The flaring of the flame, however, brings the consciousness back to the

earth: Pramantha has brought the god to earth. We must realise the

revolution effected in the consciousness by the fire breaking out. The

combination of ideas concerning the earthly fire, which had coalesced

with the other combination concerning the divine fire, is, by the

present perception, again introduced into the consciousness as a special

power, and its coalescence with the other conception is thereby

cancelled. Against the sensuous impression of the present actual fire

the circle of ideas of the divine one cannot maintain its supremacy. It

retires and leaves the foreground of the consciousness to the circle of

ideas of the earthly fire. But all this appeared to the primitive man

not a psychological, but a real procedure; not a shifting of ideas, but

an actual shifting of the imagined reality. When attention was shifted

from the one circle of ideas to the other, guided by the idea of fire,

which bound the two together, then it appeared to the primitive man as

if the actual fire had removed from the one into the other, and had come

from heaven to earth; and the already-begun fancy that the god Pramantha

had fetched Agni, is accordingly carried on to the further point of

saying that he put him among men.

Man soon observed in the sky on an enlarged, divine scale, the identical

process which he had learned when producing fire by rotation. Agni

dwells in the bright, clear, light sky. But the sky is overcast and

darkened by a thunder-cloud: Agni has concealed himself; he has hidden

himself in the hollow of the cloud. He breaks forth from it, being

fetched by a divine Pramantha, Mâtariśvan, the Lightning. The lightning

bores into the cloud as the earthly borer into the wooden disk:

Prometheus, or Bhṛgu and his descendants the Bhṛgu-s, fetch the god from

his hiding-place. They go down to the earth with him and take him to

men.

The primitive man does not ask, Where does the fire come from? what

becomes of the fire that has fallen from heaven? Before he asks this,

and without his asking, he sees, and the lightning tells him, that the

fire comes from heaven, and the wood tells him that the lightning (Agni)

is concealed in the wood. Neither does the primitive man ask, Where does

man come from? He sees it, and practises it.[803] The birth of man is a

generating of fire. When the primitive man sees a tree, he does not ask,

What is it? but by the sight of the tree present before him the

combination of ideas respecting trees which is already formed in his

mind is without his observation recalled into his consciousness; and

this combination appropriates to itself the present sight, the

perception coalescing with the combination of ideas through the

similarity of their contents: and thereby what is seen is apperceived as

a tree. Similarly, when the primitive man figures to himself the act of

copulation, it is the combination of ideas of producing fire by rubbing

that enters into his consciousness on account of the similarity of the

movement, and gives him an apperception of that act. The similarity of

the two acts seems to the primitive man greater than to us. On the one

hand, the production of fire is to him a religion and a divine energy;

on the other, man is already regarded by him as a fire-creature,

lightning-born quite as much as a bird. The two combinations of ideas do

not, indeed, coalesce; but yet are greatly interlaced with each other in

some of their essential elements. The opposition between the partial

difference which separates the combinations and the partial similarity

which unites them, leads to a solution in a double and reciprocal

apperception: first, that the divine rubber, Pramantha or Prometheus,

created man, or that lightning, Bhṛgu, Yama, or the lightning-bird

Picus, was the first man; secondly and conversely, that the production

of the flame by rubbing is the production of the Fire-God Agni, and that

the wood is the cradle of the new-born god. Thus Agni remains always the

‘new-born’ and the ‘youngest,’ as he is called in the Vedas; and

Dionysos, also a fire-god, appears as λικνίτης, a god in a cradle.

The primitive man was convinced that man was fire. Indeed, his wonder at

his own lightning-nature was aroused every time that he produced the

god; and when sacerdotal families had gained the exclusive privilege of

kindling fire, these families traced their origin to Bhṛgu or Agni, and

called themselves Bhṛgu-s, Aṅgiras-es, etc. For they continued to do

just what their ancestor, the Lightning, had done before them.

This is, as far as I can give it, the psychological explanation of the

original forms of the stories of the Descent of the Fire. The

superstition attached to these stories, in ancient as well as in modern

times, would be more fittingly considered separately. The peculiar

formation of the character of Prometheus among the Greeks however, may

still engage our attention a little longer.

Prometheus is a god and yet a Titan also. He is the greatest benefactor

of the human race. Yet in all other cases the mythical idea is that

whoever does good to man is also friendly to God, and that only those

who do harm to man rebel also against God. For the elucidation of this

most peculiar and contradictory position, the following points seem to

me worth pondering.

All the forces and occurrences of nature show two sides; one beneficial

to man, and one hostile to him. So also the myth almost always discovers

in the one and the same natural event, a good and a bad god. The bad god

is hostile at once to men and gods. The development of a myth frequently

takes the course of converting one of the epithets of the god who

represents some process of nature, into a good god, and another into a

bad god. The course to be followed in such a case is frequently

determined by the nature or significance of the epithets themselves. Now

it is certain that Hephaestos and Prometheus are identical in their

origin, as indeed is shown in the story of the birth of Athene, in which

the head of Zeus is cleft by either one or the other of them. But both

Hephaestos and Prometheus are Agni in different forms. We have seen what

Prometheus signifies. Somewhat of the physical signification must have

still clung to this name even when it came upon Greek ground.

Hephaestos, on the other hand, possessed from its very origin the finest

signification of Agni; for it probably represents Agni as a home-god,

guardian of the family, as a god of the hearth. And Hephaestos was still

worshiped by the Greeks as a hearth-god. It surely seems natural, then,

that the ideas of the beneficent action of fire should fasten themselves

to him. But, on the other side, to make Prometheus, the Fire-stealer, an

actual enemy of the gods, was impossible, for the very reason that he

had been a benefactor of men by giving them fire, and was also the

creator of men. Thus, he, as a god, became the champion of mankind

against the injustice of the gods. It must be added that, perhaps even

in the age of the unity of the Aryan race, the Fire-god, in his capacity

as god (creator) of mankind, was also a god of Thought, who among

primeval circumstances could scarcely be anything else but a god of

Prudence, or foreseeing caution—an idea which gave the Romans their

Minerva, but which might very naturally be attached to a god of fire,

since prudence is exhibited nowhere more plainly than in the use of

fire. At all events, even in the Vedas, Agni has the epithet _pramati_,

which would yield something like προμῆτι-ς in Greek. Epic story made

Pramati an independent personage, a son of Ćyavana (_supra_, p. 373),

the ‘Fallen,’ who is a son of Bhṛgu, the Lightning. Thus in sense, if

not in name, the Indian Pramati is equivalent to Prometheus.

Prometheus is Fire-god, Man-god, God of human energy in thought. In this

capacity he comes into collision with the supreme god. So he appears in

Hesiod, and also in Aeschylus, except that the latter was able to give a

far deeper meaning to the guilt of Prometheus, to his entire relation to

Zeus, and therefore also to his ultimate reconciliation.

Thus then in Prometheus is comprised the whole essence of heathenism:

deification of Man and Nature. He was the most characteristic figure of

that mode of conception which created gods in the image of man. But the

opposite mode of conception, according to which man was created like one

single god, and was expected to make himself like God in life, produced

a figure opposed to that of Prometheus—Moses. I speak here not of the

historical, but of the mythical Moses; and I hope that the reader will

be inclined to distinguish the two as clearly as we distinguish the

historical and the legendary Charlemagne. Now the mythical Moses may be

compared in meaning with Prometheus. Prometheus ascended to heaven and

fetched down fire from the altar of Zeus for men. Moses also went up and

brought back the Tables of his God with the fundamental laws of all

common human moral life; for this act Moses could not come into conflict

with God. But the original heathen myth respecting Moses was different.

Moses struck water out of the rock with his staff: the staff is the

lightning, the rock the cloud, the water the rain. Kuhn has shown at

length what a close connexion subsists between the procuring of water,

wine, honey, mead, and soma, and the bringing down of fire,[804] (like

the connexion between rain and lightning), and that they are so to

speak, mythical synonyms. And this water did cause a difference between

Moses and God. Now the reconciliation is brought about by Aeschylus by

making both Prometheus and Zeus purify themselves and bind themselves by

moral elements. But the monotheistic spirit of the Prophet transfigured

the entire myth, and put in the place of the water and the fire the Word

of God; and then no reconciliation was needed, for God spoke with Moses

as his servant and messenger. Yet alongside of this monotheistic myth of

Moses who brings down the Word of God, there remained also the old

heathen one, which said that he brought water. It was a correct feeling,

or a lingering consciousness which had been retained, that declared that

Moses had sinned in the matter of the water, although it was no longer

known in what the sin consisted.[805] Therefore I interpret and clear up

the obscured remembrance or suspicion of the author of the Book of

Numbers, by saying that, forasmuch as Moses strikes water out of the

rock with his staff, he is a heathen god, a Mâtariśvan, a Pramantha, and

therefore in opposition to the one true God, and must die; but forasmuch

as he gives the Word of God to men, he is the Prophet without his equal.

------------------

_THE LEGEND OF SAMSON._

By H. STEINTHAL.

When an author can presume that his readers share his views on things in

general, and also accept like principles respecting the special sphere

to which his subject belongs, it may be fitting to descend from the

general to the particular. But when, as is now more frequently the case,

no such assumption can be made, the opposite course, from the particular

to the general, is preferable for the sake of both the matter and the

manner of the investigation itself. I shall therefore adopt it.

I shall, therefore, at the outset leave out of the question what view it

is possible to hold respecting the growth of the people of Israel, and

especially of their monotheism. I shall not proceed on the assumption

that any particular view is proved true, but try whether, after the

consideration of our subject in its details, any result affecting

general questions is reached. I also for the present leave undetermined

the value of the Biblical Books as sources of history, the period of the

composition of the separate books, and even their relative age—i.e. the

earlier or later compilation of one with reference to others. For all

these are still disputed points; and I desire not to build upon any

unproved assumption, but to see how much can be contributed to the

solution of the questions that arise. Even the question, whether, and

how far, we are justified in treating the history of Samson in the Bible

as legend,[806] may be left to be answered only from the result of the

following enquiry. If, on comparing these stories with other nations’

stories, similarities are discovered alongside of much that is

dissimilar, nothing shall, in the first instance, be decided about the

cause and significance of such similarities, but new investigation shall

be made on the subject.

I. THE ADVENTURE WITH THE LION, AND THE RIDDLE.—

THE FOXES.

I pass over the narrative of the birth of Samson for the present,

intending to come to it only after the contemplation of his actions. The

reason for this arrangement will then become apparent. I therefore

commence with Samson’s first action.

It is narrated (Judges XIV.) that Samson was attacked by a lion when on

the way to see his bride, and killed him. When he went by the same road

to his wedding, he looked at the carcase of the lion, and found a swarm

of bees and honey in it. This occurrence suggested the following riddle,

which he put forth at the wedding-feast: ‘Out of the Eater came forth

Meat, and out of the Strong [Wild] came forth Sweetness.’ By his bride’s

treachery the riddle was solved: ‘What is sweeter than honey? and what

stronger than a lion?’

Samson’s riddle is still a riddle even to us now. It has never yet been

solved, as far as I know; certainly not in the Bible itself, for the

answer there given is a still greater riddle than the riddle itself,

which seems not to have been observed. Only look closely at the

pretended solution. It looks as if the question had been: ‘What is the

sweetest, and what the strongest?’ But the actual problem was: ‘Out of

the wild eater comes sweet food;’ how that came to pass, was the

question—and still is a question. For even the story of the slain lion

and the honey found in his carcase cannot contain the solution, because

it involves a physical impossibility. Bees do not build in dead flesh;

their wax and honey would be spoiled by putrefaction. In no such wise

can honey come out of the lion. Besides, Samson would be very foolish to

base a riddle on a mere personal experience known to no one; it would

then be absolutely insoluble. We cannot credit the original narrative

with so gross an ineptitude. Then what is the position of the affair?

It is certain that a riddle like the one in question was in circulation

among the ancient Hebrews, and that Samson was believed to have proposed

it. It is equally certain that its solution lay in the words transmitted

from antiquity: ‘What is sweeter than honey, what stronger than a lion?’

But it is not only to us at the present day that this solution is as

obscure as the riddle itself; it was quite as unintelligible to the

latest elaborator of the Book of Judges. So he attempted a solution on

his own responsibility. He had two data in his possession: the riddle,

and the story of the lion-killing. Well, he concluded, Samson must have

found honey in the carcase of this lion. What he had wrongly inferred,

he narrated as a fact which ought to yield the solution of the riddle.

