_INFLUENCE OF THE AWAKING NATIONAL IDEA ON THE TRANSFORMATION
OF THE HEBREW MYTH._
§ 1. The nomadic stage of the Hebrew tribes reached its end at the
moment when a large part of them gained a land for themselves on the
right bank of the river Yardên (Jordan); and that is the true beginning
of the History of the Hebrews. Nomadism holds in itself nothing
essential to the world’s history. Hence the nomadic age of most great
nations fades away into the vague, and there are at most separate and
unimportant reminiscences by each tribe of its ‘days of battle,’ which
give the historian any fixed points for the construction of his picture.
There is scarcely any other nomad people that has had greater
vicissitudes in its changeful life than the Arabic tribes: yet they
scarcely afford any fixed points when we try to survey their history.
For it is not tied to any definite limited soil; no geographical unity
runs throughout it. A true national history is inseparable from one
country, which in peace presents the conditions necessary for the
development of civilisation, and in war offers an object for the
enthusiasm of assailants and defenders. There can be no history without
a definite land to which the events of history cling. The nomad cares
less for a particular territory than for his goods and chattels, when he
goes to war.[605] The Desert, and the roamer who roves over its broad
surface, have no history proper. Only isolated vague memories, such as
can attach themselves to a great geographical territory, are at our
command as points of support for the history of the Hebrew nomads. Their
proper history begins with the conquest of Canaan. This conquest was by
no means, as is still often assumed, a program of political
reorganisation, long nourished in the mind of the people. On the
contrary, the fact that we find the tribes on coming from Egypt (whence
it cannot be seriously doubted that they came) engaged in roaming about
on the left side of the Jordan before they entered Palestine, proves
that the Hebrews did not dream of the prospect of exchanging their
nomadic life for one in towns. In case they had any such intention, a
way from Egypt to Palestine was always open to the people, independently
of the route by sea, which could scarcely be thought of from the want of
means and adequate preparation. They would have traversed the northern
part of the desert al-Tîh, aiming directly at Hebron, on nearly the same
track as that taken by the Patriarch’s family according to the Biblical
narrative in going from Canaan to Egypt. The theocratic historian
himself finds a difficulty here, and ascribes to Moses strategic reasons
for adopting another course: ‘And Elôhîm led them not by the [regular]
road to the land of the Philistines, because it is near; for, thought
Elôhîm, [there is danger] lest the people should repent when they see
war, and return to Egypt’ (Ex. XIII. 17).
But the fact is really that on leaving Egypt the people wished to
continue in their old mode of life, roving from desert to desert,
seeking out one pasture after another; they were indifferent to the
cultivated side of the Jordan, and chose by preference the wild eastern
side, that is to this day the scene of that restless Beduin life which
runs continuously from the bank of the Euphrates to the Sherra
mountains. Nomadism is the most conservative life imaginable. For
hundreds and thousands of years this plain has been occupied by the same
tribes, alternately binding themselves for mutual support against a
common foe—often even in modern times the townsmen, and quarrelling
among themselves on the slightest provocation. A perfectly new tribe
entering from other parts would have great difficulty in holding its
ground there; and there is no wonder that the nomadic Hebrews in the
desert east of the Jordan were driven by constant struggles further and
further to the north, and, having at last discovered their
self-protection to be impossible there, resolved to cross the Jordan and
try their fortune in the towns. Another circumstance pressed this
decision upon them. The further they pushed northwards, the nearer they
came to the great northern power which stopped further advance. Great
kingdoms whose territories are bounded by deserts have never left these
deserts and their inhabitants alone, but have always been diligently
engaged in the subjection of the desert tribes: it was so ages ago, and
is so still. The wars of the Grand Turk against the Beduin-tribes in
Syria, Palestine and Arabia, those of the North-African powers against
the nomadic tribes which form their boundaries, are historical
continuations of political events of the very oldest times. The remark
of Manetho, the Egyptian priest and historian, is therefore very good:
‘According to the agreement they travelled from Egypt through the desert
to Syria with their whole households and possessions, not less than
240,000 souls. But in fear of the Empire of the Assyrians—for these were
then masters of Asia—they built a city in the land now called Judea,’
etc.[606]
Here comes that remarkable turning-point in the life of the Hebrew
people—the abandonment of nomadic life and transition to the civilised
life of towns. The passage of the Jordan marks this turning-point. That
river is still the boundary-line of two stages of civilisation,
nomad-life and town-life. Not the entire mass of the nation submitted to
these changes; we know that a large portion of it, remaining at a
half-nomadic stage, declared itself averse to the removal, and preferred
to stay on the left bank of the Jordan, which is the Nomad’s paradise—a
plain blessed with splendid pasture and fine woods, of which the Bedawî
even now says ‘Thou wilt find no land like Belḳâ.’ The Biblical document
gives the exact name of the portion of the people which resisted the
transition to town-life; they are described as the sons of Reuben, the
sons of Gad, and a part of the tribe of Manasseh. We have no right to
decide how much historical truth there is in the contract between the
two sections of the nation, by which the larger only gave its consent to
the practice of cattle-breeding east of the Jordan by the smaller on
condition that the latter would render all possible service to their
martial brethren at the conquest (Num. XXXII). Enough that after many
long-protracted struggles with the people of the land the advancing
Hebrews got a large part of Canaan into their power. The details and the
chronology of these wars lie outside my present scheme. The history of
the civilisation of the Hebrews in Canaan has here to be considered only
on one side—with reference to the history of Religion. In the previous
chapter we left the nomadic people wandering in the desert, and
worshipping those beneficent powers which provide the nomad with his
conditions of life and protect him from the scorching heat so hostile to
wanderers—the Rain, his mother the Cloud, and the luminous smile of the
cloud, the Lightning. The commencement of religion does not kill off the
whole myth at one blow. For the mental activity required for the
creation and propagation of myths does not cease when polyonomy
vanishes, but only has its full vivaciousness abridged by that process
of language. But the process goes on very gradually; on domains not yet
fully attacked by it, accordingly, the telling of myths continues for
long. One part may remain when another has been converted into religion.
