins
with his ancestor Shem. But the name Shêm has the same signification as
Abhrâm itself, according to the lexicon. As Abhrâm is the ‘_High_
Father,’ so also the name Shêm denotes the ‘High;’ and from this name
the Semitic appellation of heaven, Hebrew shâmayim, Arabic samâ, is
derived. Like Abram, Abel, Jabal, Jacob, Lot &c., Shem too possesses
tents. ‘Elôhîm opens out (room) for Jepheth;[367] he (Jepheth) dwells in
the tents of Shem’ (Gen. XI. 27), is said in the extant fragment of an
ancient hymn. Jepheth (Yepheth) signifies the ‘Beautiful, Brilliant,’ if
it is connected with yâpheh; or ‘who spreads himself out,’ if the root
pâthâh is its origin; or ‘who opens,’ if with Gesenius and some later
writers we lay stress on the connexion of the sounds of pâthâh with
pâthach; but in any case it is a solar name. As the sun of the daytime
is observed wandering from place to place, it is not an unnatural idea
that the sun takes up his abode in the _tents_ of high heaven. ‘For the
sun he made a tent in them (the heavens).’[368]
It cannot be denied that in Abraham’s genealogy, as given in the Book of
Genesis, there occur some ethnographical appellations which have no
mythological meaning (e.g. Arpachshad). Still, the majority of names are
of a mythical character. Unfortunately, they must remain mere names to
us, as no material myth connected with these names is extant. Although
they seem to invite etymological attempts, as e.g. the names Shelach and
ʿÊbher, yet I shall resist the temptation, as it is not my business here
to indulge in vague speculations. But I may be allowed to remark that
there is one sentence in this genealogy which reflects the nomad’s life
again. ‘Peleg begat Reʿû:’ that is, taking these words, as they were
originally understood, appellatively and translating them literally,
‘The stream produces the pasture-land;’ the nomad owes his meadow-land
to the stream that meanders through the pasture and keeps the grass
fresh and green. So instead of ‘to lead the cattle to pasture,’ he says
also, ‘to lead them to the waters of rest.’ The psalmist of Ps. XXIII.
1, 2, says ‘Jahveh is my shepherd, I want nothing. He makes me lie down
in green pastures, he leads me to waters of rest.’
§ 10. We will now continue our contemplation of the contests which the
myth tells of the sky at night, in which we have already seen the dark
sky either conquering or conquered by his brilliant father or brother.
One of the most conspicuous names of the dark sky of night or clouds in
the Hebrew mythology, and containing a rich fund of mythical matter, is
Jacob. Etymologically we have already done justice to him. Now let us
see what the myth has to say of him. He endures hard struggles. His
father, ‘the _laughing_ sunny sky,’ loves him not. The hatred of his
brother Esau drives him from house and home; and at the place where he
takes refuge, he has to struggle against ‘the white one’ (Lâbhân), who,
if not his brother, is at least his near relative, and in the original
form of the myth was perhaps presented as his brother (see Gen. XXIX.
15). We must examine more closely the mythical character of these two
hostile brothers of Jacob. To make short work of it—both Esau and Laban
are solar figures. What we learn of them in the epic treatment of the
old myth found in the Old Testament, presents a multitude of solar
characteristics. We especially note this in Esau, whose _heel Jacob
grasps at their birth_ (Gen. XXV. 26). This mythical expression is in
itself clear enough: ‘Night comes into the world with Day’s heel in his
hand,’ or, as we should say, Night follows close upon Day, driving him
from his place. Nevertheless, we can further confirm this signification
of the mythical expression for the benefit of hesitating doubters by
showing that the same conception is found even in the later Arabic
poetry, where it is doubtless a residuum of an old mythical idea. For
Thaʿlabâ b. Ṣuʿeyr al-Mâzinî[369] says of the breaking of the dawn: ‘The
shining one stretches his right hand towards him who covers up;’ the Sun
puts out his hand towards the Night, grasps him, and pulls him forward,
whilst he himself retires; here therefore it is the same relation, only
inverted. Similarly, the poet al-ʿAjjâj says: ‘till I see the shoulder
of the brilliant dawn, when he springs upon the back of the black
night.’[370] This is spoken in quite a mythical tone, and expresses the
same idea as the Hebrew when he said ‘Jacob holds the heel of his red
brother in his hand,’ only that the Arabic words quoted speak of day
following after night.
‘Esau is a hunter, Jacob a herdsman, dwelling in tents.’ _The Sun is a
hunter_: he discharges his arrows, i.e. his rays, and does battle with
them against darkness, wind and clouds. Why should I adduce examples
from Aryan mythology, where this view occurs in manifold variations and
is one of the commonest?[371] The Sun’s arrows are golden, wherefore
Apollo is called χρυσότοξος Πύθιος (Pindar, _Ol_. XIV. 15). This
mythical idea is frequently reflected in the composition of language. In
Egyptian, the combination _st_ denotes ‘flame, ray, and arrow,’ all at
once; and the Slavonic strêla, with which the German _Strahl_ ‘ray’ is
connected, means ‘arrow.’[372]
‘The Sun can no longer bend his bow’ = he has lost his power, is
therefore an expression for the setting of the sun. When Herakles finds
himself too weak to bend his bow and shoot his arrows, he feels that his
end is approaching. When the Sun regains his powers at the outburst of
spring, after a long winter in which his arrows had been at rest,
Odysseus (Ulysses), a solar wanderer like Cain, seizes his bow to shoot
off his shafts again.[373] We see the same in the myths of the Semites.
An epithet of the Sun-god Bêl is Nipru, which, according to Sir Henry
Rawlinson, signifies ‘hunter;’[374] and the city Resen, the building of
which is attributed in the Bible to Nimrod, is called in the historical
cuneiform inscriptions the ‘City of the Hunter.’[375] This Nimrod
himself, against whom Abraham the Nomad contends in the same sense in
which Jacob the Nomad against Esau the Hunter, is a hunter (Gen. X. 9).
The etymological explanation of the name Nimrôd cannot be established
until the really primary signification of the root mârad has been
satisfactorily traced; for it may be considered certain, that at the
myth-creating stage mankind had no sense of the idea of ‘insurrection,’
which could only be formed after some advance in social life, and could
not therefore endow a word with that special meaning. This signification
can consequently only be secondary and metaphorical.[376] As to the
grammatical form of the name Nimrôd, it is not impossible that, like
Yiṣchâk ‘Isaac,’ Yiphtâch ‘Jephthah,’ &c., it is a verbal form. If so,
it would be the third person of the imperfect, formed by prefixing _n_,
as in Aramaic. Schrader[377] regards this prefixed _n_ in Nimrôd as a
sound used for the formation of _nouns_. I will also call to mind
incidentally that on Babylonian ground we meet also with the name of a
god Merôd.[378] The wars of Nimrod with Abraham are not preserved in the
Old Testament, but are in Agadic tradition, which has also retained from
the Nimrod-myth an expression of a truly solar character; that _three
hundred and fifty kings_ sit before Nimrod, to serve him.[379] Similarly
against Joseph, the giver of increase, the rainy sky, fight ‘the _men
with arrows_’[380] (baʿalê chiṣṣîm, Gen. XLIX. 23), ‘who exasperate him
and _shoot_ and persecute him.’ So again Jacob fights against Esau the
_hunter_. It is always the battle of the sky of Night and Clouds against
the Sun, who sends his arrows to repel the invader. One somewhat more
complicated mythological conception having reference to the arrows of
the sun is found on Hebrew ground. The sun and the moon stand still, and
then go in the direction of the arrows which were sent off before them.
This view is known to poetry, except that there it is Jahveh who shoots
the arrows, so that the sun and moon
Walk to the light of thy (Jahveh’s) arrows,
To the brightness of the glitter of thy spear.—_Hab._ III. 11.
The rays of the moon also are here designated arrows.
_Esau is a hairy man, Jacob a smooth man_ (Gen. XXVII. 11). ‘_The first
came out red, quite like a hairy mantle_’ (XXV. 25). For the present we
will put the redness aside, and pay particular attention to the element
of hairiness. Long locks of hair and a long beard are mythological
attributes of the Sun. The Sun’s rays are compared with locks or hairs
on the face or head of the Sun.