But we must guess better. If it is certain that Samson cannot have found

honey in the lion’s carcase, yet, on the other hand, the pretended

solution at least proves that by the strong eater the lion is to be

understood, and by the sweet food the honey. And if this was solution

sufficient for the legend, it follows that at the time when the riddle

arose some connexion between lion and honey was so definitely and

clearly present to the consciousness of every individual, because held

by the mind of the entire people, that it came into prominence as soon

as ever lion and honey were named together: somewhat as among us when we

speak of bear and honey together, though with reference to something

else.[807] But there must have been some known connexion which made it

evident how honey came out of the lion. It is our task now to discover

this connexion if we are to attempt the solution of the riddle—one which

is more than thirty centuries old, and the unriddling of which has been

forgotten for some twenty-five. Can there be any other riddle of equal

interest? In the following remarks I endeavour to solve it.

When once we know that the Eater in the riddle is the Lion, of course it

is natural to think of the lion killed by Samson; and the compiler of

the Book of Judges would not have fancied that the honey was in its

carcase, but for an obscure memory that this particular lion had

something to do with it. Now to us this lion is not a real but a

mythological one, i.e. a symbol. And we know the meaning of the symbol.

Herakles also, it is well known, begins his labours by killing a lion.

The Assyrians and Lydians, both of them Semitic nations, worshipped a

Sun-god named Sandan or Sandon; he also is imagined to be a lion-killer,

and frequently figured struggling with the lion or standing upon the

slain lion. The lion is found as the animal of Apollon on the Lycian

monuments as well as at Patara.[808] Hence, it becomes clear that the

lion was accepted by the Semitic nations as a symbol of the summer heat.

The reason of the symbol was undoubtedly the light colour, the colour of

fire, the mane, which recalled Apollon’s golden locks, and also the

power and rage of the wild beast. The hair represents the burning rays.

So we have here to do with the sign of the Lion in the zodiac, in which

the sun is during the dog-days. At this season the sky is occupied by

Orion, the powerful huntsman—of whom I shall presently have a few words

to say—and Sirius, who in Arabic is designated ‘the Hairy’ in reference

to his rays.

‘Samson, Herakles, or Sandon kills the lion,’ means therefore, ‘He is

the beneficent saving power that protects the earth against the burning

heat of summer.’ Samson is the kind Aristaeos who delivers the island of

Keos from the lion,[809] the protector of bees and hives of honey, which

is the most abundant when the sun is in the Lion. Thus sweet food comes

out of the strong eater.

Very possibly and probably, however, there was a superstition to the

effect that bees are generated out of the lion’s carcase, in the same

way as they are believed by some nations to spring from an ox’s

carcase.[810] But such a superstition must have some basis, and no other

basis is easily conceivable but the mythological one which I have

mentioned. What was true in symbol, that the Lion produced honey, was

taken as true in fact. For I must insist on the fact that, according to

the literal meaning of the Hebrew, no mere taking of the honey from

outside a lion’s skeleton is meant, but its being actually produced by

the lion.

However, when we try to clear up to our own minds what has been said, we

stumble upon a difficulty. It is after all the Sun that produces the

summer-heat; Apollon sends the destructive shafts. Therefore, if the

Sun-god does battle against the summer-heat, he is fighting against

himself; if he kills it, he kills himself. No doubt he does. The

Phenicians, Assyrians, and Lydians attributed suicide to their Sun-god;

for they could only understand the sun’s mitigation of its own heat as

suicide. If the Sun stands highest in the summer, and its rays burn with

their devouring glow, then, they thought, the god must burn himself; yet

does not die, but only gains a new youth in the character of the Phenix,

and appears as a gentler autumn-sun. Herakles also burns himself, but

rises out of the flames to Olympos.

This is the contradiction usual in the heathen gods. As physical forces

they are both salutary and injurious to man. To do good and to save,

therefore, they must work against themselves. The contradiction is

blunted when each side of the physical force is personified in a

separate god; or when, though only one divine person is imagined, the

two modes of operation—the beneficent and the pernicious—are

distinguished by separate symbols. The symbols then become more and more

independent, and are ultimately themselves regarded as gods; and whereas

originally the god worked against himself, now the one symbol fights

against the other symbol, one god against the other god, or the god with

the symbol. So the Lion represents as a symbol the hostile aspect of the

Sun-god, and the latter must kill him lest he should be burned himself.

Samson also unites both aspects in himself. The Hebrew story makes him

operate even on the pernicious side, but against the foe. To the foe he

is the scathing Sun-god. This is the sense of the story of the Foxes,

which Samson caught and sent into the Philistines’ fields with

firebrands fastened to their tails, to burn the crops. Like the lion,

the fox is an animal that indicated the solar heat; being well suited

for this both by its colour and by its long-haired tail. At the festival

of Ceres at Rome, a fox-hunt through the Circus was held, in which

burning torches were bound to the foxes’ tails: ‘a symbolical reminder

of the damage done to the fields by mildew, called the “red fox”

(_robigo_), which was exorcised in various ways at this momentous season

(the last third of April). It is the time of the Dog-star, at which the

mildew was most to be feared; if at that time great solar heat follows

too close upon the hoar-frost or dew of the cold nights, this mischief

rages like a burning fox through the corn-fields. On the twenty-fifth of

April were celebrated the Robigalia, at which prayers were addressed to

Mars and Robigo together, and to Robigus and Flora together, for

protection against devastation. In the grove of Robigus young dogs of

red colour were offered in expiation on the same day.’[811] Ovid’s story

of the fox which was rolled in straw and hay for punishment, and ran

into the corn with the straw burning and set it on fire,[812] is a mere

invention to account for the above-mentioned ceremonial fox-hunt; still

it has for its basis, though in the disguise of a story, the original

mythical conception of the divine Fire-fox that burns up the corn.

The stories of Samson hitherto discussed seem to me so similar to the

Eastern and Western ones that I have compared, their interpretation so

certain, and their sense so essential to the character of the Sun-god,

that I am of opinion that even the coincidence of collateral points

cannot be treated as accidental. The Bible says that Samson killed the

lion with his bare hands: ‘there was nothing in his hand.’ But Herakles

also kills the Nemean lion without his arrows, by strangling him with

his arms. This feature, too, is probably significant. The Greek myth

says that the reason why Herakles could not use any weapons was because

the lion’s hide was invulnerable; but this is pure invention. The truth

seems to me to be, that the weapons possessed by the Sun-god are

actually his only in so far as his symbol is the lion; for they consist

of the force and efficacy of the Sun. Now when the Sun itself is to be

killed, that cannot be done with the very weapons which are its

strength. The god is forced to catch the burning rays in his own arms;

he must extinguish the Sun’s heat by embracing the Sun, i.e. by

strangling or rending the lion.

The following point is less clear, but surely not without significance.

The Philistines avenge the destruction of their cornfields, vineyards,

and olives by Samson, by burning his bride and her father. This causes

Samson to inflict a great defeat on his enemies; but after the victory

he flies and hides in a cavern.[813] What means this behaviour, for

which no motive is assigned? What had Samson to fear in any case, but

especially after such a victory? But let it be remembered that Apollon

flies after killing the dragon; so also Indra after killing Vṛtra,

according to the Indian legend in the Vedas; and that even Êl, the

Semitic supreme god, has to fly. Thus Samson’s retreat, mentioned, but

not very clearly expressed because not understood, by the Biblical

narrator, appears to indicate this often-recurring flight of the Sun-god

after victory. In the tempestuous phenomena, in which two powers of

nature seemed to be contending together, men felt the presence of the

good god; but after his victory, when all was quiet again, he seemed to

have I withdrawn and gone to a distance.

But if on the last-mentioned point the story is seen to be shrouded in

much obscurity, this is the case in even a higher degree with the two

next-following deeds of Ṣamson.

2. THE ASS’S JAWBONE.

We come to Samson’s heroism displayed with the ass’s jawbone. There is

much difficulty here, and it will be impossible to be certain as to the

interpretation. But it must be noticed at the outset that the story

belongs strictly to a certain locality. Its field of action is a

district between the Philistine and the Israelite territories, which was

called ‘Jawbone,’ or perhaps in full, ‘Ass’s Jawbone,’ and doubtless

received this name from the peculiar conformation of the mountains.

Pointed rocks probably formed a curved line, and thus presented the

figure of a jawbone with teeth. Between these teeth of rock there may

have been a cauldron-shaped depression, which had the appearance of an

empty place for a tooth; and just there a spring, no doubt a well-known

and perhaps a particularly healing one, must have risen.[814] So,

although the story wishes to derive the name from Samson’s feats, the

truth is rather that the name and the territorial conditions produced

the transformation of the story.

Now I must first remind the reader of the tongue of land in Lakonia

close to the promontory of Maleae, which stretches out into the Lakonian

gulf opposite the island Kythera: it bears the very same name as the

place where Samson performed his feat, Onugnathos (‘Ass’s Jawbone’). The

name is certainly only the Greek translation of an original Phenician

name. From Strabo[815] we learn little or nothing of this peninsula.

Pausanias[816] reports that there had been on it a temple of Athene

without image and without roof. Now this Athene was probably identical

with a modification of the Astarte of Sidon, Athene Onka, who was

worshipped at Thebes also. And it may be significant, that there was in

that temple a monument to Menelaos’ steersman, who was called Kinados

(‘Fox’). At all events _Onugnathos_ proves a myth, known also to the

Phenicians, of which an ass’s jawbone was an essential part.

But the ass, like the fox, was in many nations sacred to the evil

Sun-god, Moloch or Typhon, on account of his red colour, from which his

name in Hebrew is taken. The Greeks say that in the country of the

Hyperboreans, hecatombs of asses were offered to Apollon. But he was

also ascribed to Silenos, the demon of springs, on account of his

wantonness; and this may perhaps furnish the explanation of the

celebrated spring at this place, which has its rise in the Jawbone.

Perhaps formerly there was at this spring, which was called ‘Spring of

the Crier,’[817] a sanctuary where the priests of the Sun-god gave out

oracles, as those of Sandon, the Lydian Sun-god, did at a spring in the

neighbourhood of Kolophon. And the ass is a prophetic animal: I need

only refer to Balaam’s ass.

To ancient tradition must undoubtedly be ascribed the exclamation which

Samson is said to have uttered on this occasion: ‘With an ass’s jawbone

a heap, two heaps—with an ass’s jawbone I slew a thousand men.’[818] Now

Bertheau conjectures[819] that this short verse had originally ‘_at_ the

place called _Ass’s Jawbone_ I slew,’ and that the story of Samson

gaining a victory with an ass’s jawbone arose solely from false

interpretation of it; and no doubt the Hebrew preposition _be_ can

denote ‘in, at’ quite as well as ‘with.’ The same scholar observes

further, that according to the story the rocks called ‘Jawbone

Hill’[820] are, themselves, the very ass’s jawbone that was thrown away

by Samson after his victory; for only so is it intelligible that a

spring should gush out of the cast-away jawbone, as the story goes on to

relate.[821] To this I must add, that the throwing of the jawbone seems

to me the most essential and original feature in the whole story, from

which the name and origin of the locality, and the victory with the

jawbone also, were developed. For surely the jawbone cannot be anything

but the Lightning, just as in Aryan mythology the head of an ass, or

still more that of a horse, denotes a storm-cloud, and a tooth,

especially the tusk of a boar, signifies the lightning.[822] Here then

we have a thunder-bolt thrown down in the lightning—the instrument with

which the Sun-god conquered, and at the same time formed the locality.

I have two more observations to make here. We nowhere find Samson armed

with the weapons which we see almost everywhere else in the hands both

of the Greek and of the Oriental Herakles—the mortar-club (pestle) or

the bow and arrows. The club had the appearance of a mortar with the

pestle in it, or of a tooth in its cavity; and in Hebrew one word[823]

denoted both a mortar and the cavity of a tooth.[824] The second remark

relates to the Spring. The Bible tells that Samson, wearied out by the

murderous contest, at length sank down, faint with thirst, and prayed to

God, saying ‘Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy

servant, and now I shall die for thirst and fall into the hand of the

uncircumcised!’ upon which God made the spring burst forth. This might

be a fiction, in which Samson was depicted under human conditions; and

the story of the spring given to relieve Hagar and Ishmael might in that

case serve as a model for it. But perhaps the following combination will

not be found too far-fetched. The Solar hero wages war with the mischief

done to nature by an excess of heat. Thus the battle of Herakles with

Antaeos is only the form localised in the deserts of Libya, of the story

of the contest against the stifling heat, against the simoom which gains

its strength from the sandy soil, as Movers, who also sees in the

Erymanthean boar only a variant of Antaeos, has ingeniously explained.

In Tingis, i.e. Tangier, the grave of Antaeos was shown, _with a spring

beside it_. A similar legend among the Hebrews might perhaps assume in

time the above strictly Jahveistic form. In that case the national

instinct of Israel would have retained only the spirit and sense of the

old story, while putting off all the heathen form and substituting a

Jahveistic one for it. This would require no reflexion indeed, but

undoubtedly much creative power of popular imagination. The fact, that

in the Hebrew story the spring is put into combination with the jawbone,

would seem to me, connecting it with my conception of the latter as

Lightning, to indicate that the spring is the Rain, which breaks forth

from the cloud with the lightning.