Now the law described in Chapter IV. would require, that, after
settlement in towns and adoption of agricultural life, the part of the
Hebrew myth which was not yet turned into religion should be subject to
a development corresponding to the transition from nomadic to
agricultural life, by which the solar figures, the victors over Darkness
and Storm, take up the position of honour and sympathy always accorded
to them by the agriculturist.
§ 2. Here, however, we have to notice a peculiarity of Hebrew
development resulting from the occupation of Canaan.
Politically, the Hebrew nation on settling in Canaan had power to
annihilate a few small tribes which before the occupation had held the
middle of the land. But they brought with them a minimum of civilisation
and mental endowments, and intellectually had nothing to oppose to the
long-established civilisation of the old inhabitants,[607] and
especially of the neighbouring Phenicians, who even then were the
ancient occupiers of a great historical position. In mercantile and
industrial respects, especially, they were very dependent on that
nation, which was the chief bearer of the commerce and industry of
antiquity.[608] How should the Hebrews have risen above such dependence?
for the Phenicians exerted a powerful intellectual influence not only
upon the mentally inferior tribes of Canaan, but also upon the western
nations with which they held intercourse; as in recent times Ewald has
again strongly asserted.[609] Notwithstanding the contradiction of some
scholars who depreciate Phenician civilisation,[610] this seems to be
tolerably well established.
There is a phenomenon which has been repeated countless times in the
history of the world. A conquered people intellectually superior to its
conquerors may, any political dependence notwithstanding, enforce its
intellectual preeminence by assimilating to itself the nation which has
succeeded to its dominion. The political victor has no power to
incorporate the mind of the subjugated, if the latter possesses a higher
civilisation than his own. For example, the Hyksôs, who were strong
enough to annihilate the rule of the Egyptians in the Delta, could found
no independent civilisation in the conquered land, but made the Egyptian
culture entirely their own. And when the Aztecs, or more strictly the
second horde of the Chichimecs (Northmen), coming from Aztlan and
California, overwhelmed Anahuac in the twelfth century, and subjugated
the Toltecs, a people which had already attained a certain degree of
civilisation, it was again the conquered that imparted their culture to
the conquerors. All the elements of civilisation—arts, manners, rights,
usages, writing, etc.—which the Spanish conquerors found existing among
the Aztecs, had been received by them from the conquered Toltecs, to
whose intellectual influence they were forced to accommodate themselves,
not having anything more potent of their own to impart.[611] The same is
seen in China, first in the tenth and again in the seventeenth century.
The victorious Khitem dynasty, as later the Manchu dynasty, which still
holds the sceptre of the Middle Kingdom, could only accept and advance
the native civilisation and the peculiarities of the old Chinese nation.
And who can help thinking of the often-quoted instance of the Franks as
conquerors of Gaul? And the relation of the Normans to the population of
France conquered by them is most curious. The conquerors lost their
mother-tongue in favour of the French, took to themselves French
institutions, laws and customs, and actually transplanted subsequently
the French language to England.[612] The same phenomenon is also
encountered on the domain of Religion.[613] For the Phenicians, to whom
we recur, it was the easier to establish their system, as they came as
conquerors to places where they found a population intellectually
inferior to themselves. When by the foundation of Carthage they gained
an establishment in Northern Africa, they exerted an influence on the
Libyans which almost suppressed everything native. ‘Phenician
civilisation prevailed in Libya just as Greek in Asia Minor and Syria
after Alexander’s campaigns, if not with equal force. At the courts of
the nomad Sheikhs Phenician was spoken and written, and the civilised
native tribes took the Phenician alphabet for their languages; but it
was neither the spirit of the Phenicians nor the policy of Carthage to
Phenicise them entirely.’[614] But this very Phenician language, which
as bearer of a higher civilisation suppressed the language of
surrounding tribes and the civilisation connected with them, had in its
turn to step into the background. A civilisation of superior force and
intensity, the Arabian, assailed it, and put the Arabic language of the
conquerors of North Africa in the place of that of the Carthaginian
colonies. Renan is wrong in asserting, ‘L’arabe n’absorba que les
dialectes qui lui étaient congénères, tels que le syriaque, le chaldéen,
le samaritain. Partout ailleurs, il ne put effacer les idiomes
établis.’[615] We will not here enter on an enquiry, to what extent
Arabic in the middle ages and in modern times has supplanted other
idioms. But two considerations must be suggested in answer to Renan’s
thesis.
The first is, that it is difficult to see what power a relationship of
language like that between Arabic and Phenician can possess to cause the
weaker civilisation connected with one of the languages in question to
be supplanted by the stronger civilisation belonging to the other; when
the relationship is so remote as to be clearly understood only by
linguists, and neither known to ordinary people speaking either tongue,
nor even instinctively felt by the popular mind (if any such instinct
can be allowed in psychology). Indeed Semitic philologists themselves,
even with the knowledge of one or more of the Semitic dialects besides
their mother-tongue, arrived comparatively late at acknowledgment of
this relationship.[616] It is easy to understand how within the bounds
of the Arabic tongue the Northern dialect supplanted the Southern, when
the Northern tribes, especially that of Kureysh, gained the political
and social hegemony over Arabia, and their dialect was written down and
introduced into literature. Here, to say nothing of political and
religious causes, the extraordinary similarity of the two shades of the
Arabic language, of which the commonest Arab could not but be conscious,
made the suppression of the one in favour of the other easy; we have
frequent opportunities of observing the same in the dialects of European
languages. But it is not so easy to conceive that a relationship in
language which is only to be discovered by learned research can promote
the process of suppression of dialects. To the Arab, Syriac is as
foreign as French or any perfectly strange tongue. Botrus al-Bustâni, an
eminent savant at Beyrût, the compiler of a dictionary of his native
language and active editor of several Arabic journals, had no fewer
difficulties to overcome when he devoted himself to the study of the
Syriac language in the Maronite convents of Lebanon, than when he
learned English by intercourse with Dr. Van Dijk at the American
Protestant Mission; perhaps even greater, as in the latter case
mouth-to-mouth intercourse removed many difficulties. A Maronite priest
at Damascus assured me that the acquisition of the Italian language gave
him but few hard nuts to crack, whilst in the language of his Syriac
Church he could not get further than the elements which were
indispensable to his office. The Fin found no special difficulty in
becoming Swedish, because Swedish is a Teutonic and Finnish a Ugrian
language. In Hungary, during a long subjection to the Turks, Turkish had
no appreciable effect on the language, except in lending a few words,
although Hungarian and Turkish belong to one and the same group of
languages. Hence when one language ousts another, it is not their
relationship, but solely the superiority of the one people in intellect
and matters of culture that determines the result.