Helios is called by the Greeks the _yellow-haired_; and in Greek poetry
χρυσοκόμης or ἀκερσοκόμης is a frequent epithet of solar gods and
heroes. A Latin poet also calls the sun’s rays _Crines Phoebi_.[381] In
an American legend the Sun-god Bocsika is introduced as an old man with
a long beard; the Viracochaya of the Peruvians, the Quetzalcoatl of the
Toltecs, the Coxcox of the Chichimecs, solar figures all of them,
possess this strongly emphasized characteristic of the long beard.[382]
Indeed, this feature is sometimes ascribed in popular fancy to
historical personages, as e.g. to Julius Caesar, who was imagined to
have been born with long hair; and his name was popularly explained from
this circumstance—_caesaries_.
We must here consider a point in the history of Art, which occupied
archeologists about the years 1820–30, and especially the meritorious
numismatist Ekhel. I refer to the representation of Janus as _biceps_,
_vultu uno barbato_, _altero imberbi_, which some regarded as the old
traditional conception of Janus, while others thought it comparatively
modern; the question of age is, however, not a question of principle at
all.[383] In any case it may be assumed as probable that this picture of
the two-headed ‘Opener,’[384] is not an accidental idea, devoid of all
mythical import; but that on the contrary, the two bearded and beardless
representations of the Sun-god express two points in the Sun’s life; he
appears in the morning and evening (as ‘Opener’ and ‘Closer,’ _Janus
Patulcius_ and _Janus Clusius_) with smooth, beardless face, i.e.
without powerful rays, but in the middle of the day with a large beard
and hairy face.[385]
When the Sun sets and leaves his place to the darkness, or when the
powerful summer sun is succeeded by the weak rays of the winter sun,
then Samson’s long locks,[386] in which alone his strength lies, are cut
off through the treachery of his deceitful concubine Delilah, the
‘languishing,[387] languid,’ according to the meaning of the name
(Delîlâ).[388] The Beaming Apollo, moreover, is called the Unshaven; and
Minos cannot conquer the solar hero Nisos, till the latter loses his
golden hair.[389]
It is then clear what the description of Esau as a man born hairy in
contradistinction to the smooth Jacob denotes—the same as the epithet
îsh baʿal sêʿâr ‘hairy man’ (2 Kings I. 8) in the description of Elijah:
the rays of the sun, whose mythical representative Esau is. It is a more
difficult question whether the solar character of this hero is capable
of proof from his name. If, not to have recourse to non-Hebraic
languages, we derive ʿÊsâv from the Hebrew verb ʿâsâ ‘to do,
accomplish,’ and explain it as the ‘Accomplisher, Worker,’ or the like,
then this description of a solar hero is suitable enough for a legend of
civilisation, which sees in the sun the power that brings to perfection
the corn and fruit, and produces in human society a legally secured
condition of social life, in short, the Perfecting Agent. But such a
description is less consonant with the sense possible to the ancient
myth, in which the ideas and conceptions just mentioned were not yet
developed. If then the name ʿÊsâv cannot be etymologically explained in
the spirit of the oldest mythical circle of ideas, we are necessarily
driven to conjecture that the appellation does not belong to the oldest
stratum of the materials of Hebrew legends, but was introduced by a
legend of civilisation. This conjecture appears all the more probable
when we remember that Jacob’s hostile brother in the Bible itself bears
another name besides Esau, much more expressive and suited to the
earliest period of the formation of legends; namely, Edôm ‘the Red.’ In
later times, when the original signification of the myths was entirely
forgotten, these two names Esau and Edom were found in the story of the
brothers’ quarrel, as appellations of the brother with whom Jacob
fights. Attempts were made to harmonise them; and the name ‘the Red’ was
connected with the _red_ pottage (Gen. XXV. 30), as well as with the
more characteristic feature belonging to the old mythic stage, that the
hostile brother was admônî, ‘of a reddish colour.’ But the name Esau
also can be rescued for the old myth, if we connect this name with the
Arabic aʿtha ‘hairy,’ which is etymologically related to the name
Esau.[390] Thus the name Esau would come in contact with the
above-discussed mythic characteristic of the Solar hero, that he is an
îsh sêʿâr, a hairy man.[391] In the Phenician mythology the antagonist
of Usov (whom those who do not utterly reject the authenticity of the
statements of Sanchuniathon identify with Esau) lives in tents and is
called Shâmînrûm ‘the high heaven,’[392] i.e. the dark night-sky. The
identity of the conceptions _Abh-râm_ and _Yaʿakôbh_ would find further
confirmation here. We are led to a different series of solar
characteristics by the name Edôm, an unquestionably ancient designation
of the Solar hero. We will consider together the names Edôm and Lâbhân,
both appellations of hostile brothers of the Night-Sky. But before we
begin this, I will mention another contest of Jacob’s, to which the
original writer devotes only a few lines: ‘Then Jacob remained behind
alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the morning rose. And he
saw that he could not do anything to him, so he knocked his
thigh-socket, and Jacob’s thigh-socket was dislocated in wrestling with
him. And he said, Let me go, for the morning has risen’ (Gen. XXXII.
25–27 [24–26]). Thus Jacob fights with a man who cannot conquer him, but
whom he must let off at the rise of the morning. This is the Dawn, who
wrestles with the end of the night, and in the end breaks loose, so as
to go up to the sky. The Night is a _limping_ figure (ver. 32 [31]).
This again is a feature in the myth of the hero of darkness, which we
meet with also in classical mythology, e.g. in Hermes, κυλλοποδύων.[393]
It probably indicates the opposite to the swiftness and the rapid
never-ceasing course of the day, the sun and the dawn.
§ 11. Jacob is pursued and made to fight by the _Red_ and by the
_White_. Both words are designations of the same thing, _i.e._ the Sun.
It strikes us as very strange that the myth should call the same object
now red, now white. To appreciate this fact, we must think of the
various stages which the sense of colour has to pass through in old
times, until it is fully developed. Even in much later times we come
across extraordinary fluctuations of language on Semitic ground in the
designation of colours for solar phenomena. As the demonstration of this
fact appears important to our present subject and things in connexion
with it, the reader will excuse me for pausing longer than usual at this
point and taking some excursions from the centre of our investigations.
The names of colours were in ancient times very vague; the primitive man
could not elevate himself to make any sharply defined distinction and
classification of colours. _Red_ and _white_ are therefore here not
exactly red and white, according to our modern distinction of these
colours, but rather _light_ or _bright-coloured_. It is a great merit of
the late Lazarus Geiger, too early called home, to have most clearly
exhibited this phase of the history of the development of ideas and
their expression in language, and illustrated it with the light of
psychology and comparative philology.[394] His ingenious researches have
raised to a certainty the theory that the capacity for distinguishing
colours has arisen, both in the individual and in the whole race, in the
course of history, through gradual general development; that its
beginning follows very late after the beginnings of other intellectual
capacities; and that, even after man had grasped the distinction of
different classes of colour, the _fixing_ of his conceptions of colour
made very slow progress, so that he often attributes first one and then
another colour to the same object. The shading-off of colours, when once
understood, has yet been fixed in the human mind with such difficulty,
that we find in many languages the most helpless wavering in the use of
names of colours. As this phenomenon, important in man’s mental
development, is no less so in relation to the origin and the
understanding of the elements of myths, we will pause over Geiger’s
disquisitions, to consider still further the fluctuating nature of the
designations of colour in language, and especially to notice how far
from clear and unsullied a reflexion impressions of colour cast on
language, their natural medium of expression. We will however stay in
the neighbourhood of the proper subject of investigation, and bring only
Semitic words under consideration. Let us pick out the designations of
Gold in this field. We cannot say in general terms of the Semitic
languages that in the designation of gold and silver they do not express
the optical difference between them, as a scholiast remarks in reference
to Homer; for the appellations both of gold as _brilliant_,
_shimmering_, and of silver as _pale_, prove that at least the different
shine of the two metals was observed at the stage of the formation of
language.[395] Far less definite, however, than this distinction of the
two according to the general impression made on the sight, is the
designation of the sensation made by each separately. The appellations
of gold in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, zâhâbh, dahabhâ, ḏahab, denote
_brilliant_ in general; whereas the Assyrian and Phenician[396] word for
gold, ḥuraṣu (which is the same as the Hebrew chârûṣ), expresses no
optical sensation.[397] The former appellations describe an optical
sensation; but no definite colour-sensation. Indeed, even a late Arabic
poet says of gold: al-ḏahab al-nârî,[398] ‘the _fire-like_ gold,’ which,
if a description of colour, is a very vague one. Ruʾbâ b. al-ʿAjjâj, an
Arabic poet living in the second century of the Hijrâ, says:[399]
Hal yanfaʿunî kaḏabun sichtîtu * au fiḍḍatun au dahabun kibrîtu?
