_THE MYTH OF CIVILISATION AND THE FIRST SHAPING OF HEBREW RELIGION._
§ 1. In close connexion with that stage of development of the
myth-producing faculty which is inaugurated by the beginnings of
agricultural life, is found a natural consequence of the solar myth
among agriculturists—the Myth of Civilisation.
We have seen that the advance in civilisation from the nomad life to the
agricultural stage is accompanied by that inversion of the direction of
the myth which puts the Sun in the foreground and allows a tone
favourable to him to prevail in it, whereas at the nomad stage it was
the night-sky and the phenomena of nature connected with it that
engrossed the sympathy of the formers of myths. Now here we again
encounter a remarkable phenomenon. No intricate psychological foundation
or historical demonstration is required to prove that our own stage of
civilisation—and not ours alone—is intellectually qualified to compare
itself either with a lower stage through which it has long since passed,
or with a higher which is now only beginning to be aimed at by our best
spirits,—so as to estimate its value from the point of view given us by
our social system. For let two different stages of civilisation, social
systems or conditions be brought before any man’s observation so that he
notes their essential difference, and the perception of this difference
will awaken an impulse to measure them off against one another and form
a judgment on the perfection of the one and the insufficiency of the
other. And not only does the man who has reached the higher stage feel
himself impelled to compare his new condition with that of those who
remain behind on the less perfect stage already passed by him; but also
those who stand on the lower stage, but are acquainted with the altered
mode of life of others, contemplate the advanced stage and set off its
value against that of the stage on which they still stand. Thus we have
seen above that huntsmen and fishermen have their ideas about
agricultural life. Still he who has reached the higher stage will be
more generally impelled to such meditations than those who still stand
on the lower. When the question has arisen in his mind, it must finally
culminate in the enquiry, What was the origin or who was the author of
the great advance which procures for him such advantages over one who
stands lower? It is true, the agriculturist is not always conscious that
his stage of civilisation is the result of an _advance_ at all; for in
many nations there exists no consciousness that any less perfect stage
preceded that of the agriculturist. But this consciousness is not a
necessary condition of the raising of the question; the mere observation
of the _difference_ between the two stages of civilisation suffices to
prompt it. And it will come more and more into the foreground when the
gradual progress within the limits of the agricultural stage has
advanced so far as to develop the social consequences of the new state
in all their fulness. Social order and laws are non-existent for the
nomad, who has not yet formed for himself any permanent social system.
At his stage they are not merely superfluous, but even in a certain
sense inconceivable. The wranglings, the objects of which are chiefly
wells and pastures, are settled and composed, not by laws and rights
established once for all, but by strength of arm, or between disputants
of peaceful disposition by separation: ‘And there arose strife between
the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle. And
Abram said to Lot, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and
thee, between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we are brethren. Is not
the whole land before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if
thou goest to the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou
goest to the right hand, then I will go to the left’ (Gen. XIII.
7–9).[548] And on occasion of a dispute about a well, Abimelech said to
Isaac: ‘Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we. And Isaac
departed thence, and pitched his tent in the valley of Gerar, and dwelt
there’ (Gen. XXVI. 16, 17). Arts, manufactures and other occupations are
inconceivable at this stage; for the wants of the nomad are so limited
that the conditions of his existence are satisfied by his tents, herds,
and pasture-ground.
The answer which the agriculturist gives to the question about the
origin of the arts and manufactures, of social order and law, all of
them products of agricultural life, is what we call the Myth of
Civilisation. This Myth of Civilisation, which we encounter among the
most various nations, refers the authorship of the advanced and refined
state of civilisation to the _Solar figures_ of the myth, which, to the
prejudice of the figures of the dark sky, are brought into the
foreground by the human mind on its advance to agriculture. It is
therefore a spontaneous act of the human mind that is made the cause of
a series of phenomena, of which it is itself really the result.
The Greek and Roman mythology abounds with data verifying the Solar
character of the stories of the origin of civilisation and morals. Arts
and manufactures are constantly brought into connexion with mythical
names which are recognised by comparative philologists as designations
of the Sun. Not only the musician but the smith of Olympus are Solar
figures; so also the first navigator and founder of cities. The right
understanding of Mythology was long hindered by the so-called
Euhemeristic system, which assumed that the gods of mythology, and
especially of the Greek and Roman mythology (for scarcely any others
were sufficiently known to be considered), were only great benefactors
of humanity, who after their death were rewarded by divine honours; and
this system has been maintained till the present day. The Myth of
Civilisation consequently had to be fitted into the frame of this
convenient system. It was said that posterity had from mere _Gratitude_
raised the inventor of the arts to the throne of deity. Petrarch says,
‘We know that the founders of some arts after their death were rewarded
by divine honours, rather from grateful than from pious feelings ...
Thus Apollo was made a god through his lyre, Apollo and Aesculapius
through medicine, Saturn, Liber and Ceres through agriculture, Vulcan
through his smithy.’[549] This mode of regarding the subject was not
only upheld from Euhemerus down to Petrarch, but exerted its influence
on the interpretation of the ancient stories even to our own times.
However, the consideration of the store of legends of humanity in
general, as far as they are brought under our ken, collected and
analysed according to their historical and psychological truths, teaches
us that the founder of all the order and morality which result from the
more civilised agricultural life is, in the language of the old stories,
the Sun. The so-called Myths of Civilisation are always put into
connexion with the Sun, or with some of the copious synonyms which
mythology gives to the Sun. These myths must exist in every nation which
has won its upward way from nomadism to agriculture, or from tribal life
to society. As soon as the agriculturist began to use the ploughshare,
he could not but observe the difference between his life and that of the
nomad, who fixed his tent-plugs in the earth at a different place from
day to day, moving from pasture to pasture, whilst he himself had the
control of permanent dwellings, protected by definite unalterable laws,
and lived a life of regularity, yet full of enjoyment and variety,
strongly contrasting with the Bedawî’s monotonous independence. Then,
when the source of this difference was sought, all the advance was
attributed to the Sun, as the author and encourager of agriculture and
inventor of the more refined arts and enjoyments of life. Moreover, the
connexion which the Myth of Civilisation establishes between the Founder
of cities and the Wolf, as e.g. between Romulus and a she-wolf who
suckled him, has lately been explained by Prof. Sepp through the
signification given to the wolf in the solar myth—with perfect justice,
though perhaps going rather too far in the elaboration of details.[550]
Like Apollo, Osiris also is γεωργίας εὑρετὴς, Μουσῦν μαθητής, ‘Inventor
of agriculture and teacher of the arts;’[551] and in this point the
myths of nations quite distinct in race agree. A few examples taken from
sources wide apart will make this clear.
One of the Solar heroes of the Persian myth of civilisation is Jemshîd,
whose character can scarcely be doubtful to the mythologist, after the
consentaneous characteristics with which the epic poet Firdôsî and the
historian Mirchond fill up the description of his life.[552] His very
name indicates clearly enough a solar signification; and to this must be
added the fact that he combines many characteristics of the solar
supporters of the Myth of Civilisation. He first gives to Irân, till
then savage, the benefits of civilisation. He is the first builder of
cities, the inventor of the fine arts, especially of music, navigation
(which belongs especially to the solar myth, as we have seen), and, as
Mirchond explains at length, of the cultivation of the vine—an Iranian
Noah. He divides the whole nation into four classes: Scribes, Warriors,
Agriculturists, and Artists. Thus it is he who puts an end to the
nomadic tribal life. In this breaking up into castes not the slightest
trace is discoverable of any notice of pastoral life; on the contrary,
in the story of Jemshîd as worked out by the later narrator, probably in
close agreement with the still living mythical tradition, especial
weight is laid on _Agriculture_. The solar chronology is also due to
Jemshîd. Mirchond says: ‘As often as the Chosrev of the stars, the Sun,
took away the royal robe of rays from the fish’s tail and threw it on
the neck of the ram, Jemshîd appointed an assemblage of the great and
noble at the foot of the throne. He instituted all the appliances of
pleasure, and spread out the carpet of joy, and called the day Neurûz.’