3. SAMSON AT GAZA.

It is related[825] that to escape out of the Philistine town of Gaza by

night, Samson pulled up the city-gates with their posts and bars, and

carried them to the top of the hill opposite the city of Hebron; which

seems an utterly senseless practical joke, though quite in keeping with

Samson’s overweening jovial character. It will probably be difficult to

make out with any certainty what is the foundation of this legend. It

seems probable to me, however, that we have to do here with a disfigured

myth, of the same import as that of the descent of Herakles into the

nether-world,[826] which originally declared that Samson broke open the

gates of the well-bolted (πυλάρτης) Hades. As in the Greek story of

Herakles the fight at the _gate_ of the nether-world, ἐν πύλῳ ἐν

νεκύεσσι, was transformed into a fight at Pylos,[827] by a mere play on

words; so in the Hebrew story, instead of the gates of the nether-world

or of death (shaʿarê mâweth), those of the city called the Strong (Gaza,

or properly ʿAzzâ) might be named. The cause for which Samson went down

into the nether-world was forgotten, and a new motive was invented by

the legend for his visit to Gaza, in keeping with the licentiousness of

his character. The fact that he starts at midnight, and does not sleep

till morning, is certainly not without significance, but contains a

remembrance of the circumstance that the deed took place in the

darkness, i.e. in the nether-world. And the feature of the story which

tells that Samson carries the gates to the top of a hill, must have been

suggested by some local peculiarity in the form of the rock. But very

probably the recollection of a myth which made the Solar hero bring

something up from the nether-world had also some influence on the story.

4. SAMSON'S AMOURS.

The circumstance that Samson is so addicted to sexual pleasure, has its

origin in the remembrance that the Solar god is the god of fruitfulness

and procreation. Thus in Lydia Herakles (Sandon) is associated with

Omphale the Birth-goddess, and in Assyria the effeminate Ninyas with

Semiramis; whilst among the Phenicians, Melkart pursues Dido-Anna.

The beloved of the god is the goddess of parturition and of love. She

is, in general terms, Nature, which is fructified by the solar heat,

conceives and bears; or is specially identified with the Moon, or even

with the Earth, but more frequently with Water—originally rain, and

subsequently the sea and rivers also, and finally (the rain being

regarded as mead or wine) the vine, caressed by the sun. Thus Venus

rises out of the sea; and Semitic goddesses have fish-ponds dedicated to

them. Iole, whom Herakles woos, is the daughter of Eurytos, the

‘Copiously Flowing.’ Of the three Philistine women whom Samson

approaches, only one—the one who brings about his ruin—is named. Her

name, Delîlâ, denotes, according to Gesenius, _infirma_, _desiderio

confecta_, i.e. the ‘Longing, Languishing,’ and according to Bertheau

the ‘Tender;’ at all events, it refers to love. She lives in the

‘Vine-Valley,’[828] and consequently appears to represent the vine

itself, which the Sun-god is so zealous in wooing; indeed, even the name

Delîlâ might denote a Branch, a Vine-shoot. Deianeira, also, is the

daughter of Oeneus the ‘Wine-man,’ or, as others say, of Dionysos.

Orion, who stands so near to the Sun-god, woos the daughter of Oenipion

the ‘Vine.’ But even supposing—what is very possible—that Delîlâ

originally denoted a Palm-branch, we know that the palm was sacred to

Asherah.

But yet another combination appears admissible. Delîlâ may also signify

the ‘Relaxed, Vanishing,’ as a Moon-goddess. This goddess is indeed

originally a chaste virgin; but in Tyre and Assyria she also assumes the

character of Birth-goddess, and is variously served by strict chastity,

by sacrifice of children, and by prostitution of virginity.

The coalescence of the chaste and cruel goddess with the luxurious one

is exhibited in Semiramis, who is said to have killed her husband and

all her numerous lovers. This might have given to the story of Samson

its present form, which represents his ruin as brought about by a woman.

But this leads to the following point.

5. SAMSON’S END.

Looking back, we find that we may probably regard as certain the

proposed interpretation of the killing of the lion, of the foxes

carrying firebrands, and of Samson’s sexual passion: while the deeds

with the jawbone and the gates must be termed uncertain. Now Samson’s

end brings us back into perfect clearness; it refers again to the Solar

god. If the hair is the symbol of the growth of nature in summer, then

the cutting off of the hair must be the disappearance of the productive

power of Nature in winter. Samson is blinded at the same time, like

Orion: this again has the same meaning, the cessation of the power of

the Sun. Again, Samson and the other Sun-gods are forced to endure being

bound: and this too indicates the tied-up power of the Sun in winter.

The final act, Samson’s death, reminds us clearly and decisively of the

Phenician Herakles, as Sun-god, who died at the winter solstice in the

furthest West, where his two Pillars are set up to mark the end of his

wanderings. Samson also dies at the two Pillars, but in his case they

are not the Pillars of the World, but are only set up in the middle of a

great banqueting-hall. A feast was being held in honour of Dagon, the

Fish-god; the sun was in the sign of the Waterman; Samson, the Sun-god,

died.[829]

6. SAMSON THE HEBREW SOLAR HERO = HERAKLES,

MELKART.

The above comparison and interpretation of all Samson’s deeds and the

manner of his end has yielded so clear and decided a result, that the

answer to the question, ‘Who or what was Samson originally?’ has

necessarily been already anticipated. I therefore now only combine

together what has been discovered, and say: Samson was originally a

Sun-god, or his vicegerent a Solar hero—the Sun being conceived as the

representative of the force of Heat in nature, whether vivifying and

salutary, or scorching and destructive.

To this result we are brought, finally, by the name of our hero. For

Samson, or more accurately Shimshôn, is an obvious derivative from the

Hebrew word for ‘Sun.’[830] As from dâg ‘fish’ Dâg-ôn,[831] the name of

the Fish-god of the Philistines, is formed, so from shemesh ‘sun’ we

have Shimsh-ôn, the Sun-god.

Now, to recur to Samson’s hair, our thoughts turn most naturally to

Apollon’s locks. But this comparison appears to me not quite accurate.

For Apollon’s locks are connected with his arrows, and are, like them, a

figure of his rays. But Samson is not the shining god, but the warming

and productive god. His hair, like the hair and beard of Zeus, Kronos,

Aristaeos, and Asklepios, is a figure of increase and luxuriant fulness.

In winter, when nature appears to have lost all strength, the god of

growing young life has lost his hair. In the spring the hair grows

again, and nature returns to life again. Of this original conception the

Biblical story still preserves a trace. Samson’s hair, after being cut

off, grows again, and his strength comes back with it.[832]

This Sun-god was, moreover, regarded as the beneficent power that

destroyed all powers and influences injurious to man and to life in

general,—the chivalrous hero, who wandered over the earth from the east

to the furthest west, everywhere ready to strike a blow to deliver the

earth from the creatures of Typhon, the Hydra, etc., the defender and

king of cities, leader of emigrants and protector of colonies—in short,

as _Herakles_.

This character of the Herakles-Melkart of the Phenicians appears in

Samson in greatly shrunken proportions. The Hebrews sent no colonies to

Mount Atlas; the supernatural monsters become a natural lion; and

Samson’s strength was required only against the Philistines. It is also

seen, moreover, from the above comparison, not only that it is correct,

but also how far it is correct, to call Samson the Hebrew Herakles. The

one as well as the other is a martial Sun-god. And this makes it clear

also that we are equally justified in classing Samson with Perseus and

Bellerophon, with Indra and Siegfried,—in short, with all the

mythological beings and legendary heroes whose nature is related to sun,

light, and especially warmth, like Orion, Seirios, Aristaeos, and

Kronos. In mythology, as in language, there are synonyms; e.g. Apollon

and Helios, Herakles and Perseus; indeed, the two latter are both

synonymous with Apollon. Now two words belonging to different languages,

though similar in meaning, still scarcely ever call up absolutely the

same conception, but are a little different from one another as

synonyms. So also mythological beings and names in two nations,

especially where the difference is so great as it is between the Hebrews

and the Greeks, and between the Semites and the Aryans in general, are

probably never perfectly identical, but never more than synonyms.

Therefore we must not indulge the caprice of trying to make Samson as

similar as possible to Herakles: for instance, there is not the

slightest reason to assign to Samson twelve labours, and the less so as

that number even in the case of Herakles is only derived from a late age

and forms too contracted a sphere. And, on the other hand, in finding

analogies to Samson, we are nowise compelled to rest satisfied with

Herakles. But now we must look closer into Samson’s birth and the

position ascribed to him in the Biblical narrative.

7. SAMSON'S BIRTH AND NAZIRITISM.

The birth of the hero of a legend is always the last circumstance to be

invented concerning him, when his life and character are already

settled; just as an author writes his preface only after the completion

of his book. This comparison is here particularly apposite, since the

narrative of the appearance of the angel who announces to the parents of

Samson after a long period of childlessness, the birth of a son who is

to be dedicated to God,[833] is not invented by popular imagination, but

produced by the writer.

This introduction to the history of Samson is capable of two

comparisons. It may be put side by side with the birth of Samuel,[834]

or with the law of Naziritism.[835] In either case several differences

appear. Samuel is not described by the Biblical narrator as a Nazirite

(nâzîr). But from this it does not follow that at the time of the

composition of the Book of Samuel this word had not yet come into use,

but only that in the signification which it then had, it did not seem

appropriate to Samuel as he was then fancied. Samuel was called one Lent

to God.[836] In consequence of this, he lived in the Tabernacle, waiting

on the High Priest and Judge Eli; he wore a priest’s dress, and, as is

stated with great emphasis, no razor came upon his head.[837] The latter

is said of Samson also. The expression ‘Lent to God,’ seems not to have

been a technical word or fixed designation, but only an etymological

interpretation of the name Samuel. The life in the Tabernacle and the

priest’s dress were certainly not essential to the position of a

Nazirite any more than to that of a Prophet, and are also out of accord

with the narrative of Samuel’s later life; they must be only a later

invention.

The narrative of Samuel’s dedication is perfectly simple, concerned only

with universal human conditions and feelings, deeply and fervently

religious. Deeply troubled and vexed at her childlessness, the wife

prays God for a son, vowing, if only her prayer be answered, to dedicate

the child to God for all the days of his life. With the impulse of true

piety, after the fulfilment of her prayer, she performs a voluntary vow,

to which she is compelled by no law. This story is older than that of

Samson, who becomes a Nazirite, not in fulfilment of a vow, but by

reason of a Divine command.

The term Nazirite is first found used by the prophet Amos,[838] who

couples together the Nazirite and the Prophet; but he makes no mention

of the hair, only of the prohibition of wine. But it does not follow

from this fact that in the time of Amos the Nazirite did employ the

razor on his head. Samson’s parents received a command to dedicate their

son: he was to be a Nazirite from his mother’s womb to the day of his

death. But to the prohibition to shave off the hair and to drink wine

was added a prohibition to eat anything unclean; this was a later

addition. The written law on the subject was the latest and also the

severest and most fully developed; for it adds to the previous

prohibitions another against defilement by dead bodies. On the other

side, however, the Law knows nothing of any life-long Nazirites, who

were to live like Samuel all their days in the Temple before God; for,

in the later view represented by the Law, only the Priest, the son of

Aaron, lived in the Temple; he was then the truly dedicated person, and

wine was denied him not absolutely, but at the time of his service in

the Temple.[839] And the Law had no need expressly to forbid the

Nazirite to touch unclean food, since it was already forbidden to every

Israelite. But to defile himself by the touch of a corpse, even of that

of his father or mother, brother or sister, was forbidden to the

Nazirite.[840]

Thus we discover three or four stages in the development of Naziritism

among the Israelites, exhibited, (1) by the passage in the prophet Amos,

(2) by the narrative of the birth of Samuel, (3) by that of the birth of

Samson, and lastly, (4) by the Law. Before the time of Amos there were

Nazirites—that is, as appears from their being classed next to Prophets,

people who by a voluntary resolve consecrated their lives to God and the

establishment of religion in the nation, and as a symbol of their

resolve denied themselves the use of wine and did not cut their hair.