The second answer to Renan is that it is historically untrue that Arabic
could conquer only cognate idioms, but elsewhere had no power to oust
the native tongues. Where is the Coptic now? a once powerful language
having no connexion with Arabic, the vernacular use of which in Egypt
was totally annihilated by the Arabic. The dialects of the Negro
countries are beginning to give place more and more to the Arabic, and
their ultimate defeat in the contest with that language will be hastened
by the advances of the power of the Viceroy over the equatorial regions.
This is the great struggle for existence on the domain of Mind—a
struggle which the Hebrews, with the small amount of culture that they
brought to Canaan, could not sustain, nor even attempt, against the
settled population and the neighbouring powerful Canaanites of the
coast. On this a basis could be found for a hypothesis which has never
had any other foundation of the least firmness. It is now revived by
Professor J.G. Müller of Basle.[617] The Hebrews, we are told,
originally spoke a different language not connected with that of Canaan;
but, not being able to bring it into general use in their new country,
gave it up, and took over from the Canaanites the language that we call
Hebrew, which really possesses a far more palpable similarity to all
known relics of the old idioms of Canaan than is the case with languages
which though connected, are intrinsically distinct. And assuredly the
consideration of the lately found Moabitish monument, the column of
victory of King Mesha, which shows us a form of language perfectly
intelligible by the aid of the Hebrew grammar and the Hebrew lexicon,
and an historical style indistinguishable from that of the Hebrews,
involuntarily suggests the thought that we ought to speak rather of
identity than of connexion of languages. Even the Phenician language,
though not, as many erroneously suppose, absolutely identical with
Hebrew, nor even so near to it as the more Southern language of Moab,
exhibits a far closer relationship with the latter than is generally
found between different languages of the same family.[618] Phenician was
certainly not an idiom unintelligible to the Hebrews; and indeed a
Hebrew prophet even calls his mother-tongue the ‘language of Canaan’
(sephath Kenaʿan, Is. XIX. 18). The idea that the Hebrews changed their
language in Canaan possesses, indeed, no high degree of probability,
especially in so extreme and violent a form as is given to it by J.G.
Müller—least of all for us, inasmuch as the nomadic myth of the Hebrews,
which was created quite independently of Canaan, never contains any but
Hebrew names. But in matters of culture and manners, in which the
Hebrews, only just working their way up out of the nomadic stage, still
held a very primitive position at their entrance into Canaan, they were
most certainly influenced by the conquered original inhabitants and by
their powerful neighbours. These influences were immediately perceptible
in the form given to Religion and to social and political institutions.
The Hebrews did not possess sufficient resistant force of mind to work
the solar elements of _their own_ myth into a religion suitable to an
agricultural people, and had no strength to repel the Canaanitish Solar
religion, which must have been already long growing into completeness
from an old Canaanitish Solar myth; they could not accept the challenge,
but yielded. With general notions of religion they also adopted its
forms and institutes—the Temples, which bear the same relation to the
Sukkôth used for Divine worship as the fixed house of the townsman to
the hut of the nomad; the High places;[619] the sacred Trees and Woods;
the Human Sacrifices; the Priesthood, whose relation to the Sons of Levi
among the nomads again resembles that of a powerful dynasty to the
family of a Bedawî Sheikh; the Ritual of Sacrifice, and much besides.
With the religion and religious institutions of the Canaanites, their
religious terminology was also naturalised among the Hebrews. The
Phenician title of the Priest, Kôhên—Κοίης (Hellenised from Κοίην)
ἱερεὺς Καβείρων ὁ καθαίρων φονέα· ὁι δὲ κοής (Hesychius)—became among
the Hebrews also the official name of the public sacrificers; and the
fact that a derivative verb was formed from it proves it to have become
completely naturalised in ordinary speech.[620] The extant monuments of
the sacrificial ritual of the Phenicians, viz., the so-called
Sacrificial Tablet of Marseilles, discovered in 1845, and the
Carthaginian Sacrificial documents published more recently by
Davis,[621] place before our eyes much the same as we have in part of
the Book of Leviticus; and it is to be assumed that, although, after the
profound investigations of Graf[622] and Zunz,[623] the Post-Captivity
origin of that book is impressed with increasing urgency on our
conviction, still the Sacrificial laws contained in it are only a
codification of older regulations which arose and were in force in
sacerdotal circles at the time of the Hebrew dominion in Canaan, but
were not, and ought not to be, known to the people, as they referred
only to priestly functions. It would be inconceivable that a regular
sacrificial worship could exist without such arrangements and fixed
ritual. Among the Carthaginians the contents of these sacrificial
tables, with the ordinances and apportionments to be found on them, had
_canonical_ validity, and were not occasional or arbitrary orders. That
this is so, is to be inferred from the fact that the sacrificial tariff
discovered by Davis in the ruins of Carthage exhibits only an abridged
edition of the Marseilles Tablet, which also was derived from
Carthage.[624]
Not only religious, but also social and political institutions were
introduced from the Phenicians into the public life of the Hebrews. How
else could a nation passing suddenly without political experience from
nomadic to civil life produce those institutions without which a nation
can neither constitute itself as a state nor continue to exist? Thus we
find among the Hebrews from the beginning the Shôpheṭîm (Judges), who
are known as Suffetes of the Carthaginians from Livy and the
Inscriptions. It must be assumed that, although this institution is not
distinctly proved to have existed in the mother-country, its root is to
be sought there; which harmonises well with the highly developed civic
constitution of the Phenicians. To draw an inference from the
institutions of the colonies to those of the mother-country must here,
as in other cases also, be treated as perfectly justifiable. Let it be
remembered that we should have no knowledge even of the elaborate system
of priests and sacrifices among the Phenicians, but for two remarkable
monuments of antiquity: the Tablets of Marseilles and of Carthage. On
one of the most important elements of Phenician religious life,
therefore, information is only to be found in the colonies; and the same
must certainly be true of social and political questions. In the present
case it is sure to be allowable, as the official name Shôphêṭ is found
in a Greek translation used of Tyre and Sidon. It must not indeed be
supposed that the Shôpheṭîm of the Hebrews can be placed exactly beside
the Phenician Suffetes. Whilst the latter is a permanent dignity and a
fixed institution, the Shôpheṭîm of the Hebrews are not so much
officials as a sort of _duces ex virtute_, ‘who might come and go
without any alteration in the legal bases of the state,’ as Ewald
says.[625] But if we have to allow that the Hebrew Shôpheṭîm are not
holders of so fixed an office as their namesakes in Phenicia, but were
only guerilla-chiefs in times of pressure of war, yet Phenician
influence cannot be denied, when we see that, just when the nomadic
tribal divisions were beginning to grow very loose and to make way for
town-life, these chiefs were called by a name identical with the
official name of certain Phenician dignitaries of rather different
character. It is evident from this that the Hebrews regarded their
provisional chiefs as equivalents of these Phenician officers of state;
they apperceived them, so to speak, by an idea derived from Phenicia.