The Prometheus-side of the Jemshîd-story is surprising. The Persian hero
of civilisation, like the Greek, is chastised and hurled down by God for
his presumption; his fall is occasioned by _Zohak_, who conquers him,
_from whose shoulders dragons grow up_ (the dragons of the Storm and the
Night). After a fall of a hundred years he appears on the coast of the
Chinese sea. The Sun is devoured by the monster waiting for him at the
bottom of the sea, but afterwards rises again out of the sea, like Jonah
in the Hebrew myth.
If now we turn from ancient Irân to the American tribes, we find the
Myth of Civilisation take the same direction. There also the origin of
morals, law and order is attributed to the Sun. I quote one of the
numerous myths of civilisation from J.G. Müller, who deserves great
credit for his work on American religions, which makes American
mythology known in Germany. It is the myth of civilisation belonging to
the Muyscas, inhabitants of the Terra Firma in the plain of Bogotà, who
tell as follows of the commencement of civilisation among themselves:
‘In the earliest times, before the moon was, the high plain of
Cundinamarca was closed in and the pass of Tequendama not yet opened.
Then the Muyscas people were savage, without agriculture, without
religion, without morals, without civil rule. Then there appeared _a
bearded old man who came from the East_, who had three names, Bochica,
Nenequetheba, and Zuhé, and was represented as having three heads. He
taught the savages to wear clothes, to till the land, to worship the
gods, to form states. His wife had also three names, Huythaca, Chia,
Yubecayguaya. She was dazzlingly beautiful, but so malicious that she
plotted to destroy all her husband’s salutary undertakings. And she
actually succeeded by secret magic arts, in causing the Funzha (now Rio
Bogotà), the river of the country, to rise to such a height as to
overwhelm the whole high plain with flood. Only a minority of the
inhabitants were able to escape to the summits of the mountains. But
then the just wrath of Bochica was kindled; he drove the wicked woman
off the earth for ever, and changed her into the Moon. Since then there
has been a moon. And to get rid of the troubles of the earth, Bochica
made an opening in the wall of rock, and allowed the water to run off by
the majestic waterfall of Tequendama, 570 feet high. When the land was
thus dried, the people that were left were called to civilisation, and
the Solar worship was introduced, with a sacerdotal order, periodical
feasts, sacrifices and pilgrimages. At the head of the state Bochica set
a secular and a sacerdotal chief, settled the chronology, and after a
life of two thousand years at length withdrew, bearing the name
Idacanzas.’[553]
So much for the Myth of Civilisation. It is certainly wrong to try to
find matter of history in these stories of civilisation, and, with
Markham, Rivero, and Tschudi, to see in Bochica and the other bearded
heroes of civilisation belonging to American mythology ‘missionaries of
the worship of Brahma, of Buddha, and probably of other sects.’[554] My
readers will surely perceive the perverseness of such a proceeding. J.G.
Müller himself recognised the Sun in Bochica, the civiliser of the
Muyscas; but he did not find out all the mythological relations which
determine his solar character. The most important of these is the
circumstance that Bochica is ‘a bearded old man, who came from the
East.’ Here then, as in other American myths, the Sun’s rays are
regarded as the long white beard of the old man of the sun, in the same
sense in which they appear elsewhere under the form of _locks_ of hair
(see supra, p. 137). And as in Egyptian the rising sun has a different
name from the setting, and the same distinction of name is stamped upon
the Hebrew myth also (Leah and Delilah on the one side, and Dinah,
Zilpah, Asher, etc. on the other), so in the myth of the Muyscas the
three names of the Sun refer to his various positions at rising, noon,
and setting, which probably played a part in the ancient myth of the
Muyscas. The corresponding three faces of the Sun express the same idea
that produced the myth of the two of Janus (see p. 137); with the
difference that the American myth notices three phases of the Sun, and
the Roman only two. The Sun is opposed by the Moon, the sky of day is
engaged in an everlasting war with the sky of night. The circumstance
that the moon causes the flood exactly agrees with the American
conception, which connects water with the moon.[555] The moon also is
provided with three names in our American myth, and these three names
have the same signification as the three of the Sun, i.e. the conception
that each of the varying phases of the moon is itself an independent
object. Dr. Anton Henne, a Swiss mythologist, first considered the
meaning of the three visible forms of the moon (as contrasted with the
four astronomical phases) in mythology, especially German, and cited
some parallels from classical mythology.[556] Now although this feature
of the triple form of the moon is undoubtedly expressed in many myths,
among others in the American one under review, yet Henne-Am-Rhyn seems
to go rather too far, in referring the many variations of the German
story of the three spinning girls and so forth to this mythical idea.
Many of these variants bear the undeniable impress of a mythical
description of the setting Sun’s or the Night’s battle with the bright
Sun of day; especially that in which one of the Sisters is quite white,
the second half-white and half-black, and the third _blind_.
Unquestionably the Sun of day is the quite white sister; the Sun shortly
before setting the half-white and half-black; and the Night the blind
one (see supra, pp. 109–10).[557] The solar character of the princess
Märthöll (no. 586, Henne-Am-Rhyn), _who is as beautiful as the sun, and
can only weep golden tears_ (see Excursus E), can escape no one.
The moon-lit sky of night appears in the Myth of Civilisation averse to
all the blessings which the Sun grants to the agriculturist. In this
character it appears frequently, especially in the American
mythology;[558] whereas in the Oriental the connexion between the moon
and water suggests the idea that the moon produces fertility and
freshness in the soil (see supra, p. 160). In the Voguls’ story of
civilisation, a small fragment of which, from the collections made by
Antony Reguly, is contained in the important work of the Hungarian
Academician Paul Hunfalvy on the ‘Country and People of the
Voguls,’[559] _Kulyater_ is the builder of the first city. The solar
character of Kulyater cannot be doubted, if the following portion of the
Vogul story be taken into consideration: ‘He dwelt in a house locked
with seven iron locks. Tarom was angry with him, and seized him by one
foot, and he fell into the heart of the foaming sea.’ This is the
sunset. The reason why the Founder of Cities (whom the Vogul reckons
among the evil spirits and regards as the originator of death[560])
appears here in an unfavourable light is the same as that which we shall
discover for the tone of dislike which the Hebrew story adopts towards
the agriculturist Cain. Till they became Russified the Voguls remained
prevailingly a hunting people, and their myths did not rise to the
elevation of the view of the world possessed by agriculturists. The
Vogul story of the Creation[561] reflects exactly the ideas of a hunting
and fishing people; it speaks only of the chase and of catching fish.
Now we have seen that the Myth of Civilisation expresses the same idea
in nations of the most different races. Even in the Japanese myths of
civilisation, published by the learned Japanese Dira Kittao,[562] a
thoroughly solar character is evident. Manufactures and arts, social
order and law are always attributed to the Sun as author, not only by
Aryans, but even by the still unclassified American tribes. If the
knowledge of the American languages were more advanced than it is in our
time, and if the mutual relations of those languages were not
‘exceedingly perplexing, for the same reason as those presented by the
Polynesian and African dialects, and in a yet higher degree,’[563] we
might gain some understanding of the origin of the many proper names
which we encounter in the above myth and in the other members of the
copious American mythology; and this would lead us to a far more
accurate idea of their origin and life than is possible with petrified
myths of civilisation. Nevertheless, before we part from them, we will
still just notice that the introduction of social laws, political
constitutions and religious institutions such as are ascribed in the
Muyscas’ myth to the Sun himself as an old man, is frequently attributed
to the _sons of the Sun_. There is no need to prove that in such stories
the sons of the Sun are identical with their father the Sun. So e.g.