Will a great lie save me? * or silver, or _sulphur-gold_?
Here gold and sulphur are compared together as similar, at all events in
colour, for colour is the only possible _tertium comparationis_ between
them; and in fact we also find in Arabic the expression ‘yellow sulphur,
as if it were gold’ (kibrît aṣfar kaʾannahu ḏahab).[400] I lay
particular stress upon this, because a common phrase among the Arabs is,
al-kibrît al-aḥmar ‘red sulphur,’ to denote a peculiar person, one
without his equal, inasmuch as there is no red sulphur. Now gold, of all
things, is commonly used both in the later literature and in popular
speech with the epithet _red_ (al-ḏahab al-aḥmar). This phrase, as
Osiander has proved,[401] occurs also in Himyaric, and passed from
Arabic into Persian and Turkish (in Persian zeri surch; in Turkish ḳizil
altyn), and is used especially when minted gold is opposed to silver
coins. The former is _red_ money, the latter _white_: e.g. wa-malaʾtum
aydîkum min al-ḏahab al-aḥmar wal-fiḍḍâ al-beyḍâ ‘you have filled your
hands with _red gold_ and _white silver_;’[402] dihhezâr dînâr zeri
surch, ‘ten thousand dînârs of _red gold_.’[403] In a very noteworthy
essay, Belin has shown with reference to Turkish that in the Ottoman
Empire the metal money is divided into _white_, ‘aḳ,’ and _red_,
‘ḳizil’;[404] and in Egypt at the present day the silver piaster is
called abyaḍ ‘white,’ to distinguish it from the copper money _chorde_.
Muʿâwiyyâ said to Ṣaʿṣaʿâ, ‘Thou Red one;’ and he answered, ‘Gold is
red.’[405] Thus we see that _red_ has become the constant designation of
the colour of gold. Now in what harmony does this stand with the
above-quoted designation, ‘sulphur-coloured gold,’ when we consider at
the same time the proverbial kibrît aḥmar ‘red sulphur’?
Ethiopic designates gold, not by a derivative of the root ‘ḏhb,’ like
the other languages of the same stock, but by the word waraḳ. We cannot
decide _a priori_ whether in its origin this word expresses a
colour-sensation or not. In Arabic also we find waraḳ or wariḳ in a
similar signification, and I can scarcely believe that it must be thrown
out of the original treasury of the Arabic vocabulary. Von Kremer
classifies it with the Arabic words borrowed from the Persian stock, and
refers it to the Huzwâresh _warg_.[406] In old time it was equivalent to
‘property, goods.’[407] The poet Suḥeym, an elder contemporary of
Moḥammed, says in a little poem, ‘The poems of the slave of the
Banû-l-Ḥasḥâs on the day of competition are worth as much as noble birth
and waraḳ (property);[408] and in some of the traditional sayings of
Moḥammed a collateral form of the same word, riḳâ, denotes 'money.’[409]
The Arabic lexicographers give the signification of both forms as
al-darâhim al-maḍrûbâ ‘stamped coins,’ drachmas. In the more general
signification we find waraḳ used by Abû Nuwâs in a poem of youth or
rather childhood. The poet Ibn Munâdir, finding little Abû Nuwâs leaning
against a pillar in the mosque, took a great fancy to him, and addressed
an erotic poem to him; upon which the boy extemporised the following
verses, and wrote them on the back of the letter:
You write me a letter of praise without any waraḳ (present);
That is like a house built on a foundation of reeds;
But I should think it much pleasanter than your eulogy on me,
If you would send me a pair of black shoes and a fine dress.
If you are willing, do get me a waraḳ (present): if you do so
I shall not turn you away.[410]
We see clearly from this example how general the meaning of waraḳ is in
Arabic; even a pair of shoes and a dress are included in it. It is,
however, probable that the word, which certainly comes from the south of
Arabia, originally denoted specially _gold_, but being supplanted in
this narrow sense by ḏahab in ordinary Arabic, was applied first to
gold-money, then to money generally (even of silver), and lastly by a
further generalisation to goods and objects of value of all kinds. Its
South-Arabic origin is also confirmed by the fact that it occurs in
Himyarite,[411] beside ḏahab and kethem; and there is no reason for
supposing, with Halévy, that it denotes specially _de l’or en feuilles_,
contrasted with _de l’or en poudre_.[412] On the other hand, it must be
noticed that the root waraḳ in the Semitic languages designates a
_colour_, either _green_ or _yellow_, and that it is probably owing to
this circumstance that gold is in Ethiopic called waraḳ. But this word
of colour itself is very fluctuating. Whilst in Ethiopic it designates
the colour of gold, in Hebrew it gives a name to _grass_ (yereḳ), and
similarly in Arabic the green leaves are called waraḳ, notwithstanding
which its diminutive urayyiḳ[413] (from auraḳ) denotes a _dark brown_
camel; in irḳân it returns again to the notion _yellow_ or _reddish_.
The Hebrew of the Talmûd and the Targûm employs yârôḳ (which in Biblical
Hebrew is mostly used for _green_, but sometimes of a pale face for
_yellow_, e.g. yêrâḳôn ‘jaundice’) chiefly for a green colour, of
vegetables and precious stones;[414] nevertheless, we find in the Talmûd
(Bab. Nedârîm, 32. a) hôrîḳân bezâhâbh ‘he made it yârôḳ with gold,’
i.e. made it yellow, gilded it. We have in Ps. LXVIII. 14 [13] yeraḳraḳ
chârûṣ, _flavedo auri_. There is a noteworthy passage in Berêshîth rabbâ
(sect. 4 near the end), in which the various colours of the sky are
mentioned: red, black, white, and also yârôḳ.
The above remarks show how little consistency and distinctness there is
in the relation of the names derived from colour to the various types of
colour. The same result is reached when we inquire, with what
designations of colour other objects are combined. For we find almost
everywhere the greatest fluctuation, whether we consider the
etymological value of the names themselves, or study the adjectives
attached to them. In the most favourable cases only the class of
colour—light or dark—is observed; but within the class nothing definite
is found. Arabic especially is a field offering abundant matter for
observation and demonstration, on which the excellent labours of Lazarus
Geiger might be corroborated, completed and extended; but I cannot
undertake such a task at this place. We will now limit our observations
to the point which has to be established here: the views of colour which
were attached to day and night, the sunny sky and the night-sky, the
grey of the morning and the red of the evening.
In the Vedas, when day and night, sun and darkness, are opposed to each
other, the one is designated _red_, the other _black_. ‘The gods have
made the night and the dawn of different hue, and given them _black_ and
_red_ colours’ (Rigveda, I. 73. 7). ‘The _red_ mother of the _red_ calf
comes; the _black_ leaves his place to her’ (Rigveda, I., 113. 2). ‘The
dawn comes forward, driving off _black night_’ (Rigveda, I. 92. 5:
compare VI. 64. 3).[415] In Hebrew poetry we find no similar case, in
which the opposite colours of the antagonistic forces are thus clearly
set against one another. Indeed, we do not even find that a separate
colour-epithet is given to each. Still it seems certain that at least
Night was brought into connexion with the colour black;[416] otherwise a
sentence such as ‘Darker than Blackness (châshakh mish-shechôr) is their
form’ (Lam. IV. 8) would be impossible. We may infer from this that the
notions of chôshekh ‘Darkness’ and shechôr ‘Blackness’ were closely
connected together. This is in Arabic one of the commonest combinations.
The dark night is sometimes called al-leyl al-ḥâlik—a word denoting the
deepest shade of blackness. To the same class also belongs adʿaj (in
leyl adʿaj ‘black night’), another adjective denoting _black_.
Chudârîyya is an Arabic word which denotes both _raven_[417] and _night_
(one cannot help thinking of the Hebrew ʿerebh ‘evening’ and ʿôrêbh
‘raven’). The verb iktaḥal is used of Night: ‘She has coloured herself
with the black dye[418] al-kuḥl, e.g. wa-l-ẓalâm iḏa-ktaḥal (Rom. of
ʿAntar, VI. 53. 12). Poetry gives the same evidence as language itself.
As in other literatures, so in Arabic, darkness is the term of
comparison for everything black. The black hero of the best loved Arabic
popular romance is pictured as 'black as the colour of darkness, riding
on a horse which resembles the darkness of night’ (aswad kalaun al-ẓalâm
ʿala jawâd min al-cheyl yaḥkî ẓalâm al-leyl: Rom. of ʿAntar, IV. 183.