But, on the other hand, this view of the influence of the Shôpheṭîm
rests on the picture of their actions given in the ‘Book of Judges.’ Now
it must not be forgotten that many of these Judges’ names are mythical
(as Samson, Jephthah, Gideon), used to fill up a period which to
posterity was a mere blank with no historical contents, except the bare
fact of a continuous contest with the Philistines. This historical
frame, as we shall soon see, is filled with myths, which, when
reinterpreted in a national sense, yield a supply of national heroes,
who then can be introduced as Shôpheṭîm. But the harmonising of national
stories was not pushed to a sufficient degree of continuity to form a
foundation for a fixed historical picture. It is therefore better, in
forming our judgment on the dignity of the so-called Judges, to allow
ourselves to be determined more by the name Shôpheṭîm itself than by the
nature of the nationalised myths attached to it. Grätz[626] has quite
recently renewed the attempt to render doubtful the existence of the
Shôpheṭîm-institution among the Hebrews, and especially combated any
connexion of the Shôpheṭîm with the Punic Suffetes; and in this the
judgment of the most competent professional authorities is on his side.
But, not to speak of his view of the Shôpheṭîm as representatives of an
institution, he sets up a linguistic conjecture which arouses many a
doubt. For it requires strong etymological imagination to deny to the
Hebrew word shâphaṭ the signification _judicare_. Sober Biblical
students and philologists will not be imposed on by the passages quoted
by Grätz in justification and support of his conjecture. Not to mention
other passages, compare only the words of Is. I. 17, 23 with the
passages of Scripture which, Grätz says, speak of rushing up to the aid
of ‘oppressed or injured persons, widows and orphans.’ The word rîbh is
not calculated to support this conjecture. But, that the Shôpheṭîm,
though not hereditary nor even paid officers of state (as no one would
pretend they were), were yet certainly heads of the state, appointed by
the voice of the people, is proved by the mere fact that the Shôphêṭ was
regarded in the same light as the Melekh, as a species of the same
genus. So e.g. in Judges IX. 6, 16, where the instalment of a Shôphêṭ is
denoted by hamlîkh, and Judges XVII. 6, XVIII. 1, XXI. 25, where the
interregnum between one Shôphêṭ and the next is described as a time ‘in
which no melekh (king) reigned over Israel, and every one could do what
was right in his own eyes.’ And the consideration of the word Shôphêṭ
itself leads to the conviction that the office was an institution
suggested by Phenician custom. For it is found in no other Semitic
language in the same signification as in these two dialects of
Canaan.[627] The Samaritan, in which Shâphâṭ is also found,[628]
scarcely requires separate mention. So the Hebrews, as was so often the
case, must have borrowed the term shôphêṭ, together with the
corresponding institution, from their cultivated neighbours; for it
cannot be assumed that the expression for an idea implying so advanced a
stage of civilisation as Judge had its origin in the primeval age of
ethnological community between Hebrews and Canaanites. And later, when
the Hebrews began to appreciate the institution of Kingship, as existing
in many neighbouring nations,[629] and wished to be ruled by kings, the
theocratic historian himself describes this innovation as borrowed,
making the people say to the prophet Samuel, ‘Give us a King to judge
us, as all the nations [have a king], that we also may be like all the
nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight
our battles’ (1 Sam. VIII. 5, 20). Even concerning the political
subjection of the tribes of Canaan, it has long been perceived that this
was by no means so complete as is commonly supposed, but that the
Canaanitish element in the centre of the Hebrew dominion was powerful
enough[630] to nourish exterior religious or civilising influences. A
somewhat later didactic poet exclaims, ‘They did not destroy the nations
which Jahveh told them [to destroy]; but mixed with the nations and
learned their works’ (Ps. CVI. 34 _seq._). To this time belongs the
naturalisation of theological terms and consequently of theological
conceptions, for the independent working out of which the Hebrews had
not passed through the necessary historical experience and continuous
religious stages, but in which the history of the religion of the
Canaanites found its natural result. At the time when the nomadic nation
of the Hebrews entered Canaan, it first, so to speak, produced out of
the ancient myth the first elements of a religion; we cannot speak of a
_system_ of religion existing in that age. In the Canaanitish peoples,
on the other hand, a systematical religion had already been formed. Even
independently of the preponderating spiritual influence of the native
population, it was particularly natural to the Hebrews to attach
themselves to their system, as community of language familiarised them
with much of the religious terminology of the Canaanites. Ever since the
Hebrews had by their own efforts begun to have any religious ideas, they
called every power which they regarded as divine Êl and Shadday ‘the
Powerful;’ and as these Powers (which they also called Elôhîm, i.e. ‘the
Worshipped’ or ‘the Feared’) were seen by them on the dark sky, Êl was
also called ʿElyôn ‘the Highest’ (a synonym of Abh-râm). To the Hebrews
these names were not yet exclusively theological, _termini technici_ of
religion. Religion itself had not yet grown so stiff and fixed as to
have taken from such names their appellative character: and that of
Elôhîm and ʿElyôn continued to the latest times. But with the Canaanites
even at that early age these ancient Semitic expressions had been
already employed long enough in a theological sense to take the step
which converted them into a religious terminology. Many synonyms of the
terms in question are found among the Phenicians as religious terms, and
among the Hebrews (when the words are equally native there) in a
completely appellative sense, e.g. Baʿal ‘Lord,’ Kabbîr ‘Great,
Powerful.’