Orpheus, son of the Sun, calls into cities men living a savage life in
the forests, and urges them to a more civilised life. Again, the Indian
legislator Vaivasuta is son of the Sun. And, not to neglect again here
American mythology, the two sons of the Sun, Manco Copac and Mama Oello,
are brought forward in the Peruvian myth of civilisation as teachers of
civilisation. There is no reason whatever to identify Mama Oello with
the Moon, as J.G. Müller does;[564] and it would even run counter to the
very nature of the Myth of Civilisation. For, as we saw in the
previously cited American myth, the Moon is the very power that
paralyses the work of the Sun in introducing civilisation and law. To
this place belongs also the idea, which is found in many nations, that
the founders of their legislation and religion were born from virgins,
made to conceive by the Sun’s rays.[565] This element of the solar myth
still operates in a story told by the Persian poet Ferîd al-Dîn ʿAṭṭâr,
who introduces a maiden’s dream as follows: ‘Then the Christian maiden
saw in a dream that a Sun _fell into her lap_, opened his mouth and
said, etc.[566]’
§ 2. The sources of the ancient Hebrew mythology have preserved no less
considerable remains of the Hebrew people’s myth of civilisation; and it
moves in the same direction as has been indicated above. The invention
of arts and manufactures, morals, law, and social order, is attributed
to Solar figures. Especially note-worthy in this connexion is the fourth
chapter of Genesis, where mention is made of the beginning of the
building of cities, and of the invention of agricultural and of musical
instruments; and the ninth chapter of the same book, in which the first
commencement of social order secured by law is related. All this is
attached to names of which other mythical features besides those
concerning civilisation are recorded, features which point to their
solar significance, and serve to fill up the story of the civilising
activity of their bearers.
But the Solar figures are authors not of manufactures and civil order
only: the human race itself has the Sun as its author, through whose
children mankind is propagated. The name Âdâm, Abû-l-bashar ‘father of
all flesh,’ as the Arabs call him, is, as is obvious at a glance, a
solar appellation ‘the Red’; etymologically the same word as Edôm. When
the Hebrew story of civilisation derives the human race from the Red
one, it does the same as the Greeks when they call the mother of mankind
Pyrrha ‘the Red.’[567] The Hebrews call the mother of mankind Chawwâ
(Eve) ‘the mother of all that lives’ (Gen. III. 29),[568] i.e., ‘the
Circulating’ (in Arabic ḥawa V), a name of the Sun, the feminine synonym
of Zebhûlûn ‘the Round;’ a very ancient appellation of the Sun, the
traces of which we meet also in the Vedas, where (Rigveda, I. 174. 5)
the Sun is called a Wheel, or, as he frequently is in other passages, a
Chariot. This is based not only on the conception of the Horses of the
Sun drawing his chariot, but on the original conception of this chariot,
as consisting of a single wheel or of a cylinder on a sloping plain, as
Lazarus Geiger has admirably demonstrated.[569]
It is also to be considered that the mythological genealogy of the
Hebrews makes the world to be peopled by the descendants of Cain,
children of the Sun, and that a second progenitor of the human race,
Noah, is likewise a solar figure. We must here of course disregard the
late Seth-genealogy, at the time of the drawing up of which even the
minimum of mythical conception necessary to the working-out of the Myth
of Civilisation had already vanished. It is not impossible that
originally two or even more now forgotten versions of the myth of
population existed—one which called the first father of the human race
Adam, and another which attached the propagation of mankind to the name
Noah, and that then, by the interposition of the story of the Flood
which made the whole human race perish, the two versions grew into
harmony with one another in the popular mind. But in any case it is
certain that the Hebrews made Solar figures the ancestors of mankind.
Thus among the Hebrews also it was the Solar myth that answered the
question concerning the primeval origin of agricultural civilisation;
and thus was completed the picture of what modern interpreters love to
call the ‘Origins.’ It is this side of the formation of legends which
maintains its life and productiveness longest among men. For there is
always a latent instinct and powerful impulse in the mind of man to
cancel all notes of interrogation, and to gain and to give intelligence
on the origin of all that surrounds him. We well know how many stories
are current in the mouth of the people, stories of comparatively modern
origin, which have for their subject the rise of rivers, mountains and
institutions. How charming are the Hungarian stories invented to explain
the origin of the two great rivers which traverse that beautiful
country! and who knows not into what petty details this impulse of the
human mind pushes its way? It treats nothing as a matter of course and
as sufficiently explained by the mere fact of its existence; it finds
everywhere a Why and a How, that must be answered. It not only seeks
reasons of existence, and dives into cosmogonies, for the overpowering
universe of the world and the grander features of it, mountains and
seas; but even what distinguishes one being from another—the ox’s horns
and the camel’s short ears, the lion’s mane and the black stripes on the
ass’s back—it cannot leave unexplained. It is the same noble instinct
that created the fables on the origin of things, and that encourages the
grand discoveries of the truths of natural history: the instinct that
impels us to understand aright all that lies around us.
It may be affirmed that among the Semites this impulse to explain the
origins of things maintained its longest existence as a living power,
productive of stories. Even on the subjects on which the Biblical
accounts gave information, men did not rest satisfied with these
accounts, but allowed free and unlimited scope to stories.[570] A large
part, indeed almost the whole, of the Arabian answers to questions
concerning the Origins, is a Postislamic product of popular story. All
that the Arabs learned on the subject from tradition or from stories
still in process of formation was collected in works entitled Kutub
al-awâʾil, or ‘Libri Principiorum.’ The best known and widest circulated
of these, is the Kitâb al-awâʾil, written by Jelâl al-Dîn al-Suyûṭî, a
voluminous writer of the tenth Mohammedan century, a part of which was
published by Professor Richard Gosche, with an instructive introduction
on literary history.[571] In former times it was so extensively
circulated in the East that a revised version was also prepared, which
was everywhere copied even before the clean copy (tabyîḍ) was made.[572]
But several hundred years before al-Suyûṭî, an Andalusian scholar, Tâj
al-Dîn b. Ḥammûyâ al-Sarachshî (born A.H. 576) had written a work in
eight volumes on the Origins of Things; and I believe that this work, of
which the classic historian of the Moors in Spain[573] gives an account,
is the most extensive of its kind. In the above-quoted work, Gosche
maintains the view that the whole Sêpher tôledôth, which is familiar to
us as one of the original elements of which the composite Book of
Genesis consists, was mainly concerned with these ‘Origins,’ and is the
Hebrew representative of the copious Awâʾil literature of the Arabs. But
we cannot admit this, when we consider that this book of sources, to
judge from its known fragments, has rather a genealogical character,
and, though containing the myths of civilisation, does not embrace the
cosmogony, which is of a decidedly later origin. Therefore, if we must
at any price find an analogy in Arabic literature to the Sêpher
tôledôth, we ought rather to look to the many works composing the
copious genealogical literature of the Arabs, called Kutub
al-ansâb.[574]
§ 3. In regard to the Hebrew myths of civilisation we must pay attention
to another circumstance; to do which we must again go back to what has
been said above on the phases of development of the myths. In
determining the amount of mythical matter which was worked out in any
period of development of human civilisation, we must not, as was fully
explained above, start from the materials and the elements employed in
the myths in question, so much as from the direction or tendency of the
myth and the general ideas which prevail in it. But yet this view
requires some qualification, insofar as the designation of some human
occupation is employed in the phraseology of the myth. I mention this
with especial reference to the name Ḳayin (Cain), which denotes
Smith.[575] It is obvious that this manufacture must have already
existed in society before such a name could come to be employed in a
myth. But, on the other hand, the myth of the war of the Sun with the
Cloud or the Wind cannot have so recent an origin. We must accordingly
concede to the Myth of Civilisation an influence upon the form of the
mythic matter—an influence which not only produced an alteration in the
tendency of the myth, but also introduced new names and figures, which,
as is evident from the linguistic meaning of the names themselves, arose
at the stage of conscious civilisation. The story of the murder of Abel
belongs, no doubt, to the primitive myths which were already formed at
the nomadic stage; a solar name must have been given to his murderer,
just as in the dialectic variant of Hebhel (Abel), namely, Yâbhâl
(Jabal), his father Lemekh (Lemech) is named as the murderer. Later, at
the stage of the Myth of Civilisation, the murderer of Abel is called
Ḳayin (Cain), the smith and inventor of agricultural implements, whose
name is indeed also a solar appellation, but one that already belonged
to the Myth of Civilisation. The same case occurs in the story of Jacob.