14). This is the source of a poetic figure much used by Arabic poets in
application to a mistress with light features and dark hair. So Bekr b.
al-Naṭṭâḥ says (Ḥamâsâ, p. 566): ‘She is as white as if she were herself
the brilliant noonday-sky, as if her _black_ hair were the _night_ which
darkens it.’ The black hero ʿAntar, contrasting his own colour and that
of his beloved ʿAblâ, compares himself regularly with the night, and her
with the dawn (e.g. ʿAntar, VII. 136 penult.). She herself once
addressed him thus, ‘Go, in the name of God, thou colour of night’ (sir
fî âmâni-llâhi yâ laun al-duja, VI. 162. 4), and he often repeats the
idea that his colour and that of night are the same. Thus (XVIII. 66.
12):
In akun yâ ʿAblata ʿabdan aswadâ * fasawâdu-l-leyli min baʿḍi ṣifâtî
Wafachârî annanî yauma-l-liḳâʿi * yachḍaʿu-ṣ-ṣubḥu liseyfî wa-ḳanâti.
Though I am, ʿAblâ, a black slave,
And the blackness of night is one of my qualities,
Yet it is my boast that on the day of encounter
The Dawn bows before my bow and spear.
As a black man is compared to night, so, inversely, the latter is
likened to a black gipsy. Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, who is remarkable for
accurate pictures of nature, says of the sky dazzling with stars, ‘This
night is a Gipsy’s bride, decked out with pearls:’[419]
Leylatî hâḏihi ʿarûsun min az-zan- * ji ʿaleyhâ ḳalâʿidu min
jumâni.[420]
On another occasion the same poet (II. 106. 4) compares the night to
black _ink_:
Katabnâ wa-aʿrabnâ bi-ḥibrin min ad-duja * suṭûra-s-sura fî ẓahri
beyḍâʾa balḳaʿi.
And one of the most ordinary descriptions of _darkening_ is that ‘Night
put on her _black_ adornments.’[421] From all this it is seen that it is
perfectly usual and matter-of-course to associate Night with the colour
_Black_.[422] Indeed, by the Black the poet understands _par excellence_
Night. Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, the poet so frequently quoted in this
section, says at one place (_ibid._ I. 131.2): ‘The _Black_ one, whose
father is unknown to men, has shrouded me in clothes from himself (i.e.
in black or dark ones).’ Nevertheless, we can convince ourselves here
too, that even this point of the conception of colour is not devoid of
fluctuation. For the blackness of night is not nearly so distinct a
conception as ours when we speak of a black night. On the contrary, it
is not yet separated from the general category of _dark colour_, to
which green and blue also belong. When the land of the Banû Madhij was
visited with drought, the tribe sent out three explorers (ruwwâd, from
the singular râʾid), to look for suitable pasturage. One of them says in
his report in praise of the splendid green meadows of the land he
recommends, that the surface of the land is _like night_, so green is
it.[423] Al-Afwah, a Preislamite Arabic poet and sage,[424] in a verse
quoted by the lexicographer al-Jauharî (under the root _sds_),
associates Night with the colour of _sudûs_. So also Abû Nucheylâ,[425]
a later poet who lived under the Abbasid dynasty as their laureate, says
‘Put on as thy shirt Night, black and dark like the colour of _sundus_’:
Waddariʿî jilbâba leylin daḥmasi * aswada dâjin mithli
launi-s-sundusi.[426]
Another anonymous poet, or rather verse-monger, says in the same sense
‘Among the nights a dark night, when the sky is like the colour of
_sundus_’:
Waleylatin min-al-layâlî ḥindisi * launu ḥawâshîhâ
kalaimi-s-sundusi.[427]
But sudûs and sundus denote a garment the colour of which is regularly
mentioned as achḍar ‘greenish.’ So, e.g., twice in the Ḳorân (Sûr.
XVIII. 30, LXXVI. 21), where the joys and delights of Paradise are
described, _green sundus garments_ are promised to the faithful; and
similarly in a tradition mentioned by al-Ġazâli[428] we find it said of
men who become brethren in God, ‘Their beauty shines like the sun, and
they are clothed in _green sundus garments_’ (wa-ʿaleyhim thiâb sundus
chuḍr).
But this uncertainty of the colour which is associated with the Night is
far less prominent than the fluctuation which prevails when the colour
of the Day has to be described. In the former case, with a few
exceptions based on the impression which a certain peculiar night may
have made on the mind of the speaker or poet, black is by far the
prevailing colour. Not so with the colour-distinctions of the solar
phenomena. Here usage wavers among three colours, which are usually
connected with the various stages of the Sun himself: _golden-yellow_,
_red_, and _white_. The greatest definiteness is found to exist with
reference to the first. It refers mostly to the dawn and sunset. In
Aramaic the early morning is ṣafrâ. Etymologically this word is capable
of many explanations which justify the above-expounded mythical
conceptions of the dawn. It may be explained, as the soundest
lexicographers on Semitic ground do explain it,[429] to denote _curled
locks of hair_, or _one who springs, leaps_. Both explanations take us
back to mythic attributes of the morning-sun; in the second we see the
morning-sun springing up to heaven from behind the hills like a bird
(ṣippôr). But I believe that the word ṣafrâ is related to aṣfar, a
colour-name in Arabic, which, though like all such it has an extremely
vague signification, and may even mean _nigredo_, prevailingly indicates
a golden-yellow colour. Now while the Aramaic ṣafrâ is exclusively the
morning-sun (compare Ἢὼς κροκόπεπλος, Iliad, VIII. 1, and μελάμπεπλος of
the night), in Arabic the colour-word in question is prevailingly
applied to the evening-sun: ‘Until upon him came the end of the day, and
the Sun put on the garment of yellowness’ (ila an atâ ʿaleyhi âchir
al-nahâr wa-labisat al-shams ḥullat al-iṣfirâr, Rom. of ʿAntar, VI. 244.
1). Another example, in which the succession of time comes out with
still greater clearness, is: ‘They had defeated al-Noʿmân at noon; then
they took rest till the Sun put on the garment of yellowness, and
towards evening dust appeared before them’ (wa-kânû ḳad sabaḳû al-Noʿmân
bi-niṣf al-nahâr wa-achaḏû râḥâ ḥatta labisat al-shams ḥullat al-iṣfirâr
wa-ʿind al-masâ ṭalaʿ ʿaleyhim ġobâr, Rom. of ʿAntar, VI. 35. 2). It is
remarkable that in Egyptian the setting sun is said to throw out rays of
_tahen_—a metal distinguished for its saffron colour, which is
frequently contrasted with the colour red.[430] Chabas finds this
contrast to constitute a difficulty in the comparison with the setting
sun. Semitic analogies, however, show that the association of saffron
colour with the sun, especially the evening-sun, is not confined to
Egyptian. No case on Arabic ground is as yet known to me in which this
yellowish colour, al-iṣfirâr, is attributed to any other stage of the
sun’s course except the evening. But there is the word aṣbaḥ (from ṣubḥ
‘the early morning’) ‘morning-coloured,’ used of the lion, which is said
to denote a colour near to aṣfar.[431] At all events, the Aramaic ṣafrâ
and the Arabic usage teach us that a yellow colour is in Semitic an
attribute of both the morning- and the evening-sun. It is very different
with the two other colours, white and red. There we meet with greater
fluctuations. Sometimes the morning-sun is described as white, in
comparison with the sun of the advanced day; sometimes the former is
bright red and the latter white:
Kaʾanna sana-l-fajreyni lammâ tawâlayâ * damuʾl-achaweyni zaʿfarâni
wa-aydaʿî.
Afâḍa ʿala tâlîhima-ṣ-ṣubḥu mâʾahu * faġayyara min ishrâḳi aḥmara
mushbaʿi.
As if the light of the two daybreaks when they follow one after the
other
Were the blood of the two brothers saffron and red.
The dawn poured its waters over the latter,
And changed into white its deep red.[432]
At its very first appearance the morning-dawn is of saffron colour, then
a bright red comes, and the further the day advances, the whiter it
becomes. The two daybreaks (al-fajrân), as the scholiast observes on
this passage, are al-kâḏib wa-l-ṣâdiḳ—the _lying_ or supposed one, which
precedes the true dawn, and the latter itself. The very poet, however,
from whom I quote this fragment, at another place exactly inverts the
order of colour: representing the white or grey colour as appearing
first, and then passing into the reddish or saffron. In a poem to a
friend, in which he gives a beautiful description of night, he brings
forward Night as in love with the stars. But she grows old—
Thumma shâba-d-duja wa-châfa min al-haj- * ri faġaṭṭa-l-mashîba
bi-z-zaʿfarâni.