This community of language greatly promoted the introduction of
Canaanitish religion among the Hebrews. Although the above-mentioned
names impressed the Hebrews differently, being not yet limited to a
specially religious signification, yet the knowledge of their meaning as
words, which was native to the Hebrews, promoted the acquisition of the
ritual attached to them by the Canaanites. Thus it came to pass that
besides Êl, Elôhîm, ʿElyôn, Shadday, even Baʿal received worship from
the Hebrews in Canaan, of which the Biblical documents often speak (and
he is not likely to have been the only divine person borrowed from the
Phenicians), and that those names which had previously begun to assume a
religious sense were, by intellectual as well as practical intercourse
with the Canaanites, filled with the force they had to the Canaanites.
It is therefore the exact opposite of the real state of things to call
the Elôhîm-idea specially Hebrew, and make Jahveism Canaanitish, as some
Dutch theologians do. It is equally impossible to suppose the names
themselves to have been unknown till then to the Hebrews, as J.G. Müller
infers in connexion with his ethnological hypothesis.[631] The names, as
component parts of the language, are the property of Canaanites and
Hebrews alike; only their theological employment and the worship founded
upon them are to be regarded as Canaanitish. But it is especially this
employment of the names which has to be considered in relation to the
History of Civilisation.
Thus we see how the Hebrews in Canaan learned much as to religion as
well as to politics from the conquered neighbouring aborigines. The
religious ideas produced on the nomadic stage from the nomadic mythology
were wiped away, and only a few relics of the old nomadic religion
remained to a late age, either actual residues or mere memories.
Spiritually poor, the nation was handed over to the powerful influence
of the already formed culture of Canaan, and thus condemned to mere
receptivity. Accordingly, they never had an opportunity of further
developing their myths on the agricultural stage and converting them
into elements of a religion. Hence comes the remarkable fact that from
this point the myths of the Hebrews cease to grow, in the way in which
those of the Aryan nations grew. Only a small cycle of myths of the Sun
and of Civilisation were formed at this time; and the regular advance of
the Mythical to the Religious was arrested by that religious influence
which pressed in with full force from outside. The most complete and
rounded-off solar myth extant in Hebrew is that of Shimshôn (Samson), a
cycle of mythical conceptions fully comparable with the Greek myth of
Herakles. But Samson never got so far as to be admitted, like Herakles,
into the society of the gods. Those who say that mythologies have
converted Samson to a _deus solaris_ make a malicious perversion of the
truth, merely because they set themselves against any mythological
investigation on Semitic ground.[632] Whilst the Hebrews were thus
taking in from the Canaanites things quite new to them, by which the
regular further growth of their own was arrested, a considerable portion
of their own store of legends must naturally have been starved out. For
whatever ceases to grow, falls into slow decay, and at last disappears
and leaves no sign behind. Here is discovered the origin of the
defectiveness and fragmentary nature which strikes us in reconstructing
the old Hebrew myths, when compared with the richness and variety of the
Aryan myths among those nations which have passed through all stages of
civilisation regularly and without obstruction or perverting influence
from foreign forces.
The Myth is converted either into Religion or into History; the figures
of the myth become either Gods and god-born Heroes, or Ancestors of the
nation to which the myth belonged. What part of the myth cannot be
converted, or has not been converted, into religion, and what has ceased
to be religious without ceasing to exist in the popular mind, is
converted into history; for all that remains in the human consciousness
as a living portion of it must have a distinct impress; no meaningless
vegetating is possible. Nothing is without an impressed form; when an
old impress has lost its meaning, a new one is made. It is these new
impressions that keep the elements of the ancient myth alive in the mind
of the people far beyond the mythical age. Among the Hebrews this new
force worked more powerfully than elsewhere in changing the form and
impress of the still living elements of the myth, converting almost all
myth into history.[633] This result was attained with the cooperation of
an important factor in the History of Civilisation, which also
determined the _direction_ which the myth should take in being
transformed into history. We must now consider this factor.
§ 3. Though the Hebrews were intellectually dependent on the older
inhabitants of Canaan, and had to take up a receptive position towards
them in matters of civilisation and religion, it was nevertheless
inevitable that a strong antagonism should grow up between the two
sides. The Hebrews edged themselves in like an unbidden guest into the
midst of the Canaanitish system of tribes. As they could gain their
political position in that system only by conquest and repression, so
also they could maintain, protect, and confirm it only by continuous
defensive wars. We find Philistines, Moabites, and Edomites the constant
deadly foes of the existence of the Hebrew state, and the history of
Israel in Canaan is filled up with incessant struggles of greater or
less magnitude, in which the Hebrews, themselves scarcely settled in a
home, were forced to engage against the repressed old inhabitants on the
one hand, and the menaced neighbouring peoples on the other. Moreover,
the nomadic characteristic, still preserved by the Hebrews, of
faithfully maintaining the memory of their national individuality, could
not be entirely obscured by their new spiritual life, which was only
borrowed from strangers, especially as the constant wars in which they
were necessarily involved against those strangers were calculated to
heighten and confirm it. Indeed, the spirit of tribe and race, the
repelling and exclusive tendency which characterised the Canaanitish
peoples,[634] nourished in the Hebrews the desire to insist on the
enforcement and development of individuality on their side too. This
exclusiveness, this consciousness of individual peculiarity which lived
in the mind of the people, could not now find expression in religion.