Originally, in the nomadic myth, Jacob’s hostile brother was called
Edôm, the Red, the Sun. For this name the Myth of Civilisation
substituted ʿÊsâv (if we explain this as the Worker, the Accomplisher;
see p. 139);—again a name which is essentially solar, but could arise
only with the Myth of Civilisation.
In this wise the Myth of Civilisation, starting from the general ideas
of the agriculturist, opened a wider circle of vision in the notions
held of the Sun, and with the new enlarged circle created new names for
the Sun, which then drove into obscurity some older appellations
belonging to the primitive form of the myth.
§ 4. Before we conclude our diagnosis of the Myth of Civilisation, we
will cast a momentary glance at the forms in which this group of myths
shows itself in other Semitic nations. The founder of civilisation in
the Assyrian and Babylonian myth is the Oannes of Berosus. ‘_During the
daytime_ Oannes held intercourse with men, taught them sciences and
arts, the building of cities and temples, laws and the introduction of
the measurement of planes; further, he showed them how to sow and reap:
in a word, he instructed them in everything necessary to social life, so
that after his time they had nothing new to learn.’ In a word, Oannes is
the teacher of civilisation and inventor of all art and sciences, all
law and order. That this founder of civilisation has a solar character,
like similar heroes in all other nations, is shown in the very next
words of Berosus: ‘_But when the Sun set, Oannes fell into the sea,
where he used to pass the night_.’ Here evidently only the Sun can be
meant, who in the evening dips into the sea, and comes forth again in
the morning and passes the day on the dry land in the company of men. He
is half fish half man, and in this respect identical with the
Canaanitish Dâgôn, whose name denotes ‘Fish.’ Dâgôn also is, with the
Assyrians as well as with the Canaanites, the god of fertility of the
soil and founder of civilisation. He is ‘Inventor of the plough,
distributor of grain, protector of the cornfield;’ and in Assyria we
find him represented with his head covered by a _horned_ cap.[576] The
combination of the two characters is to be explained, not by supposing
that the idea of the god of fertility was connected with that of the
rapid propagation of the fish, but by the solar meaning given in
mythology to the fish. It must not be overlooked that in this connexion
the fish is always spoken of as _rising out of the water_—like the Sun,
who, having passed the night in the water, issues forth again in the
morning.
We see the same also in the extant Phenician myth of civilisation, which
is narrated by the Sanchuniathon of Philo Herennius. Perverted and
spoiled as the stories of the Phenicians may have been by the pen of the
Greek author, who contemplated Phenician mythology through the medium of
the Greek cosmogony, corrupted and Hellenised as the proper names
especially are, yet these pieces of information are undoubtedly based on
real stories which were current among the Phenicians. It is a pity to
lavish on them so much profound thought and symbolising combination as
has been done by Bunsen, Movers and many other scholars; but, on the
other hand, it is an equal mistake to condemn the entire mass as a
useless forgery and declare it unworthy of attention in investigating
Phenician antiquity. The real task is rather to penetrate the
bewildering labyrinth of misunderstandings to the simple and original.
The confirmation given in the last few years by the cuneiform
inscriptions to the _Babylonica_, which are referred to the reports of
Berosus, ought to moderate any extreme scepticism on the subject of the
Phenician affairs which are quoted from Sanchuniathon, Mochus and
others.
The Phenician Cosmogony of Philo Herennius says that Chrysoros, who as
the Opener, Navigator, and Smith has already appeared to us (pp. 98–9)
to have a Solar character, was the progenitor of Ἄγρος or Ἀγροτής and
Ἀγρύηρος, and says of these, ‘From them are derived the agriculturists
and those who hunt with dogs. These latter are also called Ἀλῆται, or
Wanderers to and fro. From them are derived Ἄμυνος and Μάγος, who taught
men how to found villages and feed herds.’ This is only the Myth of
Civilisation of the agriculturist again, which everywhere brings the
commencement of agriculture, the foundation of cities and civilisation,
into connexion with the Sun. As from Cain is descended Enoch, whose name
is attached to the first city in the world, so from Chrysoros, the
Phenician Cain, are derived those who first adapted their places of
sojourn to the requirements of settled dwellings. In a word, the
genealogy only asserts that the Sun occasions the choice of fixed
dwellings and consequently of agricultural life. But the fact that the
hunting and nomadic life[577] is introduced together with the origin of
agriculture, and that the first commencement of the one is put into
combination with the founders of the other, occasions some difficulty,
which cannot be simply denied and put aside. Now it is certainly
possible that the Myth of Civilisation among the Phenicians, in whose
neighbourhood alongside of agricultural life nomadic life also was in
full force—for their view extended over all Palestine and the valley of
the Jordan—referred the origin even of the latter mode of life to the
Sun, as the founder of all social life. But it is also possible that
what Philo asserts on a Phenician authority concerning nomads and
hunters is founded on a misunderstanding of the original information.
For the sons of Chrysoros, the Sun, were evidently described as hunters
and wanderers. Now _Hunter_ and _Wanderer_ are, as we have seen,
attributes of the Sun, who shoots his rays at the monster of the storm,
and is ‘a fugitive and a vagabond,’ engaged in a migration from east to
west. Cain is an exile and wanderer, but not a nomad. But through
misunderstanding the Solar hunter and wanderer may have been converted
into the founder of the hunting and nomadic life. Even Bunsen, though
starting from a different point of view and influenced by other
considerations, designated this very passage as a perversion of the
Phenician account, perpetrated by Philo and perfectly in accord with the
system followed by him.[578] The original Phenician account must, no
doubt, have been different.
§ 5. Although Cain and Esau cannot possibly have been incorporated with
the old Hebrew mythology till the myth of the origin of civilisation was
unfolded, yet they retain the mischievous and hostile character which
the nomadic myth always assigns to solar figures. This fact illustrates
the general observation which I made above (see p. 81) with especial
reference to the Hebrews and Arabs—that in many nations the
consciousness of an advance in passing on to the agricultural life is
never aroused, or only very late, and that they rather regard this
advance as retrogression and look back on the nomadic state as a more
perfect one. Among the Hebrews, accordingly, the heroes of civilising
agriculture, with the exception of Noah, take a position in the myth far
less influential than similar heroes in other nations. The sympathetic
light in which Noah was regarded is closely connected with his position
in the story of the Deluge, which was added at a very late period to the
Hebrew series of stories.