And Night grew grey, and feared the desertion [of her lover, the starry
heaven]:
So she dipped her grey hair into saffron.[433]
The idea that the poet intends to express here is, that Night at its
latter end becomes grey, when the grey morning begins to appear, and
that to preserve the appearance of youth and be still acceptable to her
lover she must put on red paint. But even the brightness of the sun by
day (ḍiâ al-nahâr) is compared by the same poet to the grey hairs of an
old man (II. 226. 2), as is also the brightness of the stars:[434]
Raʾâhâ salîlu ṭ-ṭîni wa-sh-sheybu shâmilun * lahâ bith-thureyyâ
wâ-s-simâkeyni wa-l-wazni.[435]
He that was brought out of clay [Adam] saw it [the world], when its hair
was all grey,
With the Pleiades, the two Fishes and the Balance.
We find the same figure, of which we have seen Abû-l-ʿAlâ to be so fond,
used by Abû-l-Ḥasan ʿAlî b. Isḥâḳ al-Waddânî, a Maġreb [North African]
poet, who says of the morning: ‘It is like the greyness which spreads
itself over the black hair of youth (the black night):’
Dâna-ṣ-ṣabâḥu wa-lâ ata wa-kaʾannahu * sheybun aṭalla ʿala sawâdi
shibâbî.[436]
So, inversely, when the hair grows grey it is said ‘The dark night is
lighted.’[437]
From all these cases it may be gathered that the progress of the sun
from the dawn to the full day is treated sometimes as a transition from
a whitish to a reddish colour, sometimes as the reverse. Sometimes the
redness of morning begins, and turns into white; sometimes the greyness,
which passes into red.[438] But both conceptions are also found combined
in a single idea: thus, for instance, al-ʿArjî the poet says:
Bâtâ bi-anʿâmi leylatin ḥatta badâ * subḥun talawwaḥa
ka-l-aġarri-l-ashkari.
They both passed a joyous night, until began
The morning to appear, like a red horse with white forehead-spot
(ġurrâ).[439]
Some already-cited examples have enabled us to observe that when day is
contrasted with night, it is done by calling the night black and the day
white. To the former instances I will now add another for clearness’
sake: ‘Till the whiteness of the day became black’ (ḥatta ʿâda bayâḍ
al-nahâr sawâdan, Rom. of ʿAntar, XXV. 5. 4). The attribute _white_,
applied to the sun of the advanced day, is especially clear in a passage
which I must not omit to mention. The poet al-Mutanabbî says:
Azûruhum wa-sawâdu-l-leyli yashfaʿunî * wa-anthanî wa-bayâḍu-ṣ-ṣubḥi
yuġrî bî.
I visit them when the _blackness of the night_ aids me;
And I retire when the _whiteness of the morning_ drives me away.
A critic[440] remarks on this passage that the writer ought to have
spoken of the _day_ rather than of the _whiteness of the morning_, as
the rhetorical law of al-muḳâbalâ ‘antithesis’ demands as the opposite
to Night not Dawn, but Day. Thus ‘the whiteness of day’ would be better.
Another passage with the antithesis is contained in Ḥarîrî: ‘The white
day becomes black’ (iswadda-l-yaum al-abyaḍ).[441] This use of language
is characteristically exemplified in the expression sirnâ bayâḍa jauminâ
wa-sawâda leylatinâ, ‘we travelled night and day’ (literally, ‘we
travelled during the whiteness of our day and the blackness of our
night,’ Aġânî, II. 74. 20). But apart from any antithesis, the white
colour is attributed to the light of the morning and the day:
falamma-rtafaʿat al-shams fabyâḍḍat, ‘after the sun had risen high and
_become white_,’ is said in a tradition.[442] In the Romance of ʿAntar
(XXIV. 111. 3), a horse is thus described: ‘he was white in colour, as
if he were the day when it breaks, or the moon[443] when it shines with
full beams’ (wa-hua abyaḍ al-laun kaʾannahu al-ṣabâḥ iḏa-nfajar
wa-l-ḳamar iḏâ badar).
On Assyrian ground also we discover the idea of the _whiteness_ of the
sun, expressed, not indeed by a word directly signifying a colour, but
yet by an epithet which is undoubtedly founded upon this idea. In the
lyrical poem, called by Schrader ‘The Assyrian Royal Psalm’ (line 29), a
land with a _silver sky_,[444] i.e. with a bright shining sunny sky, is
desired for the king. So here the bright sunny sky is represented as of
silver colour. On the other hand, Ḥomar^m, the name of a Himyarite
god,[445] has perhaps a solar meaning, equivalent to the Arabic aḥmar
‘Red;’ at all events, the fancy that he may be a sort of Bacchus (chamr
‘wine’) sounds improbable. In Hebrew literature we find no direct
indications of the colours which were associated with the sun: an
indirect indication is afforded by the passage in Is. XXIV. 23, where it
is said that ‘the sun grows pale and the moon red.’[446] In the Talmûd
literature, however, we find an incidental discussion of the colour of
the sun; to which one of the Excursus is devoted.[447]
I have paused long on the ideas held of the Sun with reference to
colour, longer than is consistent with the symmetry of my book, and have
especially brought up many examples from the Arabic language, celebrated
for its wealth of synonyms and epithets—all with the object of giving
probability to my ideas on the mythical character of Esau or Edom and
Laban, Jacob’s two hostile kinsmen. We have seen that the sun is called
_white_ quite as frequently as _red_;[448] now is it not certain beyond
a doubt that the two foes of Jacob the Night-sky, namely Edom the red
and Laban the white, are only names for the Sun, formed by the Hebrew
myth on the ground of the sun’s colour? The war of darkness and the
stormy sky against the red or white sunny sky is described in the rich
language of Mythology, which has devoted such multifarious appellations
to this struggle, as a strife of one who follows on the heel of his
brother, against the white and the red. Here we will return to a point
which was anticipated in the Third Section of this chapter; I mean the
fact that the mythic feature which, with other solar characteristics,
has fastened itself on the description of David, a perfectly historical
person, that he was admônî ‘reddish,’ belongs to the same group of
mythic ideas. It is a bit of solar myth: ‘He is red, and of excellent
sight and good eyes’ (1 Sam. XVI. 12).
Thus the mythical appellations Jacob, Edom, and Laban appear to be
cleared up, and the features belonging to them have discovered to us the
nocturnal character of the first-named and the solar of the two latter
personages. I have confined myself to the most essential point, the
statement of the fact and the identification of the mythic figures in
the centre of the story. If we were to use the collateral points also as
mythic matter, more abundant results might be attained. But we must
limit ourselves to an investigation of the main features, since in the
present position of mythological inquiry it would be difficult and
dangerous to try to pick out with any confidence from the epic
descriptions in the Bible all that belongs to the original myth. It
might, for instance, be urged that Jacob is endowed with a _deceitful_
character, since he cheats the one of his blessing and his birthright,
and the other of his sheep (Hermes), and this might be treated as
characteristic of the _night_, as the figures of the night-sky are
credited elsewhere with a thievish nature. ‘Like thieves,’ said the
ancient Indian singer, ‘so the nights stole away with their stars, that
Sûrya might become visible’ (Rigveda, I. 50. 2).
In a legend of the Palatinate the _King of the Night_ residing at the
Ice-sea _stole_ the Sun;[449] Rachel steals the household-gods of her
father Laban (Gen. XXXI. 19); and Jacob himself, as the Scripture
expresses it, _steals_ the heart of Laban the Aramean, not telling him
of his intention to fly (v. 20).
Now wrapt in mantle, like a thief, the Night is seen,
She covers o'er her silver-studded raiment’s sheen.
says Arany, in his ‘Gipsies of Nagy-Ida’[450] (Canto I. v. 21).
But what I have hitherto explained is only one side of Jacob’s mythical
characteristics: we have seen against whom he fought. But Jacob did not
only fight: he loved also, loved with tenderness and self-abnegation. He
wooed, he married; and the history of his children takes up a
considerable portion of the Book of Genesis. The loves of the Night-sky,
the names of his wives whom he gained by conquest, and of the children
that came out of his loins, must be an important part of the Myth of the
Night-sky; and we should be accomplishing our task very imperfectly if
we refused to enter on the consideration of these figures of Hebrew
mythology.