There might be many prophets living as Nazirites because such a mode of

life seemed to them appropriate to their intercourse with God. At the

time of the construction of the narrative of Samuel’s birth the

Nazirite’s abstinence was regarded as something intrinsically

meritorious, rewarded by the special favour of God. Hence arose the idea

that Samuel, a man whom tradition allowed to have possessed

extraordinary greatness, had been a Nazirite, not only at a mature age,

but from his very birth, although tradition did not call him such, but

represented him only as a Prophet and Judge. It was supposed that

Naziritism from birth had qualified him for his subsequent greatness. At

the time when the narrator of the birth of Samson lived, this idea was

probably so firmly established, that God could be imagined to bestow his

special favour on an individual only by means of Naziritism, which was

demanded at his very birth as a condition of that favour. Naziritism,

which to Amos had been only a peculiar mode of working for the cause of

the religion and morality of the nation, was degraded by the above

process into a personal mode of life which was thought to be especially

well-pleasing to God. And then any one could adopt it at any moment, and

keep it up for a certain time only, longer or shorter; and the Law then

prescribed the conduct of such as took a vow to live as Nazirites for a

certain period.

But how does the author of this narrative of Samson’s birth stand in

relation to the subsequent popular legends? and what do these legends

know of Samson’s Naziritism? Little, not to say Nothing. The

contradiction cannot be obliterated, and seems to have been observed by

the narrator of the birth himself. He was the first who called Samson a

Nazirite. If even his mother was to observe abstinence during her

pregnancy, it seemed to follow as a matter of course that Samson himself

as a Nazirite ought to pass his life in no less abstinence. But the

legends reported the fact to be the reverse. The narrator observed this.

So when Samson’s father prayed earnestly that the angel who had appeared

to his wife and given her a rule of conduct, might appear to him also

and say how they should do unto the child, the angel gave no answer, but

only repeated the rule for the mother. Thus the narrator did not venture

to allow a degree of abstinence to be prescribed for Samson, which in

the legends he never practised.

There is, however, one feature of the Nazirite which is known even to

the legends: the uncut hair. The legend knows for certain that Samson’s

hair is the seat of his strength. But in the legend the hair is not

represented as a mere ideal sign of divine consecration, but as the real

source of strength. And therefore Samson, having trifled away his hair

and thereby lost his strength, gets his strength back as soon as his

hair has begun to grow again. Thus the loss of the hair is not in the

legend a symbol of a falling away from God, nor the weakness that

attends it produced through being deserted by God; but the hair itself

is the strength, and to cut it off is the same thing as to curtail the

strength, as we have already seen.

There must, at all events, have been a time in Israel when hair and

fulness of physical energy formed one identical idea: it was the heathen

time. When the people had gained a knowledge of the true God, the old

legend had to be modified. Then the uncut hair was treated as a

consecration of its possessor to the service of Jahveh. But the

modification was not fully carried out: one heathen feature remained

unaltered—the idea that with the growth of Samson’s hair his strength

also grew up again.

8. GENERAL CHARACTER OF SAMSON, THE HEBREW HERO.

The very distinctness and clearness with which it has been found

possible to invest the conception and interpretation of Samson as a hero

of heathen mythology, proves the justice and certainty of such an

interpretation. And the justice of the mythical conception of Samson’s

deeds may be demonstrated also by another consideration. The difference

between Samson’s position and that of the other Judges makes it obvious

enough that his history is mere legend through and through. All the

other Judges, Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, fight at the head either of a

large force or of a small and picked company: Samson always appears

alone, and beats hundreds and thousands alone, and this too without

arms. If the other Judges receive Divine apparitions by which they are

impelled to action for the deliverance of their people, yet they act

with perfectly human forces and means, in human fashion: Samson acts

with supernatural force, and is a miracle from beginning to end. In

spite of this, Samson’s action is not only destitute of any proper

result, but also—what is more significant and far worse—devoid of even

the consciousness of any aim, devoid of plan or idea. He—Samson the

Nazirite consecrated to God!—looks for wives and mistresses among his

own and his people’s enemies.[841] He teases, irritates, injures his

enemies, and kills many of them. But there appears nowhere the

consciousness of any mission which he had to fulfil for the good of his

native land against his enemies. He is inspired by no idea of Jahveh,

driven forward by no impatience of a shameful yoke. He is roused only by

pleasures of the senses and the caprice of insolence. Samson is utterly

immoral. He is exactly an old heathen god, and therefore immoral, like

all idols. Idols must be so, for they are only personifications of the

forces and occurrences of nature; now nature as such is indifferent

towards morality, and consequently, though not moral, still not immoral

either; but when the mechanical force of nature is pictured as a person,

and removed into the conditions of ethical life, it cannot but appear

absolutely immoral. This is what all heathendom does, that of Greece not

excepted.[842]

If, on the one hand, Samson wants all the qualities necessary to an

historical hero, he is on the other, viewed from the esthetic point, a

most admirable phenomenon, quite unique in Hebrew literature. It is

really wonderful with what tact, and what firm and delicate esthetic

feeling, the gigantic, Herculean, Samson is delineated in the Hebrew

legend. His behaviour evinces nothing uncouth or vulgar, a fault from

which even the Greek Herakles is not free. Herakles, though adored as a

god, has to put up with being scorned and derided for his greediness; he

is a standing character in the Greek comedy, and a butt against which

all jests are levelled. Samson, on the contrary, is himself the jester

and scoffer, who adds the jest of insult to the injury he does his

enemies. A native merriness encircles him; and in the very hour of

death, at his self-prepared destruction, he maintains his humour, which

here assumes a sarcastic tone.

* * * * *

We have now to take in hand two more considerations of a general

character, which will determine the true import of the preceding

detached ones and set them on a firm basis. We must first enquire: What

means the above demonstrated accordance of the Hebrew legend with the

legends of other nations?—what is to be inferred from it? The answer to

this will assign the cause of the accordance. And then the field for the

development of the legend of Samson in the popular mind, and the

connexion of the legend with the progress of religions life in the

course of centuries, must be more fully discussed.

9. THE MUTUAL RELATIONSHIP OF THE COMPARED LEGENDS.

In the preceding comparisons, I have in the first instance proved

Samson’s relationship to the Semitic Sun-gods. The Hebrews being Semites

themselves, and living in the midst of Semitic nations, there can be no

doubt that the similarity of the Story of Samson to those of the Semitic

Sun-god is founded on original identity. But, on the other hand, the

Hebrew form of the story exhibits sufficient peculiarity to negative the

idea of its being simply borrowed from other Semitic nations. Samson is

not exactly the Tyrian Melkart, nor the Assyrian and Lydian Sandon, but

a peculiar modification of the conception which lies at the base of both

of them. It is, moreover, quite inconceivable that myths and stories

heard from strangers could yield materials for tales about a national

hero such as Samson. If we knew the Semitic myths and stories more

completely, there would probably be not a single feature in the story of

Samson left without some mythical conception of the Semites

corresponding to it; yet every feature would have undergone a peculiar

Hebrew modification. In the absence of such knowledge, we were obliged

to proceed to a comparison with Greek and Roman legends. Now how are we

to understand the similarities discovered there?

In the abstract, three cases may be assumed as possible. First, there

may have been borrowing; and if so, we should probably be inclined

without hesitation to assume that the Greeks borrowed from the

Phenicians and the Semitic nations of Asia Minor. Secondly, there may

have existed an original similarity in certain mythical conceptions

between Semites and Aryans, whether by reason of original historical

unity, or because both races had, independently of one another, hit upon

the same conception. Then thirdly, a combination of borrowing and unity

is conceivable, by which the Greeks regained by borrowing some element

which had been lost out of their memory, or obtained by borrowing from

strangers an idea synonymous with a preexisting native one. Which of

these possibilities is the reality, cannot be decided all at once with

reference to Herakles in general; but even after some result has been

reached respecting that hero’s personality, the above enquiry must be

instituted afresh concerning every one of his acts.

Now as to the general aspect of Herakles, I think we have at the present

day advanced far enough to be able summarily to reject as absurd the

idea that the Greeks had borrowed him from the Phenicians. The hero

exhibits so decidedly the character of the Aryan Sun-god and Solar hero,

and moreover appears in so specifically Greek a form, that there can be

no doubt but that in him we see the peculiar Greek modification of a

possession held in common by all the Aryans.

The fact, however, of Herakles being originally Greek, does not exclude

the possibility that the Greeks, if they heard of a Semitic god whom

they believed to be their Herakles, might claim the deeds of the foreign

god as belonging to their own hero. This was a perfectly natural and

simple process in the mind, such as may occur now to any one of us.

Suppose that some one tells us news of a certain person whom we think we

know, because we know a person of the same name and position living at

the same place; then we shall immediately attribute what is told us of

the stranger to the one known to us. Thus the Greeks could, and could

not but, ascribe unconsciously to their Herakles what were really

Semitic stories of Solar heroes.

Accordingly, it seems to me beyond doubt, that the Greeks borrowed the

killing of the lion from the Semitic god. For the Lion is a mythical

symbol that recurs among all Semitic nations, whereas he is scarcely

ever, if ever, found in the original Aryan mythology. In the original

seats of the Aryan races there can scarcely have been any lions.

Moreover, it is only after the seventh century B.C. that Herakles was

figured with the lion’s hide. His original arms were those of Apollon,

the bow and arrows.

We touch here on a characteristic distinction between the Semitic and

the Aryan Sun-god. The former kills a lion, the latter a dragon. The

Lion is a symbol of solar heat; the Dragon was originally a symbol of

winter, rain, mist, marshy vapours. The Semitic god has to combat

chiefly with the burning sun, the Aryan with clouds. In India, no doubt,

Indra does battle with the ‘Scorcher,’ ‘the Drought’ (_śushṇa_); but

this is surely a later, peculiarly Indian, accretion. On the other side,

however, as we shall see further on, the Semites were not ignorant of

the Cloud-Dragon. The distinction just indicated, therefore, must be

understood as meaning only that here the one, there the other, of the

two characteristics is the more widely spread and important; or that the

one or the other is the more fully developed.

With this may be combined another interesting feature. The Semitic

Sun-god represents chiefly the procreative warmth and the scorching

heat; the Aryan rather the illuminating light and the fire, which latter

however, in connexion with the rain, is no doubt regarded as productive

of fertility. The two races also appear in general to be similarly

distinguished: the Semite has greater heat, the Aryan more light; the

former is more passionate, the latter more sanguine. But this is not a

suitable place to follow out this train of thought.

As to the foxes with fire-brands, that feature is probably also

borrowed. Among all the Aryan nations, it is only the Latins, as far as

I know, with whom this feature assumes any prominence; and with them it

appears only in the form of sport, derived from a legend already

enfeebled, and scarcely at all in religious rites; for in the latter we

find the red dog with the same signification; and the dog also is

Semitic. It is possible that the fox is also preserved in the Fox of

Teumessos;[843] but the latter belongs to Boeotia, where much Phenician

influence is visible.

If the adventure with the gates of Gaza is correctly interpreted above,

the corresponding descent of Herakles into the nether-world can still

scarcely be regarded as borrowed. The interpretation of the adventure at

Gaza, however, is not certain enough to build any further theories upon,

any more than the story of the ass’s jawbone, which moreover is very

different from the boar’s tusks.

10. THE DEVELOPMENT OF MYTHS AMONG THE ISRAELITES

IN CONNEXION WITH THAT OF MONOTHEISM.

We have convinced ourselves that the mythical mode of looking at things

indicates a distinct stage in the development of the intellectual life

of nations. The substance, which is looked at in the myth, is very

various, and by no means bound to a polytheistic system. Without

offending the dignity of Monotheism, it must be affirmed that not only

Genesis, but also the narrative portion of the other Books of Moses, of

Joshua and Judges, and isolated passages in all other books of the Old

and the New Testament, are mythical. The primeval history comprised in

the first ten chapters of Genesis, sublime above the cosmogonies and

theogonies of all other nations, contains also sublimer myths.

But these Israelite myths, in the form in which we have them now, are

framed throughout on a monotheistic principle. This form is for the most

part not the original one, but a conversion out of a polytheistic form.

My exposition of the legend of Samson might be considered to have

sufficed to prove the existence of a primeval heathenism among the

Hebrews, which of course rested on a Semitic foundation. But this

conclusion may be further confirmed by the following considerations.

I believe myself justified _a priori_, i.e. by reflections of a general

nature, in relying on the concession, that the notion of Revelation, in

the sense that at a definite point of time and by a special Divine

contrivance, Monotheism was taught to a whole nation, and immediately

handed down by them in the sharpest, fullest, and most elaborated

antagonism to all heathen ideas, is philosophically untenable, since it

is in accordance neither with psychology nor with history. This leads

directly and necessarily to the assumption, that the Israelites freed

themselves gradually from their inherited Semitic heathenism, and passed

over to a Monotheism which increased in purity with time.