When even modern Biblical criticism, coming into the inheritance of a
conception which obtained acceptance from religious animosity, still
continues to insist on the ‘National God of the Hebrews,’ it commits a
decided error, at least in reference to the age of which we are now
speaking, and especially with regard to the Elôhîm. The consciousness of
national peculiarity could not, at this stage of religion among the
Hebrews, find any expression on the domain of religion. Yet it must
perforce gain expression somewhere, and could not do so anywhere except
on a domain on which the most original impress of their own mind was
still visible—in the myths, insofar as they were not yet swept away by
foreign influence.
The awaking of National Consciousness plays a very prominent part in the
history of the development of the Myth. From the moment when in ancient
times this idea began to fill the soul of a great national community, it
seized on and transformed the whole material of which its mythology was
made. The fact that this noble consciousness gives a distinct direction
of its own to everything that fills the human soul, is another proof of
its power to transform the spiritual life. In modern times the kindling
of national self-consciousness, advanced by the arousing of spiritual
opposition to foreign influences which had previously repressed national
individuality, causes the production of documents to prove the awakening
of this national opposition, documents which belong to the best part of
literature and intellectual labour. Similarly, in ancient times before
literature, this consciousness of opposition impressed its image
especially on the myth, and made that subservient to its purpose. And on
considering the relation of the myth to the idea of nationality, we see
on many sides, how closely and inseparably the two are connected
together, how the idea operates to transform the myth, and how it needs
the myth as a support; for the myth, going back to the earliest times,
confers on the new idea something like an historical title, and gives a
broad basis to the intenseness of its force by furnishing a
justification of it. Hence it comes to pass that nations which have
preserved no great stock of original myths on which the awakened
national consciousness could fall back, instinctively create similar
stories, and this even in relatively modern times, in which a system of
religion hardened into crystal on every side, combined with the
corresponding stage of intellectual development, would leave no room for
the revival of mythical activity. Of this there are two noteworthy
instances, one in the middle ages (the twelfth or thirteenth century),
the other in this century. The Cymry of Wales, becoming alive to the
opposition in nationality between themselves and the English, felt the
need of finding a justification of this opposition in the oldest
prehistoric times. It was then first suggested to them that they were
descendants of the ancient renowned Celtic nation; and to keep alive
this Celtic national pride they introduced an institution of New Druids,
a sort of secret society like the Freemasons. The New Druids, like the
old ones, taught a sort of national religion, which however, the people
having long become Christian and preserved no independent national
traditions, they had mostly to invent themselves. Thus arose the
so-called Celtic mythology of the god Hu and the goddess Ceridolu, etc.,
mere poetical fictions, which never lived in popular belief.[635] The
other instance is furnished by the Hungarian national literature of the
time when, to revive the ‘ancient glory,’ Andrew Horváth and Michael
Vörösmarty created new myths, mythic figures and a national epic, in
place of the mere fragments remaining of the old Hungarian cycle of
myths, with the view of reviving national feeling and consciousness in
their fellow countrymen. And a few of these new creations have in a
course of a few decads of years penetrated so deep into the national
mind as to be treated as something primitive and aboriginal; so e.g.
Hadúr, the god of war, etc.[636]
Far more organic and natural is the effect produced by the national
sentiment and national opposition on the form of the myth wherever
copious mythic materials exist, which it can influence and transform.
The entire contents of the myths—the mythological figures and all that
is told of them—are apperceived by the national movement and receive
from it a new interpretation. This may be seen clearly in the case of
the old Persian myth, mentioned briefly above (pp. 15, 16), where I
showed that all that it told of the contests and mutual relations of the
Sun and Night was, at the stage of the rising national consciousness,
converted into contests between Îrân and Tûrân—the heroes of mythology
became national heroes, the victorious Sun became a victorious helper
and saviour of the nation, and the malicious intriguing Darkness the
cunning hero of the hostile people. This national interpretation of the
myth is only another side of the process which resulted in
individualising the mythical figures and created personalities of
theological significance. I have already insisted on the fact that
another set of the mythical figures when converted into individuals
assume an historical character. This comes to pass in various ways:
either the myth which is turned into history first passes through the
stage of religion, and then becomes history; or secondly, the historical
transformation is effected in immediate sequence upon the old
mythological stage; or lastly, the mythological figures assume a meaning
which is at the same time both religious and historical, like the Greek
Heroes. On the development of the Hebrew myth also the awakening of the
national spirit exercised a great influence. The consciousness of
national individuality gave a new direction to all the ideas of the
Hebrews, and so also to their mythology. Among the Greeks and Indians
the chief figures of mythology—not to speak of occasional
localisation—preserved a cosmopolitan character; for Zeus, Indra, and
others have no special national character. But the figures of the Hebrew
myths at this period became the national progenitors of the Hebrew
people, and the mythology itself the national primeval history of the
Hebrews before their settlement in the land of Canaan. Abhrâm, the ‘High
Father,’ is converted into Abhrâhâm, the abh hamôn gôyîm, ‘Father of a
mass of Nations,’ and at the same time into hâ-ʿIbhrî, ‘the Hebrew’
(Gen. XVII. 4, 5, XIV. 13); and all other figures of the myth are made
to subserve the national idea. On the one hand, they are eager to have
documentary proof of their nation’s noble origin and glorious past; on
the other, they nourish a feeling of opposition towards other
nationalities, on which they cast shame. The nation of Edom receives
Esau as ancestor: and the reminiscence of nomadic conceptions which
draws their sympathy towards Jacob, the persecuted brother, and turns
with antipathy away from the red solar hunter, is again revived in the
service of the formation of a national myth which paints Esau in the
most repulsive colours. The old mythological incest of Lot’s daughters
is made the cause of the origin of two Canaanitish tribes, the Ammonites
and the Moabites.[637] The Philistines also are dragged through this
story-making process of national antagonism. The primeval heavenly
‘Father-King’ Abimelek, who conceives a warm love for the wife of the
Morning-sky and thinks to carry her off, is made a king of the
Philistines, and Shechem, the Early Morning, the seducer of Dinah, is
converted into a prince of the Hivvites. In the story of Dinah, as given
in Genesis, we have an especially eloquent testimony to the national
animosity to which this conversion of the myth owes its origin. This
aspect of the story has been very fully proved by a Dutch scholar, Dr.