To understand this fact, however, we must cast another glance at the
oldest stage of Hebrew Religion, at which religion had not yet fully
shaken itself free from mythology, but was closely united with it, and
only beginning to have a separate form. Whatever be the psychological
factors that produce the religious tendency in man—an attitude of the
soul which can no longer be treated as congenital,—it must be regarded
as established and certain that the psychological process of the origin
of religion, a process influenced only in its most advanced stages by
ethical and esthetic forces, is in the first instance developed out of
the older mental activity which resulted in the creation of myths. After
the exhaustion of the mental activity that forms myths, which is
equivalent to the disappearance both of mythical productiveness and of
vivid understanding of myths, men have no longer any consciousness of
what may be called the etymology of the myth. Then the mythical figures
begin to be individualised; and parallel with this process runs the
linguistic phenomenon that polyonymy disappears and all the phases of
meaning previously expressed by separate names are combined in one or a
few. The various synonyms for Sun, Darkness, etc., which existed in the
myth, lose their significance; the different names for these natural
phenomena, in each of which one feature or element of them was expressed
in language, succumb to one single name, which then comprises in itself
all their features and elements. The names Helios and Shemesh take the
place of all other designations created in myths for the phenomenon of
the Sun. These other designations, e.g. on Hebrew ground Jephthah,
Asher, Edom and others, forfeit the signification which they originally
had when myths were formed, and instead thereof are individualised.
These names become personal names, and the stories of which they are the
subjects become events of society. Thus from physical stories arise
stories of gods and heroes; thus the nomenclature of the Sun and the
Darkness produces a host of names of gods and heroes. For the personages
who are thus imagined are powerful celestials, and the forgotten
processes of which the myth spoke preserve for some time their heavenly
scene of action.
This process of transformation of myths is inevitable, because bound up
with the laws of development of the human mind and human speech; at a
certain stage of the development of mind and language, the myth must
become theology. But the process is gradual, so that the commencing
stages of theological development do not break loose at once from the
mythical consciousness, and the latter loses its colour gradually before
it disappears altogether. A stage of this kind, at which Myth is turning
into Religion, is most clearly exhibited by the Myth of Civilisation.
Some bit of divine nature or peculiar personality always cleaves to the
hero of civilisation; and some such myths actually live long unimpaired
after the greater number have been metamorphosed into theology or
religion. Thus, for instance, among the Hebrews the origin of religion
is to be traced in its germ as far back as the nomadic age. Even at that
stage, though of course towards the end of it, we observe the Hebrew
myth of the beneficent sky of night and rain turning into religion. For
a searching investigation of the religion of the nomadic Hebrews proves
the object of their veneration to have been the dark overcast sky,
connected (where it is not distinctly declared) with mythical figures of
undoubtedly nocturnal character. I must briefly refer to what was
indicated above (pp. 72, 73) of the worship of the night-sky and the
rain among the Arabs. The religious stage of the nomadic Hebrews is
still to be recognised in the reminiscences, transmitted by theocratic
historians, of that age, which was to them a forty years’ wandering in
the desert preceding the conquest of Palestine. To the same stock, as
sources for the reconstruction of this religious stage, belong also some
accounts contained in the Prophetical books; and they cannot but be
considered historically credible—of course in the sense in which such
reminiscences must be critically estimated as sources of history. For it
is certain that such recollections lived on a very long time in the
nations of antiquity, and that, if the special tendency of the reporter
be stripped off, they may yield objective matter of history.
The most important datum of this kind is the question of the Prophet of
Tekoa, which refers to a great expanse of history—a passage which has
spurred many learned men to attempt ingenious interpretations.[579]
Did ye offer unto me sacrifices and offerings in the desert forty years,
O house of Israel? Did ye bear the huts [read Sukkôth] of your king, and
Kiyyûn (Chiun) your idol, the star [read kôkhâbh], your god whom ye had
made to yourselves? (Amos V. 25, 26.)
It is evident from this important passage that the nomadic Hebrews
worshipped their god or gods by huts, and that one among the objects of
their worship was a Star, let alone what star Kiyyûn may be, whether
identical with the Arabic keyvân, or some other. Thus, so far as we can
infer from the Prophet’s word, their divine worship was paid to the
night-sky. The nomad looks on the night-sky as a pasture where the
herdsman (for the mythical figures of the night-sky are mostly regarded
by him as herdsmen) lets his cattle feed; and it is easy to conceive
that at the theological stage he venerates in huts the mythical figure
now converted into a god, ascribing to him the same dwelling which he
occupies on high in the sky. The most important feast of the nomadic
Hebrews was the Feast of Sukkôth, or Tabernacles, which probably stands
in close connexion with these Sukkôth of a god, and at the agricultural
stage became a Harvest-feast. But even at that stage the connexion of
the feast with nomadic life and the past nomadism of the nation itself,
lived long in its memory (see Lev. XXIII. 43). That which they
worshipped in the huts was not the Sun,[580] the bright sky of day, but
kôkhâbh, a Star, doubtless no particular star, but only the starry
heaven in general. For the rain, the most beneficent element to the
nomad, was identified with the stars, i.e. with the sky at night. In the
view of the ancient Arabs there were also Hyades in the starry heaven;
we meet in poetry with the expression marâbîʿ al-nujûm ‘spring rain of
the stars’ (_Muʿallaḳâ_ of Lebîd, v. 4). A familiar phrase in the speech
of the nomadic Arabs is ‘the stars have brought rain.’[581] Moḥammed
forbids the Moslims to express their common idea of the origin of the
rain by their usual phrase muṭirnâ binauʾ kaḏâ ‘we have received rain
from such and such a star,’ though he allows the connexion of the rain
with the stars, and only insists on the recognition of Allâh as first
cause, while the nauʾ is the immediate origin.[582] Similarly the
Mohammedan Arabs were forbidden to call the rainbow the bow of the
Thunder-god Ḳozaḥ.[583] The dew, also, has a connexion with the anwâʾ
‘stars’ (plural of nauʾ). It is not without interest to find this view
in a Jewish-Arabic writer of the middle ages.[584] The worship of the
kôkhâbh ‘star’ by the Hebrew nomads must therefore have a special
connexion with the rain. Ancient mankind did not distinguish between the
cloudless sky which grows dark at night, and the sky gloomy with clouds
and rain by day (see supra, p. 42). He notices the darkness only, not
the various times of day or night at which it occurs. Hence a sunless
sky in general is treated as bringing rain. To show what connexion he
imagined to subsist between the _huts_ (sukkôth) and the rainy sky, I
will quote a verse of a hymn to Jahveh, attributed to David, and said to
have been sung on his deliverance from the power of Saul:
He made darkness round about him into _huts_ (Sukkôth), collections of
water, clouds of the sky. (2 Sam. XXII. 12.)
The various reading for the expression chashrath mayim ‘collections of
water,’ which is preserved in Ps. XVIII. 12, where this hymn is given in
a somewhat corrupt and less original form, deserves attention
nevertheless. The words are cheshekhath mayim ‘darkness of water’ or
‘rain-bringing darkness.’
The more we study the information preserved to us on the religion of the
nomadic Hebrews, the stronger is our conviction that it consisted in a
veneration of the sky of clouds and rain, and was developed immediately
from the elements of the nomadic myth. We read that in the desert God
went before the Hebrews _as_ a pillar of cloud by day and _as_ a pillar
of fire by night, and showed them the way (Ex. XIII. 21);[585] that he
_as a pillar of cloud_ came between the pursued Hebrews and the pursuing
Egyptians (Ex. XIV. 19, 20) by night (for the day breaks soon after, Ex.