In opposition to these ideas, some have very recently renewed the

attempt to establish Monotheism as the belief of primeval mankind, from

which the nations passed into Polytheism, either, as some assume,

through a growing dulness of spirit (a Fall), or, as others think,

through the very opposite process, a higher development of mind; whilst

the Israelites preserved the old original Monotheism, which is reckoned

to their credit by the first, and to their blame by the latter,

theorists. It suffices here to remark that this primitive Monotheism is

absolutely incapable of proof from history, that at the outset it turns

history upside down, and especially that it is conjoined to a very loose

and mean notion of the nature of Monotheism. Moreover, the Semitic race

did not possess Monotheism as an inheritance from its birth.[844]

Now if history is unable to prove Monotheism to have existed from the

beginning in the Semitic race, even the monotheistic literature of the

Israelites contains evidence on the other side, exhibiting a mythical

Polytheism that extended from high antiquity down into those writings.

For this Polytheism, as was natural, impressed on the language a stamp

so distinct as to be still recognisable in various views and phrases

belonging to the Prophets and sacred poets.

I will begin with the Book of Job. We need not here discuss the age of

the composition of this wonderful poem. No one will now think of placing

it before Solomon’s time; and Schlottmann’s view, that it was produced

at the end of Solomon’s reign or under his successor, has probably but

few adherents. Now in this poem occur many personifications, which,

although mainly based on lively poetical views and forming simply the

poet’s language, often also betray the existence of decidedly mythical

persons. Although the author was undoubtedly a monotheist and a

Jahveist, yet in his ideas of the world heathenism was still not far

removed from him. This appears precisely in the passages in which he

tries to portray the omnipotence of Jahveh; for there he sometimes slips

into expressions which look as if intended to picture the power of Indra

and Zeus or Apollon. So e.g. (XXVI. 11–13): ‘The pillars of heaven

tremble, and are frightened at his rebuke; by his strength he shakes the

sea, and by his wisdom he crushes Rahabh; by his breath he brightens the

heaven, his hand pierces the flying Dragon.’ To understand these words

in the poet’s own sense, I think we must make very delicate

distinctions. He appears to me to occupy a position in the middle

between the pure Heathenism of a Vedic bard, and Prophetism, and no

doubt nearer to the latter than to the former; yet a position from which

the myth still almost looked like a myth, and was not a mere poetic

figure. I must explain my meaning more fully.

Ewald’s view, that Rahabh was originally a name of Egypt, and then

became the mythological designation of a sea-monster, is an exact

inversion of the fact, and requires no refutation—especially as it has

been already answered.[845] _Rahabh_, etymologically denoting the Noisy,

Defiant, was originally the name and description of the Storm-Dragon. In

the storm it was believed that Jahveh was fighting with a monster that

threatened to devour the sun and the light of the sky. I should claim

this well-known myth of Indra for the Semitic race, were it supported

only by the above verses, and should consequently regard it as a

primeval feature of the mythical aspect of nature, common to Semites and

Aryans, even if we were not so fortunate as we are, through Tuch’s and

Osiander’s investigations, in finding the same myth repeated among the

Arabs and Edomites, who have the divine person Ḳuzaḥ, a Cloud-god, who

shoots arrows from his bow.[846] Here it is clear at the same time that

the Bow is the Rainbow, and the Arrow the Lightning.[847] I see no

reason for the supposition that the Storm-monster was fettered to the

sky. But I think we may gather from Is. XXVII. 1, that the Semitic

Storm-Dragon[848] was imagined in three forms: coiled up (ʿaḳallâthôn),

i.e. the Cloud; flying (bârîach), i.e. the Lightning, or the dragon

flying from the lightning, and lastly stretching himself, extended

(Tannîn), i.e. streaming Rain. By the downpour of the rain the sea in

heaven produced a sea on earth, and the tannîn was removed from the sky

into the ocean. As a sea-serpent he is called Rahabh, the Noisy.

Of this nothing was known even to Isaiah, and no later Prophet or

Psalmist understood this mythical view; these names of mythical beings

had been imperceptibly converted into names of hostile nations, having

been probably first used to designate great and notorious beasts living

in the territories of the nations. Thus in Ps. LXXXVII. 4, Rahabh

indisputably stands for Egypt; and two passages in Ezekiel (XXIX. 3, and

XXXII. 2), exhibit clearly the supposed transition, since Pharaoh, that

is Egypt, is in the latter compared to the Tannîn, that is the

Crocodile, and in the former actually addressed as such. Thus the Tannîn

or Rahabh became first any kind of sea-monster, then specially the

crocodile, and finally Egypt. Similarly it is said in Ps. LXVIII. 31

[30], ‘Rebuke the beast of the sedge,’[849] i.e., the crocodile, meaning

Egypt.

But there is a general connexion between this dragging down of mythical

beings into the life on earth and the conversion of mythical actions in

heaven into terrestrial history. Passages are not wanting in which a

wavering between the mythic signification and that of legendary history,

or the absorption of the former in the latter, is evident. Thus it is

said in Ps. LXXXIX. 10–12 [9–11], ‘Thou rulest the pride (elevation) of

the sea; when it raises its waves, thou stillest them; thou treadest

under foot Rahabh as one that is slain; with the arm of thy might thou

scatterest thy enemies. Thine is the heaven, thine also the earth, etc.’

Here the parallel to Rahabh in the preceding member is gêʾûth

‘elevation, pride, defiance,’ and in the succeeding one ‘thy enemies.’

The writer’s general attention is directed to physical phenomena, which

yielded to him the old heathen conception of Rahabh; but Rahabh had

already gained a historical signification, and consequently suggested in

the following member an historical reference.

This appears still more beautifully, and in a way which lays open to us

the origin of the legendary history, in the following passage, Ps.

LXXIV. 12–17: ‘But God my king, from the olden time working deliverances

in the middle of the earth. Thou cleavest with thy might the sea,

breakest the heads of the Tannîns over the water. Thou crushest the

heads of Livyâthân, givest him for food to beasts of the desert. Thou

splittest open (i.e. makest to burst forth) spring and stream; thou

driest mighty rivers. Thine is the day, thine also the night, thou hast

appointed light and sun. Thou settest all the borders of the earth;

summer and winter, thou formest them.’ Here, again, we have a picture of

the natural world, and one taken from the mythical point of view. God

cleaves the cloud with the lightning, and by that act kills the upper

Dragon above the water, so that the rivers of rain stream down out of

cloud-rocks. But this mythical act, which is repeated for ever in every

thunderstorm, had been converted first into a single act, performed once

in ancient time (miḳḳedem), and subsequently into a cleaving of the sea

at the Exodus out of Egypt. It is this which the poet intends to depict

in these six verses, which he probably took from an ancient song. Thus

he sings of Israel’s passage through the sea and the desert in words

which were intended to picture the Semitic Storm-myth; and thus we see

how the latter was transformed into the former. This transformation was

facilitated on the part of the language by the circumstances that in the

verses just quoted the verbs may be understood as well as in a preterite

as in a present sense (‘thou cleavest’ or ‘thou cleavedst’), and that

ḳedem denotes either ‘past time, antiquity,’ or ‘the beginning of all

time.’

The case is exactly the same with the Prophet, Is. LIX. 9, 10: ‘Awake,

awake, put on strength, O arm of Jahveh; awake, as in the days of the

beginning (ḳedem), in the generations of olden times (ʿôlâmîm)! Is it

not thou that dost (or ‘didst’) cut Rahabh, that piercest (or

‘piercedst’) Tannîn? is it not thou that didst dry the sea, the water of

the great abyss, that didst make the depths of the sea a way for the

ransomed to pass over?’ Here also it is clear how the Prophet’s

consciousness passed imperceptibly from the myth into the legend, or, if

you prefer to call it so, history.

From these passages it appears that the conversion of the legend into

history was already so firmly fixed in the minds of men, that, when they

began with depicting nature, and in so doing had recourse to the

stereotyped expressions that originally had a mythical meaning, they

were involuntarily drawn into historical contemplation. This is not the

case with the writer of Job: he remains within the mythical

contemplation of nature. So full of life are the mythical pictures in

his writings that we must suppose them to have been to him more than a

mere matter of constructive fancy. The Pillars of Heaven are not to him

mere mountains poetically described, but also convey a full-toned echo

of the Pillars of Hercules that supported the heaven.[850] The stars and

constellations are to him still actually living beings. In his work

Rahabh cannot signify Egypt, but is still really the Sea-serpent. It is

true that in other passages of the Prophets and Psalms Jahveh walks over

the water of the clouds, which is by Habakkuk (III. 15), in a chapter

containing many references to mythology, actually called ‘Sea’ (yâm):

but only the writer of Job still speaks of the ‘heights of the

sea,’[851] which in mythology are the clouds; even Amos, one of the

earliest Prophets, substitutes for it ‘the heights of the earth’ (IV.

13). Isaiah mentions the ‘heights of the clouds,’[852] a decidedly

mythical phrase; but the Prophet appears in that passage to have

intentionally adopted heathen conceptions, as the words are put into a

heathen mouth. Amos (V. 8) names the constellations Orion and the

Pleiades, but he knows only that Jahveh ‘made’ them; whereas the writer

of Job (XXXVIII. 31) speaks of their fetters. From the speech which he

puts into the mouth of Jahveh it may probably be inferred that he

regarded the mythical acts as acts that took place at the Creation.

Thus, as I have already remarked, he takes a middle position between

pure myth as such and myth transformed into legendary history.

Altogether, he never directs his attention to History and the revelation

of God in history: to his mind God is only a wise creator and upholder

of Nature, and within this nature lies Man, i.e. the individual whom God

created thus, and whose destiny he determines in wisdom and grace. The

poet of Job does not possess the world-embracing glance of the Prophet.

Still, though in his mythology he stands nearer to heathenism than the

Prophets, and his mind falls short of the breadth and greatness of the

prophetic soul, he may yet be a contemporary of theirs, only one who

lived in a retired circle, and had, so to speak, a one-sided education.

And his whole phraseology possesses a somewhat sensuous and

materialistical character, which becomes strikingly obvious on the

comparison of certain expressions and certain passages expressing the

same thought. Orion is in Job still really the fettered Giant (Kesîl

‘the Strong,’ not ‘the Fool’); but Isaiah (XIII. 10) forms from this

word the plural kesîlîm, ‘the bright-shining stars.’ Then the word had

ceased to be a proper name, which it was still in Job. Similarly Tannîn

is here a proper name; but later it denotes a great sea-animal in

general (e.g. in Ps. LXXIV. 13, quoted above), and therefore can have a

plural. See also Is. XIX. 13, 14: ‘The princes of Zoan are become fools,

the princes of Noph are deceived; the heads of her tribes have led Egypt

astray. Jahveh pours into their midst a spirit of perverseness, and they

lead Egypt astray in all her action, like a drunken man tumbling into

his vomit;’ and compare with this Job XII. 24: ‘[God] taketh away the

heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and leads them astray in

a pathless waste; they grope in darkness without light, and he leads

them astray like a drunken man.’ Here we have not, as in Isaiah, the

abstract ‘Spirit (rûach) of perverseness,’ but the concrete ‘Heart’

(lêbh); and the ‘Going astray’ also is depicted more sensuously.[853]

Now that we have thus learnt that the Storm-myth existed among the

Hebrews and the Semites in a form similar to that which it had among the

Aryans, to such an extent that it indelibly permeated their views of

nature and their language, we have not only gained a greatly increased

justification for regarding the story of Samson as a myth, but we can

now venture also on other mythological combinations and interpretations,

which taken singly possess but little security and may pass for mere

conjectures, but which almost certainly have a general mythic character.

Thus we may find in the Bible a copious source of knowledge of Semitic

Mythology. While only calling to memory in general terms the numerous

accordances with Semitic mythology contained in the Bible, which Movers

has in many cases made quite certain, I will here select a few

narratives which seem to have a connexion with the above discussed

Storm-myth.

I have before[854] pointed to the fact that myths of a Sun-god are

embodied in the life of Moses. Now all of these correspond to

wide-spread Aryan myths of the Sun-god or Solar hero. Immediately after

his birth Moses is put into a chest and placed on the water. A similar

fate befalls nearly all the Solar heroes: e.g. Perseus, and heroes of

the German legends. As Moses sees a burning bush which does not burn

away, so the grove of Feronia[855] is in flames without burning away. I

have already shown[856] that the staff by which Moses performs his

miracles is the Pramantha. Like Moses, Dionysos strikes fountains of

wine and water out of the rock.[857] Moses, by throwing a piece of wood

into bitter water makes it sweet (Ex. XV. 25). This must be the same as

the churning of the Amṛta, Soma, Nectar, the divine mead. Moses has no

dragon to kill, but he kills an Egyptian, and immediately flies, like

all Solar heroes;[858] and like Apollon, Herakles and Siegfried, he

becomes a servant. And the sea, over which Moses stretches out his hand

with the staff, and which he divides, so that the waters stand up on

either side like walls while he passes through, must surely have been

originally the Sea of Clouds;[859] and I have consequently little

inclination to look for the spot of the earth where, and the conditions

under which, the passage might have taken place. A German story presents

a perfectly similar feature.[860] The conception of the Cloud as sea,

rock and wall, recurs very frequently in mythology. Moses feeds the

Israelites with quails. By means of a quail Iolaos wakes the dead

Melkart from death. And the quail appears to have had a close connexion

with Apollon and Diana; for Ὀρτυγία is an old name of Delos, the island

of Apollon; and the nurse of Apollon and Diana, and even Diana herself,

are called by the same name. Moses causes manna, sweet as honey, to be

rained down with the dew; this again reminds us of the nectar and the

mead of the gods.