Oort. It exhibits in the people newly awakened to national
self-consciousness a tendency to abominate all connexion with the
Canaanites, and introduces as representatives or types of this tendency
the brothers Simeon and Levi, the zealots for the purity of the Hebrew
family.[638] Thus we see that the national treatment of the myth is not
merely of the nature of narrative, but at the same time also instructive
or didactic. Ham, the unworthy son who reveals the nakedness of the
solar hero, is regarded as the denier of his father and made the
ancestor of all the Canaanites, and visited by his father’s curse. ‘And
Noah awoke from his wine and learned what his youngest son had done to
him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan, let him be a slave of slaves to his
brethren. And he said, Blessed be Jahveh, the God of Shem, and let
Canaan be a slave to them’ (Gen. IX. 24–26). We see that the national
passion turns especially on Canaan: for the story makes the offended
father curse, not the offender Ham, but Canaan, who is in the
ethnographical genealogy only his grandson. It is impossible to be blind
to the factors which are concealed behind such a conception. In the case
of Esau too, the national story makes him choose his wives from the
daughters of Canaan, to whom Isaac, the patriarch of the Hebrews, and
Rebekah the mother of the tribe, strongly object (Gen. XXVII. 46,
XXVIII. 1, 6, 8); so much so that the mother would rather die than that
her favourite son Jacob should also take one of them to wife, and the
father repeatedly urges on him to have nothing to do with that people.
On this very occasion it is mentioned with emphasis that Esau is
identical with Edom, or according to another version is the father of
Edom (Gen. XXXVI. 1, 43).
The national pride of a people roused to a consciousness of its worth
must be strengthened by the memories of national heroes, and find
nourishment and life in such memories; and this impulse works with a
revived force even in later times, in which historical reminiscences of
the olden time are beginning to fade. The Hebrew people found heroes
even in some mythical figures; they were turned into Hebrew national
heroes, and their celestial contest became a national war against the
Philistines, and was removed to the age of the Shôpheṭîm or Judges,
which was in memory connected with the hardest struggles and fiercest
wars against the Philistines. The blinded Shimshôn, Samson, the setting
sun robbed of his locks and his eyesight, is brought forward as a victim
of the perfidious cunning of the Canaanites. The Goat Yâʿêl (Jael), and
the Lightning Bârâḳ, the Smasher Gideʿôn, mere mythical expressions
(clearly exhibited as such by Steinthal), are sent to battle against the
Philistines; and the attractive part of the handsome ruddy sharp-eyed
youth who slays the monster of darkness by throwing stones, is assigned
as a piece of biography to the historical hero-king David, who slays the
Philistine giant Goliath in single combat, and delivers the Hebrew
people from their dangerous enemy.[639] From the last example we see
that, besides mythical figures becoming historic personages in the
service of the national idea, historical figures also may receive
biographical features proper to mythic heroes. Not only are the figures
of the myth converted into historical ones by assigning to them a part
in historical events, but events of mythology are shifted into
historical times by fastening them on to historical persons.
The entire materials of legend are clothed in a national garb. The
Hebrews in Canaan retained the nomadic tribe-divisions. Every tribe was
provided with an ancestor, and every one of these ancestors was made a
son of Jacob, who was at the same time identified with Israel. The
twelve stars of the nightly sky descended upon the new people of Canaan,
and took on themselves the duties of Eponymi. The history of each of
these fathers of tribes became the tribe’s historical reminiscence. The
national passion, the revived consciousness of individuality, blew the
glimmering sparks of story-building into a clear flame, and determined
the direction or tendency of the stories. The history of this epoch
suggests a motive for the prevailingly _national_ development of the
Hebrew materials of legend. Hence it comes to pass that the
individualised figures of the Hebrew myth appear as national ancestors
and fathers of tribes, some as fathers of the Hebrew people with a
negative spirit of exclusiveness towards everything foreign, some as
fathers of the hostile tribes, combating the ancestors of the Hebrews.
Thus the ancestors reflect in a dim primitive age their own fortunes and
relation to the tribes of Canaan. The same psychological process which
in later time caused the Agadic interpreters to declare the principle:
maʿasê âbhôth sîmân lebhânîm ‘the deeds of the Patriarchs are types for
their descendants,’[640] was, inverted, the creative cause of the
legends of the fathers and their doings.
In such wise did the Hebrew people find expression for the consciousness
of their individuality, which they might easily have utterly lost in
their spiritual dependence upon their neighbours; namely, in a new
interpretation of their ancient myths. When they were becoming quite
Canaanitish through what they borrowed from others in religion and
culture, their whole soul was again electrified, and a new spirit
aroused by the feeling of self-dependence confirmed by severe contests.
What it could not put into the religion, which it was powerless to
create of itself, it put into a glorious series of poetical legends.
These expressed both the national consciousness on the one hand, and the
national passionateness on the other; and it may be assumed that with
the progress of animosities the tone of the legends increased in
bitterness. I adduced above the development of the Persian national
legend as an instance showing how a national legend grows out of a myth.
At the close of this chapter I will again revert to the same region of
legend, to show how national animosity can operate in transforming old
materials down to the latest times, in which new legends can scarcely be
still created. Firdôsî gives the national legends of the contests with
Tûrân, formed from the myths. But the lately roused antagonism of the
Persians to the Arabs, who had become the dominant power and were
extinguishing Iranism, also finds expression in the form which he
imparts to the legends. On reading his description of the behaviour of
the Arabian ambassadors at the court of Ferîdûn, we observe that the
legend here takes a tone of hostility to the Arabs, and criticises the
dark side of the Arabian national character; and the sufferings of Irej,
the ancestor of the Iranians, are intended to be a type of the
subjugation and vicissitudes of the Iranian race. Selm himself (the Shem
of the Shâhnâmeh in relation to Îrân and Tûrân) is represented as
malicious, passionate, and intriguing.[641]
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Footnote 605:
Palgrave gives an excellent picture of this state, in his _Central and
Eastern Arabia_, I. 34: ‘The Bedouin does not fight for his home, he
has none; nor for his country, that is anywhere; nor for his honour,
he never heard of it; nor for his religion, he owns and cares for
none. His only object in war is ... the desire to get such a one’s
horse or camel into his own possession, etc.’