XIV. 24); that he appeared to Aaron and Miriam in the pillar of cloud
(Num. XII. 5); that, as the later psalmists, preserving the theological
phraseology of ancient times, say (Ps. XCIX. 7), he speaks with his
Prophet as a pillar of cloud. But what need is there to enumerate all
the passages which speak of the God of the wandering Hebrews in
connexion with the pillar of cloud, and describe his turning away as the
retreat of the cloud, or to show that the cloud was retained in the
popular tradition of a later monotheistical age as kebhôd Yahwe ‘the
glory of Jahveh?’[586] It at least appears from them that the nomadic
Hebrews attached their religious veneration to the Cloud; of which one
of the latest relics is preserved in the name ʿAnanyâ (Ananias), i.e.
‘Cloud-God,’ and another in the phrase that God ‘rides upon a cloud.’
Another feature of the nomadic religion is expressed in al-Damîrî’s
words that ‘the ancient Arabs paid divine honours to a white lamb, and
when the wolf came and devoured the lamb, they chose another lamb to
receive the same honours.’[587] From what was said above (p. 165) with
reference to Rachel, it is not difficult to perceive that this white
lamb is only a bright cloud like a lamb. This deification of clouds is
also found elsewhere. The people of Bonny on the west coast of Africa
comprise their idea of the Deity in the name Shûr or the cloudy
sky;[588] and if the learned Italian Assyriologist Felix Finzi[589] is
right, we find among the chief gods of the Assyrians the Cloud, which
looks like a relic of the ancient time, when instead of the solar powers
the Assyrians deemed those of the dark sky worthy of their worship. This
scholar wishes to explain the Assyrian divine name Anu as etymologically
identical with the Hebrew ʿÂnân ‘cloud’ which certainly well suits the
two epithets of the deity, ‘Lord of Darkness’ and ‘Gatherer of
Shades.’[590] In this case, however, the identity of Anu with the Oannes
of Berosus could not be maintained, as the solar character of Oannes is
undoubted; but this identification rests on a very slender base, and
leads to no better understanding either of Anu or of Oannes.
With the worship of the Clouds is naturally united that of the Rain,
which we find deified by many primitive nations. We find this, for
instance, in the Akra people of the Gold Coast of West Africa. They
express the question ‘Will it rain?’ by the words ‘Will God come?’[591]
Among the heathen of the tribe of Baghirmi in Central Africa, with whom
Dr. Nachtigall, lately returned from that region, has made us
acquainted, the name Deity is identical with the designation of
Storm.[592] In the language of the Wamasai in Eastern Africa the
feminine noun Aï (with the article Engaï) has the two significations God
and Rain.[593] This deification of rain and storm is moreover identical
with Serpent-worship, wherever the latter occurs. For the adoration of
the Serpent and Dragon is derived from the mythical conception which
regarded rain as a ‘fluid serpent’ (see supra, p. 186); and wherever it
is met with at a more advanced stage of civilisation it is a residuum
from that stage at which men knew no more beneficent power than the dark
overcast sky, the rain, the dragon that opposes the sun Bêl. The
Egyptian and Indian theological ideas of the serpent are examples of
such residua of the ancient nomadic views. Where a solar worship has
grown up, either the old conception of the beneficent serpent continues
to exist alongside of the new views, without being understood or
harmonised with these, or else the defeat of the Serpent by the victory
of the Sun becomes a feature of the new religion, and the Serpent
appears as a hostile figure. So, for instance, in Persia and elsewhere.
Max Müller actually opposes the very method of Comparative Mythology
which he himself introduced and maintained so brilliantly, when he
declares ‘There is an Aryan, there is a Semitic, there is a Turanian,
there is an African serpent, and who but an evolutionist would dare to
say that all these conceptions came from one and the same original
source, that they are all held together by one traditional chain?’[594]
No doubt this single chain of tradition is a perfectly unscientific
assumption, but none the less does the same original source serve as
origin of serpent-worship everywhere, namely, the old mythical
conception; and the varieties of view that we meet are to be classified
not according to ethnological races, but by historical stages of
civilisation. Certainly we shall at length have to cease seeking a
motive for the worship of the Serpent where the symbolical school have
persistently sought it even to the most recent times—in the ‘Conception
of the deep wisdom of the serpent and of the mystic powers which are
said to belong to its nature.’ The Serpent-worship as a form of religion
is a further development of the mythical expressions which describe the
rain as a serpent, made when these expressions had become
unintelligible; in the same way as the worship of crocodiles, cats,
etc., are traced back to a solar myth, the meaning of which had been
forgotten.[595] The apparently mutually contradictory significations
which are attached to the serpent in the myth and the worship must be
traced back, not to opposite views held by different races, but to
varying modes of understanding the myth, which might all emanate from
the idea of the serpent. How often in the mythology of one and the same
people we find the same object employed for the apperception of most
different, or even opposite, things!
The adoration of the Serpent is also demonstrable of the Hebrews when
nomadising in the desert; for only in this sense can the Brazen Serpent
be understood, the adoration of which was commenced by the Hebrews of
the desert and continued to the latest times (Num. XXI. 9, 2 Kings
XVIII. 4). It also deserves notice that that Hebrew tribe which had from
the earliest times the care of religious affairs and provided the
worship called itself ‘Sons of the Serpent,’ Benê Lêvî[596] (see supra,
p. 183), and that it was these who fell upon their compatriots when on
the exodus from Egypt they were about to introduce a solar element into
their religion by the adoration of the Golden Calf.[597] It was the Sons
of Levi, the priests of the ancient religion of the nomads, who defended
conservatism, and would not allow the solar bull-worship to raise its
head.[598]
Accordingly, the tribal designation ‘Sons of the Serpent’ belongs to the
long list of such names which are derived from animals.[599] Lubbock and
Tylor, especially, have put this species of tribal nomenclature into
connexion with the so-called Totemism; but in any case it is natural to
assume that the original relation of the animal to the origin of the
tribe or nation which claims it as its ancestor is purely mythological.
§ 6. Thus, then, the most ancient religion of the Hebrews in the desert
was derived immediately from the myths of the nomads. To complete the
above exposition, it is now only needful to refer to the traces of Lunar
worship, which were treated in a previous chapter (pp. 158–160).
Not till after the entrance into Palestine, i.e. after the transition
from nomadic wanderings in the desert to a settled agricultural life,
does Solar worship appear among the Hebrews, chiefly in the northern
part of the land; but even there it is only introduced in imitation of
the rites of the neighbouring Canaanitish tribes, which, having been
long settled in Palestine as agriculturists, had formed a complete solar
ritual. The Hebrews brought no such system into the conquered land; on
the contrary, their religion was, as we have seen, of a purely nomadic
character, having its centre in the adoration of the dark sky of night.
That it was so is evident also from the fact that the solar worship
employed by the Egyptians had no attraction for the people of Israel
during their residence in that country. Accordingly in this point the
Hebrews were radically different from other tribes that had immigrated
into Egypt, which are generally comprised under the common name Hyksôs.