Thus we see that almost all the acts of Moses correspond to those of the

Sun-gods. We have here not only similar mythical features, but features

which in both cases unite to form one and the same cycle.

The Book of Judges, as well as the Books of Moses, exhibits ancient

elements preserved from the heathen times, also in conformity with Aryan

myths. So Shamgar (Judges III. 31), who slew six hundred Philistines

with an ox-goad, is only Samson in another form. And his name points to

the Sun-god; for it seems to me to denote ‘He that circles about in the

sky.’ We must pay attention to the fact that Barak denotes ‘Lightning,’

even though Barcas is a Carthaginian name. With Barak is associated

Deborah, the ‘Bee.’ Now if rain and dew are treated as Honey, then the

Bee must stand for the rain-cloud. A third name occurs in this

connexion—Jael (Yâʿel), the ‘Wild Goat,’ which is also a symbol of the

Cloud. The Melissae (bees) and the goat Amalthea among the Greeks take

each others’ places. Lastly, the manner in which Sisera is killed, by a

hammer and nail, reminds one of the God of Lightning. The mode in which

David kills Goliath reminds us of Thor’s battle with Hrungnir, in which

he throws his hammer into Hrungnir’s forehead.

The germ of these various agreements ought in fact probably to be

referred to an original identity in the mythical views of the Semites

and Aryans, who were not separated till later. The Fire and (connected

therewith) the Sun, and then the Storm also, may well have led to the

formation of the same myths by the two races while they still lived

together. The separation of the races then produced distinct

developments out of the common germ, which developments, however,

naturally had many points of agreement.

11. ANALOGY WITH OLD HEATHEN ELEMENTS IN THE

POPULAR IDEAS OF THE LATER AGE.

It results from the preceding historical investigation that the oldest

Hebrews were heathens, and that elements belonging to heathen mythology

are even present in the Bible. To gain a clearer idea of the nature of

this fact, I will refer to a precisely similar case—the relation of our

age to the old German heathen times.

The Germans had originally gods, worship, myths and legends—in short, a

heathen faith, of their own. But for more than a thousand years all the

German tribes have been Christian. Nevertheless, heathen practices still

survive among them everywhere and in most various forms; and are so

closely interwoven with Christian practices as to be almost

ineradicable. I will only select a few instances. The old German gods

still live in the names of the days of the week.[861] Churches and

convents were founded at places which had been heathen sanctuaries;

Christian feasts were fixed on days sacred to heathen deities, and thus

the heathen name ‘Easter’ has maintained its existence as a designation

for the highest Christian feast. Heathenism is preserved chiefly in the

popular legends both of the hills and of the lowlands, in popular

customs, usages, games and superstitions; all which has been lately

collected in special books and periodicals. Kuhn’s collections made in

North Germany and Westphalia are of especial scientific value. The gods,

however, have been converted into devils and monsters, the goddesses

into night-hags and witches. But religious stories, Christian legends,

are also often utterly heathen; there are deeds and occurrences

belonging to gods and heroes, which are attributed to the Saints and to

Christ himself. Thus the killing of the Dragon, which is known as a myth

to all the Aryan nations, is ascribed to Saint George. The office of the

god Thor, who pursued and bound giants, is filled in Christian Norway by

Saint Olave. Christ and Saint Peter wander about unrecognised in human

form, to reward virtue and punish vice, as the heathen gods did before

them. Mary, especially, had a multitude of lovely and charming features

ascribed to her, which under heathenism were attributes of Freyja,

Holda, and Bertha. A great number of flowers, plants and insects, the

older names of which referred to Freyja and Venus, are called after

Mary, e.g. Maiden-hair (i.e. the Virgin Mary’s hair), otherwise Capillus

Veneris;[862] and Holda who sends snow becomes Mary: Notre Dame aux

neiges, Maria ad nives. In short, ‘now Christian substance appears

disguised in a heathen form, now heathen substance in Christian form,’

as Jacob Grimm says, in whose _Deutsche Mythologie_ the reader will find

much relating to this mixture of old heathen and Christian ideas in the

spirit of the ‘simple folk that have a craving for myths.’

With the Hebrews it must have been much the same as with the Germans. We

know that no less time than the entire period from Moses to Ezra—a

thousand years of all manner of struggles and of the exercise of the

greatest intellectual and moral forces—was requisite to develop the

faith in One God, and make it a common and permanent possession of the

people, pervading the whole spiritual consciousness.

But the fact that the Germans’ monotheism was brought to them from

outside, while that of the Israelites sprang up among themselves, must

surely have been favourable to the preservation of heathen

characteristics among the latter. Whilst in Germany a systematised

Christianity, fully conscious of the issues involved, contended against

Heathendom; among the Hebrews, Monotheism unfolded all its inevitable

consequences only by degrees, gradually gaining a knowledge both of

itself and of the antagonism in which it was implicated towards all

phases of the heathen faith, worship and life. The Germans knew that

their ancestors were heathens; they endeavoured as far as possible to

break with their heathen past; and yet, knowingly or unknowingly, they

retained a great deal of heathenism; and the pride of the Old German

popular poetry, the _Nibelungen_, has a primeval myth for its subject.

But the contrast between the heathen and the modern age was not at all

firmly fixed in the mind of the Israelites, precisely because the

transition was gradual. Only exceptionally do we find any reminiscence

of the old heathenism, which is put back into the most ancient times. As

far as the people were able to trace their history backwards, that is,

to their supposed ancestor Abraham, they put back the faith in Jahveh;

or indeed still farther, to Adam. The only true God Jahveh was soon

treated as the only one worshiped in the beginning, from whom mankind

fell away, intentionally defying him. Abraham alone remained faithful,

and therefore Jahveh elected Abraham’s descendants to be his people.

Thus the Israelite fancied the faith in Jahveh to be the primitive and

inalienable possession of his people, which had been only temporarily

weakened, but never really lost. Even to other nations the knowledge of

Jahveh could never be wanting; for they worshiped false, non-existent,

gods from folly and malice, and the Israelite took for granted that they

must know all that he knew. Now if even the Christian of the middle

ages, although he knew that his ancestors were heathen, nevertheless

often described them as acting like Christians, because he had no

knowledge of heathendom, and no power of imagining a past age, except in

the likeness of his own; how much more would the monotheistic Israelite

picture his past ages, in which he acknowledged no heathenism at all, in

a Jahveistic light? His whole history was unconsciously transformed. The

heathen myths, which must have something in them, else they could not be

told at all, were converted into events of the earth, closely coalescing

with historical facts, what the heathen gods were said to have done was

ascribed to Jahveh himself or one of his human ministers. The old

Semitic gods, if not utterly forgotten, were made by the Hebrew into men

of the primeval age, powerful heroes, or Patriarchs. I can invoke the

authority of Ewald and Bunsen, for the assertion that no Biblical name

before Abraham has any historical significance, and that of Movers for

saying that Abraham is only the ancient national god of the Semites, El,

who was also their first king or their ancestor, and that Israel,

Abraham’s grandson, was the Semitic Herakles Palaemon. The Israelite

knew no longer how his forerunners had lived and thought in those ages,

while they were still heathen; and he flooded his past history with the

light which shone for him, but was of recent origin. He unconsciously

falsified the facts of the history, because he did not care particularly

for facts. Everything heathen received a Jahveistic sense, the heathen

form a Jahveistic significance, the heathen substance a Jahveistic form.

Only under these conditions could the past history of Israel be made

intelligible to the mind of the people.

And then, when priests and prophets came to reduce the popular stories

to writing, they could certainly only complete what the populace had

already begun. They also were not historians or investigators at all;

instead of transporting themselves into a past age, they raised the past

age to the light of the present. No doubt they were more consistent and

more inventive than the populace; for they wrote with an intelligence

which marks and attempts to explain inconsistencies; and even in the

interest of a certain political or religious object. The heathenism,

which they could not understand, seemed to them impossible; they

discovered everywhere at least Jahveistic motives.

Thus, I think, the Biblical narrative of Samson was an old heathen

story, transformed by a Jahveistic colouring, given to it first by the

Israelitish populace, and subsequently by the author of the narrative. I

have endeavoured, by the aid of parallel instances, to trace the mode of

this transformation and to recover the original form and meaning of the

old story.

12. GENERAL PSYCHOLOGICAL REFLECTION.

We must now attempt to realise the psychological relations and processes

upon which is based the preservation and transformation of heathen ideas

within the range of Monotheism, the fact of which has been exhibited

above.

We require here to see clearly, at least in broad outline, what

relations ideas of recent growth, especially on religion and morals,

bear to older representations. For from this it will then be easy to

make the application to the special case before us, the relation of the

monotheistic Jahveistic ideas to the older heathen representations among

the Israelites. The story of Samson will then present only a special

instance of this relation.

Among the ideas and thoughts, either of a nation or of an individual, a

certain harmony prevails, which is in its nature not logical but

psychological, not based on the law of Contradiction, but yielding that

law as a specially rigorous result; in itself, however, much broader and

more delicate, and indeed through its very breadth losing in stringency.

The laws of logic have a double basis, a metaphysical one on the

objective side, and a psychological on the subjective. That is, the

logical law must be observed, because, if it be not, there arises, on

the one hand, a disturbance of the metaphysical relation under which

things in their reality have to come into thought, and on the other, an

insoluble problem for our psychological function of Consciousness. Of

course, in logical error or offence against logical law, so far as it

actually occurs, there is nothing psychologically impossible. For

example, a logically improper association of two ideas in the mind is

possible—but only through the absence from the mind of the third factor,

which logically makes it an error: if it were present, it would

infallibly have prevented the improper association. That which is

logically wrong is thus incapable of being thought. No one can think

that 7 + 4 = 12. We may certainly make such a false reckoning, if we

happen not completely to spread before us the contents of the numbers in

this succession: then such an association of ideas, such a summation of

the series, may be formed. But as soon as the set of numbers is fully

counted out, our passage from 7 + 4 to 12 is stopped, and no effort

would avail to connect them as equals. That which in the logical sphere

is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ takes, in the psychological, the form of

‘complete’ or ‘incomplete.’ Accordingly, if without knowing logic men

can think right, and tell right thinking from wrong, it is because, when

once the elements of a case are all clearly present to the mind, wrong

thinking is psychologically impossible. This impossibility in the first

instance only forces us to drop the wrong combination; but this is the

first inducement to search for the right one. But, supposing no free

movement of search and a total absence of reflection, then we shall

simply have such range of combination as may be compatible with the

psychological conditions; and, provided the necessary factors are all

clear in the mind, this can be no other than the right one, viz., that

which accords with the aggregate view of things.

This congruity among the ideas of particular nations or individuals is

no doubt tantamount in the end to an avoidance of logical contradiction;

and into this we might in all cases resolve such concord, could we

exactly trace all the threads or intermediate members. But where the

most we can do is to _feel_ such threads of connexion, the congruity

takes the shape of some Characteristic pervading the circles of

ideas—some common stamp.

According to this, we ought to be able to discover in the mind of every

nation a system of ideas intrinsically bound together and never

self-contradictory. And this will so far prove to be the fact, that a

certain national type will be everywhere present. But it is possible for

contradictions to occur in the national life; for, if only they do not

clash against one another in the consciousness, the contradictory ideas

do not operate with their force of contradiction. Even every individual

doubtless bears about with him unconsciously many ideas in harshest

contradiction; contradictions, however, they are, in virtue not of any

objective force proper to the ideas in themselves, but of an act of

judgment which sets them forth as mutually contradictory. The

contradictions are often hidden very deep, and only brought to light by

a methodical search. When, however, new ideas, proclaimed everywhere in

the streets, conflict with the old ones, the contradiction is at once

brought to the light of day. What will be the result?

A conflict will arise, without doubt: will it be one with physical

weapons? Such a conflict, though it may be inevitable, and though it has

often given occasion for the exhibition of high and noble virtue, is

nevertheless of no value to the real cause, the true victory, the

victory of truth; and the chief point gained by the physical victory has

generally been only the conviction of its worthlessness.