§ 12. Let us turn first to his women. He has both wives and so-called
concubines. In my opinion this distinction belongs to the original
form of the myth; and some explanation of its significancy must be
given at the outset. There is another already-discussed name of the
night-sky, Abhrâm, with which are associated both a legitimate wife
Sârâ, and a concubine Hâgâr; and in the latter we discovered the
mythical bearer of a solar name, ‘the Flying one.’ This circumstance
leads to the discovery that, whilst the concubines in mythical
phraseology are figures of _opposite_ nature to their master, like
Hagar a solar figure to Abram the dark sky, the names of the
legitimate wives represent figures homogeneous to the nature of the
husband. This is the case preeminently with Sarah, Abram’s wife. The
name signifies _Princess, Lady_, the Princess of the Heaven, the Moon,
the Queen who rules over the great army of the night-sky (ṣebhâ
hash-shâmayîm). Another name of the moon in Hebrew mythology is
probably Milkâ (the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor, Gen. XI. 29),
i.e. ‘the Queen’—not expressly _wife_, but grammatically the feminine
form of Melekh (Abhî-melekh) ‘King’ (the Sun), like Ashêrâ (Moon) from
Âshêr (Sun), or Lebhânâ (Moon) from Lâbhân (Sun). ‘Queen or Princess
of Heaven’ is a very frequent name for the Moon.[451] We learn most
remarkable facts from the Chaldee-Babylonian series of deities, which,
though not old enough to be a myth, must, like every theogony, have
sprung from mythology misunderstood. In this system, in which the
deities are arranged in male and female triads, so that there is
always a male deity parallel to the goddess of the female triad who
stands at the same spot, Sîn (the Moon) and Gula of the male triad are
balanced respectively by ‘the highest Princess’ and by Malkît ‘the
Queen’ in the female; and these are only Sarah and Milcah again. Istar
also is described as Princess (sarrat) of heaven;[452] which is
probably connected with the fact that this goddess of the Assyrian
Pantheon, who is commonly compared to Venus, in later times became a
moon-goddess.[453] Sir H. Rawlinson says that Μισσαρή in Damascius may
be cognate with the Assyrian Sheruha or Sheruya, the wife of Asshûr,
and signify ‘the Queen.’[454] And as it is the _stars_ over which the
Queen of the night-sky bears sway, she is _siderum regina_ in Horace
(_Carmen saeculare_, v. 35).[455] Even in the latest times the Hebrews
called the moon the ‘Queen of Heaven’ (mele-kheth hash-shâmayîm, Jer.
VII. 18), and paid her divine honours in this character at the time of
the Captivity. The Hebrew women who had migrated to Egypt answered the
Prophet who warned them: ‘As to the word that thou has spoken unto us
in the name of Jahveh, we do not listen to thee; for we shall
certainly do all the things that have gone forth from our own mouth;
burning incense to the _Queen of Heaven_, and pouring libations to her
as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and princes, in the
cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, and were filled with
food and were happy and saw no evil; whereas ever since we have ceased
to burn incense to the _Queen of Heaven_ and pour libations to her, we
have wanted everything, and been consumed by sword and famine. And
when we were burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and pouring
libations to her, was it _without our men_ that we made cakes for her,
to receive her image, and poured libations to her?’ (Jer. XLIV.
16–19). This reply leads us to infer that the moon-worship in Judah
was specially attractive to the women and allowed by the men, and was
not a mere secondary religious act, but a prominent worship of the
first rank; yet a worship which, considering the prevailingly solar
character of the religion of an agricultural people, was then kept up
chiefly by the women as the relic of an ancient nomadic age. What was
the antiquity of this lunar worship among the Hebrews, is testified
(as has long been known) by the part played by Mount Sinai in the
history of Hebrew religion. For this geographical name is doubtless
related to _Sin_, one of the Semitic names of the moon. The mountain
must in ancient times have been consecrated to the Moon.[456] The
beginning of the Hebrew religion, which, as we shall see, was
connected with the phenomena of the night-sky, germinated first during
the residence in Egypt on the foundation of an ancient myth. The
recollection of this occasioned them to call the part of Egypt which
they had long inhabited ereṣ Sînîm ‘Moonland’ (Is. XLIX. 12).
Obviously the lunar worship of Nomads stands in connexion with the
prominent position occupied by the figures of the night-sky in their
mythology. When, through that psychological process which results in
the decay of the life of the myth and the rise of a religious view of
the world, the mythic elements become religion, then the Moon is not
believed to possess those deleterious qualities of which the later
legends of the American nations are full, but is rather regarded as
the source of blessing and success. The Hebrews called the most
fruitful place in their new country, the ‘City of the Palms,’ formerly
delightful, though now a very cheerless hole, by a name denoting
_Moon-city_—Yerêchô (Jericho). An analogous system of nomenclature is
mentioned by Ḥamzâ of Iṣpahân, a Persian who wrote in Arabic, who says
in his _Kitâb al-muwâzanâ_ that, because the moon is the cause of an
abundant supply of water and of rain, the names of the most fruitful
places in Persia are compounded with the word _mâh_ ‘moon:’ e.g.
Mâhidînâr, Mâhishereryârân, Mâhikârân, Mâhiharûm &c.[457] For, in the
opinion of the Iranians the growth of plants depends on the influence
of the moon.[458] The Arabic language still shows clearly the mythical
connexion between the moon and good pasture,[459] in the fact that the
same word, which as a noun, al-ḳamar, signifies moon, as a verb,
ḳamara, expresses the notion _multus fuit_ (de aqua et pabulo), and
ḳamir means _multa_ aqua.
The nomadic Hebrews called Sarah, the Princess of Heaven,[460] i.e. of
the night-sky, Abram’s legitimate wife. The same relation between wife
and concubine comes out with still greater distinctness in the case of
Jacob, Abram’s synonym. His legitimate wives are Leah and Rachel; to the
latter he is bound by the tenderest love—a love which in the view of the
Biblical writer became the ideal of self-sacrificing conjugal affection.
Both their names are homogeneous to Jacob’s mythical character, and the
bearers of these mythical appellations are figures of the dark sky of
night and clouds. It will be regarded by serious investigators as no
mere chance that the word Lêʾâ in its origin signifies the same as
Delîlâ, namely, _languida, defatigata_, the _Languishing, Weary,
Weak_—the setting Sun that has finished its day’s work, or rather the
time when there is no longer any sun, but the Night, who cuts off from
her long-haired lover or bridegroom the locks (_crines Phoebi_) in which
his whole force resides; the Night, which robs the Sun of his splendid
rays, and causes him to fall powerless to the ground and lie blind on
the battle-field. Even in a product of the Jewish literature of a later
age the expression châlâsh ‘weak, debilitated’ is used of the setting
sun. ‘He is like a hero who goes forth strong and returns home
powerless; thus the sun at his rising is a mighty hero, and at his
setting a _weakling_.’[461] Nothing similar is connected with the name
Lêʾâ; yet it is clear that this name is an appellation of the setting
sun or the advancing night, when we read: weʿênê Lêʾâ rakkôth ‘the eyes
of Leah were weak’ (Gen. XXIX. 17).[462] How closely the ideas ‘End’
(here that of the day) and ‘Weariness’ hang together in Semitic, we see
clearly in the Aramaic word shilhâ, shilhê ‘end,’ which is developed out
of the Shaphʿêl form of the root lehî (the Hebrew lâʾâ, whence the name
Lêʾâ), which denotes ‘to be wearied.’[463] The name Râchêl is still
clearer and less ambiguous. It signifies ‘Sheep.’ When the ancients
raised their eyes to heaven and saw grey clouds slowly driving over the
celestial fields, they discovered there the same as our children see
when in their innocent imaginations they find figures of hills and
animals in the sky. Men who form myths stand in this respect on the same
intellectual stage as our children. How finely has Angelo de Gubernatis,
in the introduction to his most original work ‘Zoological Mythology,’
attached his profound explanations of the old animal-mythology, which
are based upon a sympathetic poetical feeling after the sentiments of a
mythic age, to vivid memories of that early age in which the enquirer
after myths himself looked up to heaven and _made_ myths! Moreover, what
the primitive humanity that created myths and the children of our
advanced modern age read in the picture-book of nature,[464] is still
found there by people who, although they no longer make myths, yet excel
us in immediate observation of nature. The sandhills and downs of the
Sahara are variously called by the natives kelb ‘Dog,’ kebsh ‘Ram,’ or
chashm el-kelb or chashm el-kebsh ‘Dog’s nose’ or ‘Ram’s nose.’[465] But
it is chiefly the clouds that gave so much food to fancy. On Arabic
ground we can refer to a treatise by Abû Bekr ibn Dureyd, a linguist of
an early age known to every Arabist, on the ‘Description of the Rain and
the Cloud,’ which the learned Professor William Wright has published in
a useful collection. In this treatise many a vivid picture is to be
found which exhibits the continual working of the old mythic views.[466]
Even a modern literature nearer to us may be quoted; for who knows not
the classical passage in Shakespeare, where Polonius makes observations
on the forms of the clouds—a series of mythical observations, which the
same poet allows another of his heroes to condense into a mythological
_résumé_:
Sometime we see a cloud that’s dragonish;
A vapour sometime like a bear or lion,
A tower'd citadel, a pendent rock,
A forked mountain, or blue promontory
With trees upon ’t, that nod unto the world,
And mock our eyes with air.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, IV. 14.