For in some of these tribes a fully developed solar form of religion,
including even the wildest excesses of the service of Moloch, is found
to have been adopted even as early as their residence in Egypt.[600]
The objects of the adoration of the nomadic Hebrews were the cloudy sky
and the rainy sky.[601] But not only was direct worship addressed to the
Cloud and the Rain; their will was also regarded as a revelation of
destiny, and consulted. At first any nomad would look to the Cloud and
the Serpent, to learn what the gods wished; but at a later time such
knowledge generally becomes the property of certain persons—perhaps
originally a sort of Rain-makers, like the Mganga in Eastern Africa. The
persons among the Hebrews who understood this revelation and could exert
influence by magic on the higher powers were the meʿônenîm and
menacḥashîm, the ‘Observers of Clouds and Serpents,’ as mentioned
regularly together (Deut. XVIII. 10). In the same book of law in which
the adoration of the seʿîrîm is strictly prohibited, it is also
forbidden to observe clouds and serpents (Lev. XIX. 26). I am well aware
that the connexion of these two verbs with the words for cloud and
serpent is denied by some authorities of note;[602] but the objections
raised in reference to the first at least lead to the establishment of
nothing more tenable.
Still there is another question which ought to come under our notice
here, the answer to which shall form the conclusion of this chapter.
When the nomad Hebrew’s Myth of the victory of the night-sky over the
day-sky, or of the unjust violence to which the dark sky falls a victim,
was converted into a nomadic Religion, in which the mythical figures
were individualised and adored as great powers; was not adoration then
addressed to the _names_ which had been assigned to the night-sky in the
myth of the nomads? In other words, were not the deities themselves
called Abram, Jacob, etc., just as among the Aryans the mythical figures
when converted into gods were called by the same names as they had in
the myth? For it was mainly the appellations becoming unintelligible
that occasioned the process of transformation, and so it would be
expected that in the resulting religion these names would occupy the
centre. It is, indeed, the consequence which we should necessarily infer
_a priori_ from all that has been said. We should infer that those names
of the sky of night and rain, of which the myth of the nomad was chiefly
composed, at the theological stage became names of theological meaning.
Yet this does not appear at all clearly in the Old Testament books. The
reason is, that most of the historical books belonging to the Bible are
coloured by a theocratic conception, and as literary works are advanced
even beyond that stage of the national mind at which the mythical
figures were converted into _Ancestors_. For not only religion, but
history also, is formed out of myths at a certain stage of their
development. But the mythical names really belonged first to theological
nomenclature before they became historical, as names of Ancestors. This
is proved by the fact, which has been mentioned already for another
purpose, on which Dozy, in his book on Jewish-Arabic Religious History,
has with excellent tact laid emphasis,[603] that none of these mythical
names occurs as a human name in the whole course of ancient history, and
even in modern history not till late,[604] any more than an Indian would
be named Sûrya, Ushas or Dahanâ, or a Roman Jupiter or Saturn, or a
Greek Herakles or Aphrodite. This proves that the mythical names of the
Hebrew nomads possessed a super-human significance before they became
historical names.
Yet there is still a fact belonging to the latest age which shows that
the memory of a former connexion of theological ideas with the names
Abram and Jacob had not even then altogether vanished. The great Prophet
of the Hebrew people in the Babylonian Captivity, whose name is unknown
to us only that we may admire the more his noble soaring spirit, cries
in a prayer to Jahveh:
For thou [Jahveh] art our Father;
Abraham knew us not,
And Israel [Jacob] acknowledged us not;
Thou, Jahveh, art our Father,
Our Redeemer, whose name was from eternity.—Is. LXIII. 16.
It is obvious that here the names of Abraham and Jacob are _opposed_ to
that of Jahveh. Therefore it is Jahveh, not Abraham; Jahveh, not Jacob!
Jahveh is the omniscient redeemer and protector of the people Israel;
the others take no care of it. Can we read in this opposition of names
anything else but that the writer wishes to contrast the idea of a God
recognised as the only true with the memory of something different,
which ages ago passed for divine, but is unworthy of adoration now, when
the Prophet brings forward the _omniscience_ of Jahveh as an
irrefragable argument for the exclusiveness of his divinity? I think
not. And it is not stated without a purpose that Jahveh is the redeemer
of the Hebrew nation ‘from eternity’ (mêʿôlâm), i.e. even from that age
in which to the popular mind Abraham and Jacob towered over the range of
humanity into the sphere of the gods. We ought further to notice the
change of the names Abhrâm and Yaʿaḳôbh into Abhrâhâm and Yisrâʾêl (Gen.
XVII. 5; XXXII. 29 [28]). The motive alleged for the change of Abhrâm
‘High Father’ is, that the historical character of the patriarch as
Ancestor may be brought into the foreground: ‘for I have made thee
father of multitudes of nations.’ To Jacob the later _ethnographical_
name of the people is given. Thus the memory of that to which the
ancient Hebrews had paid divine honours was to be suppressed as a
thought of something divine but hostile to Jahveh; and its place was to
be occupied by the memory of the _Ancestors_ of the nation, in which
character the Patriarchs are warmly commended to the people by this very
prophet (LI. 1, 2). We must next explain what was the impulse that drove
the Hebrews to form out of the nomenclature of their ancient myth the
names of their ancestors, or in other words to translate a considerable
portion of their mythological phraseology into ethnological.
-----
Footnote 548:
An interesting Arabic parallel to this occurs in Yâḳût, III. 496.
Thaḳîf and al-Nachaʿ, who with their herds were migrating together,
determine to separate: ‘So one said to the other: Assuredly this land
can never support both me and thee. If thou goest to the west, then I
will go to the east; and if I go to the west, then do thou go to the
east. Then said Thaḳîf, Well, I will choose the west. Then said
al-Nachaʿ, Then I go to the east.’ _Ibid._, p. 498, occurs an equally
curious arrangement between two nomad tribes.
Footnote 549:
_De vita solit._ I. 10. Inventores artium quarundam post mortem
divinitatis honore cultos audivimus, grate quidem potius quam pie.
Nulla enim est pietas hominis qua Deus offenditur, sed erga memoriam
de humano genere bene meritorum inconsulta gratitudo mortalium,
humanis honoribus non contenta, usque ad sacrilegas processit
ineptias. Hinc Apollinem cithara, hinc eundem ipsum atque Aesculapium
medicina, Saturnum, Liberumque et Cererem agricultura, Vulcanum
fabrica deos fecit.
Footnote 550:
_Ausland_, 1875, p. 219 _et seq._
Footnote 551:
Sir G. Wilkinson on _Herodotus_, II. 79, note 5.
Footnote 552:
Even Herder compared together these two sources of information on the
story of Jemshîd, in the Appendix to vol. I. of his writings on
Philosophy and History.
Footnote 553:
_Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, Basle 1867, p. 423. This
myth of civilisation is given also by Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, I.
318 _et seq._
Footnote 554:
See Dr. Robert Hartmann, _Die Nigritier: eine
anthropologisch-ethnologische Monographie_, Berlin 1876, Thl. I. p.
176.
Footnote 555:
Brinton, _Myths of the New World_, New York 1868, p. 130.
Footnote 556:
Otto Henne-Am-Rhyn, _Die deutsche Volkssage, etc._, p. 281 _et seq._
Footnote 557:
_Ibid._, p. 285, the author says on the other hand: ‘The blind sister
is of course always the invisible new moon, the half-black and
half-white the half moon, the quite white the full moon.’
Footnote 558:
See Hellwald, _Ueber Gynäkokratie im alten Amerika_, third art. in
_Ausland_ for 1871, no. 44, p. 1158. In the language of the Algonkins
the ideas Night, Death, Cold, Sleep, Water, and Moon are expressed by
one and the same word.
Footnote 559:
_A vogul föld és nép, Reguly Antal hagyományaiból_, Pest 1864, p. 139.
Footnote 560:
In the Hottentot story it is the Hare (on his solar significance see
supra p. 118) that is represented as the origin of death, in
opposition to the Moon (Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, II.