The conflict within the mind, where Ideas _en masse_ confront Ideas in

rank and file,—this forms the substance of the History of Mankind: a

Conflict of Souls.

Mind rules and moulds, Matter is ruled and moulded: this relation

repeats itself within the consciousness. Whatever consciousness owes to

impressions of sense, serves as material to be moulded by mental

activity. For the purpose of this moulding, the mind, impelled partly by

this material itself and partly by its own nature, forms

representations, notions, forms i.e. modes of apprehension, and ideas,

namely, the general conceptions of genera and species, the metaphysical

categories, and the moral ideas. In accordance with the moral ideas are

formed principles of action, judgments on the acts of others, even of

God, insofar as man believes himself acquainted with the acts of God.

Conversely, acts are declared to be or not to be God’s, insofar as they

do or do not accord with the moral standard and the conception of God.

In accordance with the general class-conceptions the world of things

divides itself before the view: and while by certain esthetic and moral

ideas these things are brought under a rule of valuation, in

metaphysical aspects they are put into a causal relation. Finally,

religious ideas form the foundation and the summit of all these curious

constructions of a world and judgments passed on a world.

Accordingly, the conflict shows itself in two forms. Sometimes a certain

domain of materials, in which new relations and connexions have become

prominent, requires a new form of thought to dominate it; sometimes a

new form of thought strives to supplant the old one, and to reshape, in

accordance with its new laws, the matter which had been shaped by the

former one. An example will make this clear. The thought ‘God’ forms the

apex of the pyramid of ideas; it possesses the highest and widest

dominion—for this very reason unfortunately often the weakest—and

therefore shapes every province of consciousness in accordance with what

it contains. Now, let an altered character come over the contents of one

of these domains, say of the ideas concerning our relation to our

fellow-men, or concerning causality in nature; then that domain can no

longer tolerate to be ruled and moulded by the thought previously

connoted in the word ‘God,’ standing as it now does in contradiction to

that thought. It sets up the sway of a new form of thought, which fits

its new contents, because growing out of them; there arises a new

conception of God, a new Theology. But the old Theology has still its

seat in all the other provinces of consciousness; so that, before any

further advance, the new Idea has still to bring all these other

provinces under its sway, to dissolve the shape given them by the old

principle, and replace it by one which is congenial with itself. This

may, nay must, produce a long conflict, which demands much labour. Of

many a concept the intension will have to be entirely cancelled,—of all

to be at least remodelled. Yet with many ideas the association has

through long habit become quite fixed. Severed they must be, the new God

requires it; but it can only be done very gradually. A thousand

forbidden combinations find lurking-places and remain; they maintain

themselves in contradiction to the new order of things, and perhaps half

accommodate themselves to it in order to avoid a shock.

Imperfectly as I have expounded the point in question, I hope,

nevertheless, that what I have said will suffice for the present

purpose. What it wants in transparency and clearness may yet be added by

the application of the general remarks to the particular case.

There existed for a long time, as I have remarked, monotheistic and

heathen ideas in the national mind of the Israelites side by side—the

former being the newer, the latter the older. But yet the former were

the ruling ideas, and always gaining strength and clearness and coming

to the brightest foreground of the consciousness, whereas the latter

were constantly losing ground and clearness. Thus the nation lost the

true consciousness of its heathen past history and the understanding of

its former condition and experiences. For no nation as such possesses

that true sense for history, by which it would conceive of itself and

its present existence in conscious contrast to the past, and strive to

gain an objective view of the mind and nature of past ages. The

consciousness of a nation is only the active present age, and knows

nothing of history. Therefore, whenever a radical revolution, extending

over many important domains of ideas, has come over the nation, it no

longer understands its own past history which lies on the other side of

the revolution. Yet the old words, sayings and stories are transmitted

all the same, and they contain accounts of bygone events and conditions,

ancient ideas and ancient faith. But the stories which refer to obsolete

and forgotten states of things are unintelligible; the names and sayings

of forgotten gods, things and ideas are empty; typical figures and

phrases based on those legends and gods, though still living on the

lips, have become senseless. The nation always thinks that the word must

have an idea behind it. So what it does not understand, it converts into

what it does; it transforms the word until it can understand it. Thus

words and names have their forms altered: e.g. the French _écrevisse_

becomes in English _crawfish_, and the heathen god _Svantevit_ was

changed by the Christian Slavs into _Saint Vitus_, and the Parisians

converted _Mons Martis_ into _Montmartre_. And what was reported of

persons or beings represented like persons, that are no longer known, is

now told of persons whose acquaintance has been newly made. In Germany

it was told of the god Wuotan, that he was called Long-beard, and as

such fell asleep inside a mountain; now when Wuotan was utterly

forgotten, a new subject had to be found; and the legend was transferred

to the heroic kings Charles [the Great] and Frederick [Barbarossa].

Moreover, the myth that forms the groundwork of the poem of the

_Nibelungen_, which was originally told without mention of any definite

time or place, was assigned to a well-known locality, and its heroes

received the names of historical kings.

Every nation must of necessity act similarly; for the legends which it

tells must be its own legends, and reflect its own life and present

circumstances; if they have ceased to do so because its life has

changed, then they are changed in accordance with the change in the

life. Even the future beyond the grave is to the popular mind only the

present life somewhat gilded; then how is it likely that the past shall

be thought of as different from the present?

And precisely because these transformations and transferences are

necessary, they take place unconsciously and unintentionally. The mind

of the nation does not make them; they are an occurrence in that mind,

which makes itself by itself. The nation has subjects and predicates,

sounds and meanings, given to it in the legend. Now if the stream of

time carries off the subjects and meanings into the ocean of oblivion,

then by the psychological law the unattached predicates and sounds must

fasten themselves on to any other subjects and meanings by which they

can be supported. This takes place without any one intending it, and

without any one observing it.

The words, names and phrases which a nation uses have to be apperceived

in the moment when they are employed. This is true both of the hearer

and of the speaker. But the apperceptions are dependent on the

previously formed associations of ideas. Now if a German heard

‘Sinfluth,’ or if, when speaking, this word known to him by tradition

presented itself to his consciousness in the course of speech, then the

second part of the word, _Fluth_ ‘flood,’ found the idea with which it

was associated, and which was reproduced by being brought into

consciousness by the word; but the first part, _Sin_, stood in no

association and roused no idea. But by material relationship and partial

identity of sound, _Sin_ is associated with _Sünde_ ‘sin,’ and the

latter idea (that of sin or guilt) was at the same time associated with

the word _Sinfluth_ as a whole; thus then this idea of sinfulness was

strongly lifted into prominence on two sides, much more strongly and

quickly than the German _Sin_ itself. This latter was ultimately raised

into prominence only through its traditional combination with _Fluth_

‘flood,’ and this only as a sound; consequently in its advance it was

overtaken by _Sünde_ ‘sin,’ which was lifted into prominence partly

through it (_Sin_), and partly also through _Fluth_, and therefore with

double force. Consequently people spoke and thought _Sünd_, instead of

saying without thinking _Sin_; and this was the direct result of a

simple psychological process.[863] Similarly in all analogous cases.

Among the Ossetes of the Caucasus the Dies Martis, Tuesday, is

unconsciously converted into George’s Day; and the Dies Veneris, Friday,

into Mary’s Day. In many nations the gods form a circle limited to

twelve immortals; the thirteenth in a society was then a mortal, one

destined to die. Similarly, even at the present day, Christians fear

that out of thirteen one will die, referring it however to the company

of thirteen formed by Jesus and the twelve Apostles. Again, there was a

legend widely spread among Teutonic nations, of an Archer, who shot an

apple from his own little boy’s head, and answered the despot at whose

command he had done it, when asked about his other two arrows, that they

were intended for him, in case the first had killed the child. Who was

the Archer? Who was the Despot? where and what was the motive? All this

was forgotten; there only remained a dim echo of the legend of the shot.

But when Switzerland, a nation of archers, had shaken off the yoke of a

despot, all the features of the story recovered definite names, places,

time, and motive. As the stone flying through the air falls to the earth

by the law of attraction, so the old legend fell into the

Liberation-time.

Sometimes we forget something, but yet retain a small part of it in the

memory, as when we say, I have really forgotten his name; but I am sure

it begins with B. The same thing happens to nations. The name of Venus,

or Holda, was forgotten; but people were sure that she was a divine

woman. Now to the Christians of the middle ages ‘Divine Woman’ and

‘Mary’ were one single idea; consequently, the name Mary, unobserved,

took the place of the heathen goddesses in the numerous appellations and

legends which are now connected with Mary. Of Mars it was only

remembered that he was a warrior; so Tuesday, which was sacred to him,

could only become Saint George’s Day.

Similar was the history of the Israelites when they became monotheistic.

The heathen cosmogony, and the heathen idea of the activity of the gods

in physical occurrences, contradicted the new idea of the One Almighty

God, before whom Nature is nothing. But even though the idea that this

God alone created the world, had been long accepted and established, yet

there were still, preserved in stereotyped expressions of language, many

ideas which preserved from oblivion and ruin features of the old modes

of thought alongside of the new. They remain, so long as attention is

not drawn to the contradiction in which these separate words stand to

the new general system. When the clouds were no longer regarded as a

sea, as they once were, people ceased to understand the meaning of ‘the

heights of the sea;’ this expression no longer finds any organ of

apperception, because ‘Sea’ is no longer associated with the idea of the

clouds. Therefore, the expression is sustained only by its traditional

connexion with ‘heights.’ But ‘heights’ are very closely associated with

earth and with the idea of mountains; and thus with the Prophet

Amos[864] this association supplanted the older one—the living took the

place of the dead. We will now, in conclusion, return to Samson.

13. HISTORY OF THE MYTH OF THE SUN-GOD.

We will now review the entire history of the old Semitic God of the Sun

or of Heat, as he was present to the national consciousness of Israel.

I wonder whether I am mistaken? I flatter myself that I know the

particle by which was expressed the greatest revolution ever experienced

in the development of the human mind, or rather by which the mind itself

was brought into existence. It is the particle ‘as’ in the verse[865]

‘And he [the Sun] is _as_ a bridegroom, coming out of his chamber; he

rejoices _as_ a hero to run his course.’ Nature appears to us _as_ a

man, _as_ mind, but is not man or mind. This is the birth of Mind, the

generation of Poetry. This ‘as’ is unknown not only to the Vedas, but

even to the Greeks. This does not mean that the Greeks had no poetry at

all, but only that there is an inherent defect in their poetry, which is

connected with the deepest foundation of their national mind. Helios,

driving along the celestial road with fiery steeds, is not poetry, but

only becomes poetical when we tacitly insert the ‘as’ of the Psalmist.

He to whom Helios is a conscious being is childlike, if not childish:

the Psalmist is poetical.

Now when such psalms were being spread abroad increasingly in Israel;

when Jahveh was acknowledged as the being that brings up the sun, the

stars and the rain-clouds, that builds the house and guards the city;

then the old Sun-god or Herakles was forgotten; that is, his divinity,

and that only, was forgotten. His deeds were still recounted; but deeds

demand an agent. And thus out of the god, who could exist no longer in

the presence of Jahveh, a man was made, who with Jahveh’s force to aid

him performed superhuman things, but in other respects lived among men

and within human conditions, worked quite as a man, and even enjoyed his

superhuman power only on human terms, namely the terms of Naziritism.

Deeds were reported of some one who had long hair. But who wore his hair

long, but the Nazirite consecrated to Jahveh? Deeds were told, which no

one could accomplish unless exceptionally endowed with strength by

Jahveh; and Jahveh would give such privilege only to the Nazirite

consecrated to him. Consequently, when Samson was no longer a god, he

must be a Nazirite. Nevertheless, he was distinguished beyond all other

Nazirites: he was so from his very birth, like Samuel, to whom with

Naziritism was granted Prophecy, a gift vouchsafed to others only later

in life and occasionally. The strictly mythical character, the allusion

to a religion of nature, was entirely lost from the stories about

Samson. Whatever happened to him took a purely human character.

There was also a dim memory of the same forgotten god, that he was

Melkart, i.e. ‘king or guardian of the city.’ Samson, now reduced to

humanity, could have been such a guardian only in a human sense, though

perhaps in an extraordinary degree. Now Israel preserved from the first

half of its political existence the memory of no other enemy so

dangerous, so difficult to withstand, and again in its subsequent

weakness so hateful, as the Philistines: against them Samson must have

fought. No other foe had laid on Israel so hard a yoke or such bitter

degradation as the Philistines: but Samson must have avenged this on

them. He must not only have conquered them, but likewise have given them

a taste of his great physical and intellectual superiority: the Nazirite

consecrated to Jahveh could scoff at the Philistines. Thus Samson was in

the end a Judge, Shôphêṭ; for in the age of the Judges, the wars with

the Philistines had begun, and after Eli and Samuel, Saul and David, or

even beside any of them, Samson could not have lived. These were not

deliberations, but unconscious impulses, which shaped the legend of

Samson in the national mind of Israel.