If the sky is a pasture, it is most natural to see in the clouds beasts
feeding there. So the nomad Arab sees in the clouds herds of
camels,[467] and calls a small herd of twenty or thirty camels by the
same name by which he describes a broken-off fragment of cloud—al-ṣirmâ.
The poet Abû Ḥibâl calls a rain-cloud dalûḥ, i.e. ‘a heavily laden
camel;’[468] and according to the Arabian philologist al-Tebrîzî a cloud
accompanied by thunder and lightning is called al-ḥannânâ ‘the
bellowing,’ because the ancient Arabs compared a thundering cloud[469]
to a camel that breaks out into loud bellowing from painful desire to
reach home.[470] How full of meaning is the myth that lies hidden behind
this expression ḥannânâ! The camel on a journey has gone far away from
home, longs to be back again, and bellows with terrible pain: it is the
Thunder.[471] And this myth was not confined to the Arabs; we find a
slight trace of it among the later Jews, in the Talmûd. When it
thundered, they said, ‘The clouds groan.’ Achâ b. Jaʿaḳôbh describes
meteorological phenomena in the following words: ‘The lightning
sparkles, _the clouds groan_ (menahamîn ʿanânê), and the rain comes’
(Berâkhôth, fol. 59. a). This mythical conception is only a variation of
the more general view that thunder is a _lion’s roaring_ (Job XXXVII. 4;
shâʾag is used specially of the lion), out of which grew the roaring of
Jahveh, mentioned in many passages of prophecy and poetry—a result of
the monotheistic transformation of mythical ideas. In Arabic hamhama is
used both of the lion’s roaring and of thunder; and so also zamjara. In
the work of Ibn Dureyd already quoted an Arab says of a thunder-cloud,
‘Its thunders groan like camels longing to get home (ṭirâb), and roar
like raging lions.’[472]
The Arab saw in the clouds a herd of camels, in a single cloud a single
camel.[473] The ostrich, which is a favourite term of comparison in
Arabic poetry, is also seen by them in the clouds. Zuheyr b. ʿUrwâ says
of a little cloud visible behind a larger one, that it was an ostrich
hung up by the feet (kaʾanna-r-rabâba duweyna-s-saḥâbi * naʿâmun
tuʿallaḳu bi-l-arjuli).[474] From the Hebrew mythology we have the
similar conception of the cloud as a _sheep_, as Râchêl. She is the
legitimate wife of the dark, nocturnal or overclouded sky. When the
cloud let fall its wet burden in drizzling rain upon the earth, the
primitive Hebrews said ‘Rachel is weeping for her children’—a phrase
preserved from an age of mythic ideas, which was retained to a late age
in a very different sense.[475] For as the Arab regarded the thunder as
the cloud’s cry of pain, so the Hebrew could see in the rain Rachel’s
tears. Even up to the present day the Arabs say of the rain: ‘The sky
weeps, the clouds weep;’[476] and the idea was not strange to the Greek,
who spoke of the ‘Tears of Zeus.’[477] In the Romance of ʿAntar, XXV.
58. 4, it is said of the rain:
The gloomy heaven weeps with tears, that stream in constant flow
Out from the eye of a rainful cloud.
The poet Ibn Muṭeyr says most beautifully of the weeping sky: ‘The cloud
smiles at the lighting up (of the lightning), and weeps from the corners
of her eyes, the moisture of which is not excited by splinters (sticking
in the eye); and without either joy or grief she combines laughing and
weeping.’[478] Rachel has a favourite son called Yôsêph (Joseph). This
name signifies: ‘He multiplies,’ or, from the explanation already given,
‘The Multiplier.’ He is called in a hymn addressed to him, ‘The blessing
of the heaven above, the blessing of the flood that lies below, the
blessing of the (female) breasts and of the womb’ (Gen. XLIX. 25). Can
we doubt that this is the Rain, which multiplies—the blessing from
above, which lies below in floods of water, the rain which
mythologically was so often regarded as the nutritive milk of the milked
cows of the clouds?[479] And probably the old Arabic idol called
Zâʾidatu,[480] i.e. ‘the Multiplieress,’ has the same mythological
signification as the synonymous term Joseph in Hebrew, and may therefore
be regarded as a goddess of Rain. Can the least doubt be felt, that ‘the
Multiplier,’ the son of the cloud, must be the rain, as wine is called
the daughter of the grape,[481] and the fruit the son of the tree,[482]
and as bread is called in Arabic jâbiru-bnu ḥabbata, like ‘Strengthener,
son of Mrs. Grain?’[483] Moreover, while these latter views are natural,
but not spread abroad everywhere, the idea that the rain is the child of
the cloud is universal. We meet it among the Greeks, for Pindar sings:
... ἕστιν δ’ οὐρανίων ὑδάτων
ὀμβρίων, _παίδων Νεφέλας_ (Olymp. XI. 2, 3),—
just like the Arabs. The poet Moḥammed b. ʿAbd al-Malik said, when a
violent shower of rain delayed the arrival of his friend al-Ḥasan b.
Wahab, ‘I know not how to express my complaint against one heaven which
keeps back from me another heaven (the friend), unless indeed I utter
curse and blessing together: Let _the former become childless_, and the
latter live long.’[484] The cloudy heaven was to lose his children—i.e.
the rain was to cease.
Lastu adrî mâ ḏâ aḳûlu wa-ashkû * min samâʾin taʿûḳunî ʿan samâʾï
Ġayra annî adʿû ʿala tilka bi-th-thuk- * lî wa-adʿû lihâḏihi
bi-l-baḳâʾi.
It is this ‘Multiplier, Son of the Cloud,’ alone who can bring aid when
the earth is visited by long drought and famine. The _multiplying_ Rain
gives back to the parched earth her fertility and procures nourishment
for starving mankind. This simple idea is formed from the mythic base
into the story of the famine in Egypt and Joseph’s aid in allaying it.
The myth itself, while it lived, was general, not bound by time or
place, limited neither geographically or chronologically. When no longer
understood and when lost to human consciousness, it became a locally
defined legend, belonging to a certain historical period. This is the
same experience which meets us in most of the myths of Hellenic Heroes.
The Sun, which daily assails with an iron club and slays the monsters of
darkness and the storms, when personified as Herakles does his deeds in
a small place in Hellas, Nemea or Lerna. While Joseph imparts fertility
to the parched earth, and in his character of ‘Multiplier’ delivers it
from the curse which rested on it, the prophetic hero, in whom we have
already detected some solar features, does the opposite. Elijah, who
ascends to heaven on a fiery chariot with a fiery horse, the ‘hairy
man,’ curses the soil of the Hebrew land in the time of Ahab (again a
localising and chronological limitation of what the myth had told in
general terms without such limitation) with drought, want of rain, and
unfruitfulness; he is the cause of a fearful famine (1 Kings XVII. 1).
The ‘Multiplier’ has also severe contests to sustain. The most
celebrated of them is that which he maintains against her who loves him
dearly, whose name is preserved to us only in legendary
tradition—Zalîchâ, the ‘Swift-marching.’[485] We know her already. He
flies from the temptress, but _leaves his cloak in her hand_ (Gen.