Footnote 606:
Josephus, _Contra Apionem_, I. 14.
Footnote 607:
See Duncker, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, 1874, I. 253.
Footnote 608:
In Ezek. XXVII. 17, the wares, the export of which made the Hebrews
dependent on the Phenicians, are enumerated in detail.
Footnote 609:
_Die Vorurtheile über das alte und neue Morgenland_, in _Abhandl. der
königl. Gesellsch. der Wissensch._, Gottingen 1872, XVII. 98.
Footnote 610:
So _e.g._ Jas. Fergusson, _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 38; Mommsen,
_History of Rome_, 1868, II. 18 _et seq._
Footnote 611:
Lenormant, _Essai sur la propagation de l’Alphabet phénicien dans
l’ancien monde_, ed. 2, Paris 1875, I. p. 25.
Footnote 612:
W.D. Whitney, _Language and the Study of Language_, London 1867, p.
169; cf. F. von Hellwald, _Culturgeschichte_, p. 154.
Footnote 613:
Hellwald, _ibid._, p. 482.
Footnote 614:
Movers, _Die Phönizier_, II. 2. 439 _et seq._
Footnote 615:
_Histoire générale des langues sémitiques_, p. 200.
Footnote 616:
See my _Studien über Tanchûm Jeruschalmi_, Leipzig 1870, p. 12.
Footnote 617:
_Die Semiten in ihrem Verhâltniss zu Chamiten und Japheiten_, Basel
1872, p. 134.
Footnote 618:
This question will be found very satisfactorily discussed in Stade’s
article ‘_Erneute Prüfung des zwischen dem Phönicischen und
Hebräischen bestehenden Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses_,’ in the
_Morgenländische Forschungen_, Leipzig 1875, pp. 169–232.
Footnote 619:
See Merx, _Archiv. f. wissensch. Erforsch. d. A. T._ pt. 1. 1867, p.
108.
Footnote 620:
In late Aramaised Hebrew we find the feminine kehantâ (= kôheneth) for
a Priest’s Wife, equivalent to êsheth kôhên; see Levy, _Chald.
Wörterb._ I. 356 _a_. It comes thence to be used in a general
signification, of an honest, irreproachable woman, in opposition to
pundâḳîth, properly an innkeeper, in _Mishnâ Yebhâmôth_, XVI. 7.
Footnote 621:
See Ernst Meier’s essay on the former in _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1865,
XIX., and Nathan Davis, _Carthage and her remains_, London 1861.
Footnote 622:
_Die geschichtlichen Bücher des A. T._, Leipzig 1866.
Footnote 623:
_Bibelkritisches_, in the _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1873, XXVII. 682–89,
especially the theses 22–26. Zunz appears to have laboured
independently of Graf, but arrives at almost the same results.
Footnote 624:
Bargés, who has earned great credit for his elucidation of the
Marseilles table in several writings, disputes the authenticity of the
inscription discovered by Davis (_Examen d’une nouvelle inscription
phénicienne découverte récemment dans les ruines de Carthage et
analogue à celle de Marseille._ Paris 1868).
Footnote 625:
_History of Israel_, II. 360.
Footnote 626:
_Geschichte der Juden_, Leipzig 1874, I. 407 _et seq._
Footnote 627:
See Stade’s exhaustive exposition in the _Morgenländische
Forschungen_, p. 197. But I cannot share the opinion of my respected
friend, that the Hebrews could borrow nothing from the Phenicians
because the two nations passed through a completely distinct religious
and political development.
Footnote 628:
_Shefaṭ-ʿAdad_ in Nabatean, quoted by Ernst Meier in _Zeitsch. d. D.
M. G._ 1873, XVII. 609, is also problematical.
Footnote 629:
Duncker, _Geschichte des Alterthums_, I. 371.
Footnote 630:
The data belonging to this subject are lucidly brought together in
Kuenen’s _Religion of Israel_, I. 182.
Footnote 631:
_Semiten, Chamiten und Japhetiten_, p. 160 _et seq._
Footnote 632:
Equally exaggerated on the other side, however, is Tiele’s view
(_Vergelijk. Geschied._, p. 182), treating the story of Samson as
borrowed from the Canaanites. See also Duncker, _l.c._ II. 65.
Footnote 633:
This fact, moreover, refutes Buckle’s thesis (assuming the very
opposite course of development), which makes history to be the
earlier, and to be subsequently degraded to ‘a mythology full of
marvels.’ This thesis has been estimated at its true value by Hermann
Cohen in an article entitled _Die dichterische Phantasie und der
Mechanismus des Bewusstseins_, in the _Zeitsch. für Völkerpsychologie
etc._, 1869, VI. 186–193.
Footnote 634:
Mommsen, _l.c._ book III. chap 1.
Footnote 635:
Holtzmann, _Deutsche Mythologie_, p. 28.
Footnote 636:
Paul Gyulai, _Vörösmarty élete_ [Life of Vörösmarty], Pest 1866, p. 49
_et seq._
Footnote 637:
See Excursus N.
Footnote 638:
_Godgeleerde Bijdragen_, 1866, p. 983 _et seq._ With him Kuenen
agrees, _The Religion of Israel_, I. 311 _et seq._
Footnote 639:
Like the Hungarian national hero Nicolas Toldi, who overcomes the
Czech (Bohemian) hero in single combat.
Footnote 640:
Compare _Genesis rabbâ_, § 48.
Footnote 641:
See _Shâhnâmeh_ (ed. Mohl), p. 124. vv. 121–29 and pp. 139–40, etc.
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