342).
Footnote 561:
See the article ‘Une genèse vogule,’ in Ujfalvy’s _Revue de
Philologie_, Paris 1874, livr. 1. The original text and a Hungarian
translation are given by P. Hunfalvy in his lately quoted work, p.
119–134.
Footnote 562:
_Ausland_, 1875, p. 951 _et seqq._
Footnote 563:
Whitney, _Language and the Study of Language_, London 1867, p. 346.
Footnote 564:
_Amerikanische Urreligionen_, p. 305.
Footnote 565:
Waitz, l.c. I. 464 _note_. Among other examples Waitz quotes this: ‘In
Mexico Huitzlipochtli, was born of a woman who took to her bosom a
feather-ball is a solar designation, is not easily determined.’ In
connexion with it I will only mention that Shakspeare in one passage
calls the sun a ‘burning crest.’
But even this night,—whose black contagious breath
Already smokes about the burning crest
Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun,—
Even this ill night, your breathing shall expire.—_King John_, V. 4.
Footnote 566:
Manṭiḳ al-ṭeyr, ed. Garcin de Tassy, p. 58 (from a communication of my
friend Dr. W. Bacher).
Footnote 567:
By the Red the Sun is surely unquestionably to be understood, and not,
as Max Müller says (_Introduction to the Science of Religion_, p. 64),
the Earth.
Footnote 568:
It should at the same time be noticed that in Arabic, in which, as in
Hebrew, men are usually called banû Adam, the expression banû Ḥawwâʾa
(sons of Eve) also occurs; _e.g._ in a verse of the Kumeyt (_Aġânî_,
XV. 124; wa-cheynu banî Ḥawwâʾa), in a poem of Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî,
I. 96. 1, of al-Murtaḍî in the _Keshkùl_ of al-ʿÂmilî, p. 169.
Footnote 569:
_Ursprung der menschlichen Sprache und Vernunft_, II. 42.
Footnote 570:
See Excursus M.
Footnote 571:
_Die Kitâb al awâʾil der Araber_, Halle 1867; congratulatory article
on occasion of the meeting of the German Oriental Society at Halle.
Footnote 572:
I know this work (entitled Muḥâḍarat al-awâʾil wa-musâmarat
al-awâchir) from a manuscript of it in the public Viceregal Library at
Cairo. In the catalogue of the year 1289, p. 92 _antepenult_, it is
erroneously entered with the title Muchtaṣar al-awâʾil wal-awâchir.
Footnote 573:
al-Maḳḳarî, _Analectes de l’historie et de la littérature des Arabes
d’Espagne_, II. 69. The awâʾil are there called uṣûl al-ashyâ.
Footnote 574:
A general view of this literature can now be obtained from Ibn
al-Nedîm’s _Fihrist_.
Footnote 575:
The name Yissâ-sekhâr (Issachar) must also fall under our
consideration here, if we treat it as a Solar name (Day-labourer). See
supra, p. 177.
Footnote 576:
See Duncker, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, 1874, I. 206, 266.
Footnote 577:
Can the Semitic ôhel ‘Tent of the Nomads’ be concealed in the word
Αλήτης?
Footnote 578:
_Egypt’s Place in Universal History_, IV. 223.
Footnote 579:
Besides German scholars, Dutch orientalists and historians of religion
especially have written very ably on the passage in Amos; the latest
of whom, Tiele, in his _Vergelijkende Geschiedenis_, pp. 539 _et
seq._, mentions in a note the most prominent Dutch labours on the
subject.
Footnote 580:
No weight must be attached to the word malkekhem ‘your king,’ in which
many have tried to find a datum for the high antiquity of the worship
of Moloch by the Hebrews; for the suffix shows that the word cannot be
taken as Môlekh, the name of a god. And the worship of that God
appears everywhere as one borrowed from the Canaanites.
Footnote 581:
_E.g._ in the following fragment of a poem: ‘We lived in Chaffân in
company with a people, may God give them rain by the constellation of
the Fishes (saḳâhum Allâh min al-nauʾ nauʾ al-simâkeyn), then may a
constellation give them abundant water (farawwâhum nauʾ), [a
constellation] whose shining spreads light abroad’ (in Freytag,
_Darstellung der arabischen Verskunst_, p. 253).
Footnote 582:
See Lane in the _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._, 1849, III. 97. Krehl,
_Vorislamische Religion der Araber_, p. 9.
Footnote 583:
_Yâḳût_, IV. 85. 19. _Tâj al-ʿârûs_, II. 209.
Footnote 584:
Saʿadia, who translates Job XXXVIII. 28, eglê ṭâl ‘store-houses of
dew,’ by the Arabic anwâʾ ‘stars,’ Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 21.
Footnote 585:
See Num. XIV. 14, where before the two pillars are mentioned it is
only said that the _cloud_ stood over them.
Footnote 586:
For Hebraists I note that I take the בְּ be in beʿammûd ʿânân as _Beth
essentiae_.
Footnote 587:
_Ḥayât al-ḥaywân_, II. 52.
Footnote 588:
Bastian, _Geographische und ethnographische Bilder_, p. 169, and some
passages in books of African travel quoted by Waitz, _Anthropologie
der Naturvölker_, II. 169.
Footnote 589:
_Ricerche per lo studio dell’ antichità assira_, Turin 1872, p. 467.
Footnote 590:
Tiele, _Vergelijkende Geschiedenis_, p. 301, however, calls this last
epithet ‘much too general to draw any conclusion from.’
Footnote 591:
Lazarus Geiger, _Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschlichen Sprach und
Vernunft_, I. 346.
Footnote 592:
In Petermann’s _Geogr. Mittheilungen_, 1874, XX. 330, pt. 9.
Footnote 593:
K. Andree, _Forschungsreisen etc._, II. 362.
Footnote 594:
_The Academy_, 1874, p. 548, col. 2.
Footnote 595:
See Excursus D.
Footnote 596:
Accordingly this appellation belongs to the same category as those
which are noticed above, p. 175. In genealogical notes elsewhere also
the Serpent occurs as ancestor; I need only mention the case which
stands nearest to our subject in prehistoric Arabia—that of al-Afʿa b.
al-Afʿa, ‘the Viper,’ head of a branch of the people of Jurhum, Ibn
ʿAbdûn, p. 71 _et seq._
Footnote 597:
On the solar significance of the Bull-worship see Kuenen, _Religion of
Israel_, I. 236 _et seq._
Footnote 598:
I believe the historical narrative in Ex. XXXII. 26–29 is to be taken
in this sense. It is solar worship that is forcing its way into the
strictly nomadic religion of the Hebrews, and the Levites are
guardians of the nomadic religion.
Footnote 599:
See Bastian in the _Zeitschr. für Völkerpsychologie_, 1868, V. 153.
Footnote 600:
Ebers, _Aegypten und die Bücher Moses_, I. 245 _et seq._
Footnote 601:
On the adoration of the night-sky a passage of the Midrâsh should be
consulted (Mechiltâ, ed. Friedmann, fol. 68 a), in which the
possibility of a demûth chôshekh ‘an idol of Darkness,’ is assumed.
Footnote 602:
Most recently by Ewald, _Die Lehre der Bibel von Gott_, I. 234 _et
seq._ On the purpose and importance of the interpretation of winds and
clouds among the Babylonians, see Lenormant, _La divination et la
science des présages chez les Chaldéens_, Paris 1875, pp. 64–68.
Footnote 603:
_De Izraelieten te Mekka_, Haarlem 1864, p. 29.
Footnote 604:
See my remark in the _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._, 1874, XXVIII. 309.
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