XXXIX. 12). This feature, which seems to us only accessory, may have
been an important element of the original myth. We shall see further on,
that the figures of the night-sky or the dark sky generally are provided
with a covering or cloak, with which they cover over the earth or the
sun, and thus produce darkness. It is a different battle that he fights
against his brothers, the ‘Possessors of arrows,’ i.e. the sun-rays,
which shoot at the rain-cloud and try to drive it off. Joseph’s
persecution by his own brothers and expulsion to Egypt is only the other
side of the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Typhon and the Phenician myth of
Adonis; the solar hero being in the latter cases, and the rain-hero in
the former case, the object of persecution. While the sarcophagus of
Osiris starts from Egypt on its travels, and lands at Byblos on the
Phenician coast, Joseph when sold goes in the opposite direction from
Canaan to Egypt. Both these myths became local legends, one in Egypt,
the other in Canaan; consequently the direction of the wandering is
modified in conformity with the locality.
From the battle of the rainy sky against the solar heroes with their
arrows our myth makes the Rainbow to arise: just as the lightning was
called ‘the Arrow of God,’ so the rainbow was in later times described
as the ‘Bow of God’ (ḳashtî, Gen. IX. 13). The later legend of
civilisation gives to the rainbow a foundation which is quite foreign to
mythology. In mythology the rainbow appears to be attributed to Joseph,
who, when overcome and driven off the field by the ‘Possessors of
arrows,’ is after all not totally defeated, for ‘his bow abode in
strength’ (Gen. XLIX. 24). This expression indicates the following
conception. When the rain-cloud was driven from its place by the solar
heroes, he fixed his bow in the sky, to be ready for a future fight.
Thus in the Hebrew myth the rainbow is a bow belonging to the hero of
storms. We find the same idea in the Arabic mythology. Besides other
names, the rainbow bears that of ḳausu Ḳuzaḥa, ‘the bow of Ḳuzaḥ’ (who
has been proved to be a storm-hero); and it may be gathered from some
passages which Tuch has incidentally brought together in his Treatise on
Sinaitic Inscriptions,[486] that Ḳuzaḥ shoots his arrows of lightning
during the storms from this same bow, which after the conclusion of the
battle appears in the sky. In the same Hebrew hymn which contains the
above mention of the Bow, ebhen Yisrâʾêl ‘the Stone of Israel’ is named.
Perhaps I am not at fault in conjecturing that the Stone here has a
solar signification, and is used of the Sun which after the victory over
Joseph appears on the firmament. We know from Schwartz’s[487]
demonstrations, which Kuhn has recently confirmed in his academical
treatise on the stages of development in the formation of Myths, that in
mythical language the sun and other luminous bodies are called ‘stones.’
To the same mythic cycle belongs the circumstance that David slays his
giant-foe by casting stones. And tradition[488] says that Cain killed
Abel by throwing stones. But on the whole we find in the above-quoted
hymn (called Jacob’s) only slight hints that can be claimed for the
mythic period; for the remains of primeval hymns like that fragment were
in later times so overgrown with matter derived from historical
circumstances, that we must be content if we can discover what were the
points of view and conceptions chiefly represented by these fragments.
The reason why it is so difficult to reconstruct the old mythic view of
the Hebrews concerning the Rainbow, obviously lies in the fact that it
was supplanted by a later theological explanation (Gen. IX. 12–17). It
is curious that the reason assigned in this later passage for the origin
of the Rainbow was not able to obtain general credence, and that even
Christian popular legends frequently appear to flow from ancient mythic
conceptions. I will only mention an instance given by Bernhard
Schmidt—the Christians in Zante call the rainbow 'the girdle, or the bow
of the Virgin, τὸ ζώναρι, τὸ τόξο τῆς παναγίας.[489]
§ 13. Now while Jacob’s lawful wives are mythical figures homogeneous to
himself, as we have seen, his collateral wives, the two concubines
Zilpah and Bilhah represent figures of the ancient myth standing in a
position of opposition to Jacob. The mythical character of Zilpah has
been already determined, in the Seventh Section of this chapter. For
this determination we had no other resource but the etymology of the
name, no mythical matter having been preserved concerning this mythical
figure. The case is reversed when we enquire into the meaning of Bilhah.
The resource of etymology abandons us here; for, even if we assume that
the abstract idea represented by the name must here be understood in a
participial sense (Bilhâ=‘the Trembling, Terrified’), yet, in the want
of analogous cases, the signification of the name brings us to no track
worth pursuing. But, on the other hand, we fortunately have a material
myth (as opposed to a mere name), relating to Bilhah: ‘Reuben went and
lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine’ (Gen. XXXV. 22).
The transition from one aspect of nature to another is not always
regarded by the myth from the point of view of a battle, in which the
vanishing aspect is represented by the conquered and the approaching one
by the conqueror. The myth speaks equally frequently of love and union,
i.e. of sexual connexion. The vanishing aspect disappears in that which
immediately follows: they become one, as man and wife. In the myths of
sexual union, the mythical feature that the two figures one of which
follows the other are brother and sister, father and daughter, or mother
and son, is sometimes disregarded. We had an example of this in the
Hebrew myth of the union of Shechem with Dinah. This is very frequent in
Aryan mythology; and it is sufficient to refer to the part of Max
Müller’s essay which deals with this subject.[490] There is a very fine
myth of this kind, preserved in a work ascribed to Plutarch, _De
fluviorum et montium nominibus_ (IV. 3). It is there said with reference
to the Ganges, ‘Near it is situated the mountain _Anatole_, or the
Rising,’ so called for the following reason: ‘Helios saw the maiden
Anaxibia dancing there, and was seized with violent love for her. No
longer able to control his passion, he pursued her with desire to force
her to yield to his desire. The maiden, surrounded on every side,
escaped into the temple of Artemis Orthia on the mountain Koryphe, and
was lost to the eyes of her pursuer. He, following after, and unable to
overtake his beloved, went up to the same mountain grieving. Therefore
the natives call the mountain Anatole or ‘Sun-uprising,’ as Kaemarus
narrates in the tenth book of his ‘Indian Affairs.’[491] Here, where the
sunrise is not even the result of a union, but very characteristically
that of disappointed love, Helios is no relative whatever of the Dawn,
any more than Shechem of Dinah, or Abimelech, the later Sun-god (Melekh,
compare Abhîbaʿal and Baʿal), of Rebekah, whom he loves (Gen. XXVI), or
of Sarah, ‘Moon,’ whom he takes to himself (Gen. XX). However, the view
which we shall encounter in the myth of Lot, that the lovers or united
couples are blood-relations, brother and sister, or parent and child, is
more prevalent. The idea of a son in love with his mother is quite
general in Asiatic mythology, as Lenormant proves: in the old Babylonian
mythology Dâzî, the Hebrew Tammûz, is lover of his mother Istar,
&c.;[492] among the Egyptians Amôn is called the husband of his mother
Neith; and among the Hindus Pûshan is described as both his sister’s
lover and his mother’s husband. When after long darkness a mysterious
Twilight slowly advanced, followed by the Dawn with ever-increasing
rapidity, the Aryan said, ‘Prajâpati loves his own daughter Ushas and
forces her,’ or ‘Indra seduces Ahalyâ the Night,’ or forms a union with
his mother Dahanâ.[493] To the same class Sarah also seems to belong, as
she is not only wife but also sister of Abram. Reuben marries Bilhah,
his mother, or more correctly his father’s wife. Reuben is a figure
homogeneous to Jacob, and therefore belongs to the night, as we discover
most certainly from the circumstance that in the battle of the
‘Possessors of arrows’ against Joseph he is on the side of the latter
and tries to save him, while Judah, a solar man, proposes to sell Joseph
(Gen. XXXVII. 21, 26). In a myth such sympathy indicates that the
subject and object of it are at all events not hostile figures: we have
already seen this in the relations between Isaac and Esau and between
Rebekah and Jacob. However, Reuben here seems not to be the night in
general, but the twilight which forms the beginning and the end of the
night, if we attach weight to the fact that Reuben is Jacob’s son.
Though unimportant and not even necessary for the appreciation of the
myth, this is very probable. The Sun is the mother of the Twilight, for
the twilight proceeds from the sun. So when at the end of the night the
morning-darkness gives way to the sun or dawn and disappears in them,
Reuben and Bilhah are united. Whatever part the twilight may play here,
it is at least clear that this myth speaks of the union of Night with
its mother Day: when Night gives place to Day, from whose womb it was
born but yesterday, then the myth says ‘Reuben is marrying his mother.’