No feature of the Solar hero has suffered a more characteristic

conversion than his end, as is seen by a comparison with the

corresponding polytheistic legends. Orion is blinded by the father of

his lady-love, and Samson had his eyes put out. But Orion kindled the

light of his eyes again at the rays of Helios, whereas Samson remains

blind, and only prays to be endowed with strength to avenge the loss of

one of his two eyes.[866] It is true, his hair grows again and brings

back his strength: after the winter comes a new spring. But all in

vain—Samson dies, notwithstanding. He dies like Herakles: but there is

no Iolaos to wake him to a new life, no Athene and Apollon to lead him

to Olympos, no Zeus and Here to present to him Hebe, the personification

of the enjoyment of perpetual youth. Samson dies and remains dead; he

dies, and tears down with him his own pillars—the pillars on which he

had built the world—to find a grave beneath them. The heathen god is

dead, and draws his own world down with him into his own nothingness;

his battles were a play of shadows. Jahveh lives, ‘he hath established

the world by his wisdom,’ ‘he giveth rain, the autumn and the spring

showers, each in its season, and keepeth to us the prescribed weeks of

harvest,’ ‘cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night;’[867] he

lives, the Lord of the world, the King of the earth, and his hero is

Israel.

-----

Footnote 786:

See W.K. Kelly, _Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and

Folk-lore_, London 1863, chap. II.—TR.

Footnote 787:

See Kelly, _ibid._, p. 74.—TR.

Footnote 788:

See Kelly, _ibid._, p. 83.—TR.

Footnote 789:

See Kelly, _ibid._, 163–5—TR.

Footnote 790:

See Kelly, _Curiosities etc._, p. 89.—TR.

Footnote 791:

See Kelly, _Curiosities etc._, p. 83–85, 151.—TR.

Footnote 792:

See Kelly, _ibid._, p. 83, 141–3.—TR.

Footnote 793:

See Kelly, _Curiosities etc._, pp. 37, 43.—TR. The literal meaning of

his name is _qui in matre tumescit vel praevalet_, i.e. a boring-stick

like the lightning.

Footnote 794:

In English _mangle_, substantive and verb. The verb _mangle_ ‘to tear’

is probably the same, derived from the action of _boring_. To

_mantle_—to winnow corn, to rave, to froth, may be from the same

original root, represented by the Sanskrit, _math, manth_, in the

sense ‘to shake.’ See Halliwell, _Dict. of Archaic and Provincial

Words._ The Greek μόθος ‘tumult’ is connected with the same root by

Gr. Curtius, _Grundzüge der griech. Etymologie_, No. 476.—TR.

Footnote 795:

The penis. The Latin _mentula_, as Prof. Weber reminds me, is clearly

the same.

Footnote 796:

The boring-stick and the penis.

Footnote 797:

ṛ in Sanskrit is pronounced as _r_ with a very short vowel, _e.g._

like _ri_ in _merrily_.—TR.

Footnote 798:

Halliwell, _l.c._, gives in provincial English _bliken_ ‘to shine,’

_blickent_ ‘shining,’ and _blink_ ‘a spark of fire.’—TR.

Footnote 799:

ć in Sanskrit is the English _ch_ in _church_.—TR.

Footnote 800:

This is supported by the analogy of the French _apprendre_. It should

also be noted that Plato, in defining the signification of μανθάνειν,

says that it means πράγματός τινος _λαμβάνειν_ τὴν ἐπιστήμην (Euthyd.

277. e.).

Footnote 801:

On all this see my _Einleitung in die Psychologie und

Sprachwissenschaft_.

Footnote 802:

It is explained by Lazarus, _Leben der Seele_, II. p. 166, and by me

in _Grammatik, Logik und Psychologie_, pp. 319–340, and in

_Charakteristik der Typen des Sprachbaues_, pp. 78 _et seq._

Footnote 803:

The male is the Pramantha, the female the ἐσχάρα (the lower piece of

wood and the female pudenda).

Footnote 804:

See Kelly, _Curiosities etc._, pp. 35–38, 137–150, 158.—TR.

Footnote 805:

Num. XX. 12, XXVII. 13, 14.—TR.

Footnote 806:

_Sage_, a ‘saying’ or legendary story, which may have no historical

foundation, but be produced out of mythic matter. Where, as here, it

is sharply distinguished from history, I render it _legend_; elsewhere

_story_, which is generally the best English equivalent,

notwithstanding its derivation from _historia_.—TR.

Footnote 807:

The allusion is to the story of Bruin the bear and the honey, in

Reynard the Fox: see _Reinhart_, v. 1533–1562, _Reinaert_, v. 601–706,

in Jacob Grimm’s edition, Berlin 1834; and Goethe’s modern German

version, canto 2.—TR.

Footnote 808:

Welcker, _Griechische Götterlehre_, I. 478.

Footnote 809:

Welcker, _ibid._, 490.

Footnote 810:

Studer, _Buch der Richter_, p. 320: Sachs, _Beiträge zur Sprach- und

Alterthumsforschung_, II. p. 92.

Footnote 811:

Preller, _Römische Mythologie_, p. 437–8.

Footnote 812:

Ovid, _Fasti_, IV. 679 _et seqq._

Footnote 813:

Judges XV. 8.

Footnote 814:

Judges XV. 15–19.

Footnote 815:

VIII. 5. 1, p. 353.

Footnote 816:

III. 22. 8.

Footnote 817:

Judges XV. 19: ʿÊn haḳḳôrê.

Footnote 818:

Judges XV. 16.

Footnote 819:

_Buch der Richter_, p. 185.

Footnote 820:

Judges XV. 17: Râmath Lechî.

Footnote 821:

v. 19.

Footnote 822:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_.

Footnote 823:

Makhtêsh, v. 19.

Footnote 824:

I formerly saw in the Jawbone the representative of the Harpe (toothed

sickle), with which Herakles cuts off the heads of the Hydra, and

which Kronos and Perseus also employ—the latter when he beheads

Medusa. I have changed my view in favour of that here propounded,

through consideration of the ‘throwing,’ which undoubtedly is

significant. But complete certainty is unattainable. What meaning can

be attached to the circumstance that the jawbone is called a ‘fresh’

(new) one (v. 15)?

Footnote 825:

Judges XVI. 1–3.

Footnote 826:

Welcker, _Griech. Götterlehre_, II. 776; Preller, _Griech. Mythol._,

II. 154, 167; Movers, _Phönizier_, I. 442.

Footnote 827:

Welcker, _ibid._, II. 761.

Footnote 828:

Judges XVI. 4: Nachal Sôrêḳ, _i.e._ Valley of the Vine.

Footnote 829:

I formerly took Delîlâ, _i.e._ the ‘Worn out,’ to be a personification

of Nature, worn out and no longer productive in the winter-season.

Then the name Delîlâ might be compared with that of Aphrodite

_Morpho_, supposing Movers (p. 586) to give the right interpretation

of the latter, in discovering it to be the Syriac word for Fatigue,

Flagging. Then Delîlâ would be the Winter-goddess, and might be a

peculiar phase of Derketo, who was worshiped in conjunction with the

barren Sea-god Dagon (see Stark, _Gaza_, p. 285). Pausanias (III, 15.

8) relates that there was at Sparta an old temple with an image of

Aphrodite to whom it belonged—_i.e._ Astarte, Semiramis, etc. This

temple (alone of all the temples that Pausanias knew) had an upper

story, in which was an image of Aphrodite Morpho. She was represented

sitting, veiled, and with her feet bound. Pausanias himself interprets

the fetters to indicate women’s attachment to their husbands; but this

reading is not binding on us. I regard this Morpho as a picture of

Nature fettered and mourning in winter. Similarly, and also at Sparta

(_ibid._ 5) the bound Enyalios signifies the restrained solar heat of

Mars. However, this interpretation of Delîlâ as Winter stands in no

contradiction to what is said in the text. Moon-goddess, Love-goddess,

Chaste goddess, and Winter, are only different aspects of the same

mythological figure, to which a name capable of many interpretations

is very suitable. Stark (_Gaza_, p. 292) is right in asserting the

hostility of Herakles to the descendants of Poseidon, the gloomy

sea-god, who according to Semitic conceptions I believe to have been

also the Winter-god (Dagon). But Movers (p. 441) appears to be also

right in showing how, besides combating the creatures of Typhon,

Melkart-Herakles is also hostile to the evil Moon-goddess. For she is

only the female figure corresponding to the male Moloch, Typhon and

Mars. In the Greek myth the place of the Semitic Lunar Astarte is

occupied by Hera, the adversary of Herakles. She is confounded both

with Ashêrâ the goddess of Love, and with Astarte. Thus there was in

Sparta an Aphrodite Hera (Paus. III. 13. 6). To her goats were

sacrificed at Sparta, and only there, as to the Semitic Birth-goddess;

and she was called ‘Goat-eater’ (Ἥρα αἰάγοφάγος, _ib._ 15. 7; Preller,

_Griech. Myth._, p. 111; but I am of opinion that the goats have not

the same meaning in her case as in that of Zeus). In the character of

Astarte, as an evil Moon-goddess, a female Moloch or Mars, she appears

when she sends the Nemean lion, the Solar heat, into the land, and on

other occasions when she is put into connexion with the powers of evil

(Preller, p. 109). The conception which unites opposite natural forces

in the same divine person, which then appears under a modified form,

could not be better expressed in architecture than it is in the

above-mentioned temple of Aphrodite. The lower story is a temple of

the Armed Aphrodite; the upper a temple of Aphrodite Morpho: thus the

whole is a temple of the strict goddess, below of the Summer, above of

the Winter. The fact that a deity of the Solar heat and the Fire is

regarded as also a deity of the Sea, may be explained not only by the

equal barrenness of the Desert—a sea of sand, and the Sea—a desert of

water, but perhaps also by the opinion, attributed by Plutarch (_de

Is. et Os._ c. 7) to the Egyptians, that the sea is not an independent

element but only a morbid emanation from fire. To Morpho or Winter

corresponds Hera, as one at variance with Zeus, or as a widow

(Preller, p. 108). Thus then it will be clear that Delîlâ may be both

the Birth-goddess (Ashêrâ) and the evil Moon-goddess (Astarte), or

more accurately the Winter-goddess (Derketo). If Semiramis exhibits a

combination of Ashêrâ with Astarte, then Delîlâ shows a similar

combination of Ashêrâ with Derketo, who is only a modification of

Astarte.

Footnote 830:

The derivation from the root _shmn_ is impossible, that from the root

_shmm_ far-fetched. The simple derivation from shemes ‘sun’ appears to

be rejected by Bertheau (_Buch der Richter_, p. 169) only ‘because the

long narrative concerning Samson presents no reference to a name of

any such signification’ (as ‘the Sunny,’ the Solar hero), and because,

as he says, ‘we do not expect to find a name of this kind anywhere in

Hebrew antiquity.’ But the matter appears to us now in a very

different light, and the connexion with the Sun which Bertheau did not

expect to find has now become clear.

Footnote 831:

That Dagon really had the form of a fish, which Movers denies, surely

appears certain from 1 Sam. V. 4 (see Stark, _Gaza_, p. 249). And it

would be an excess of diplomatic accuracy, such as we are not

justified in ascribing to the Hebrew writer, to suppose that his only

reason for writing dâgôn was that the Hebrew dâgân ‘corn’ was

pronounced Dâgôn in Phenician. Moreover, such a word as ‘Corn’ (dâgân)

cannot well be a proper name. The formation of proper names of men and

places by the termination _ôn_ is excessively common, and requires no

citation of examples.

Footnote 832:

Judges XVI, 22.

Footnote 833:

Judges XIII.

Footnote 834:

1 Sam. I.

Footnote 835:

Num. VI. 1–21.

Footnote 836:

1 Sam. I. 28.

Footnote 837:

1 Sam. II. 11, 18, III. 3, I. 11.

Footnote 838:

Amos II. 11, 12.

Footnote 839:

Lev. X. 9.

Footnote 840:

Num. VI. 6, 7.

Footnote 841:

The circumstance that this was ‘of Jahveh’ (Judges XIV. 4) is a

fiction interpolated into the legend by the systematising author.

Footnote 842:

It will be seen from the above, that I am far from subscribing to the

judgment on the heathen religions which has in recent times been

widely diffused among philosophers and philologians. I agree

essentially with the judgment of the natural mind, which always sees

delusion and superstition in heathendom. But it does not follow from

this that the heathens were absolutely immoral: they invested with

their own morality gods who were intrinsically representations of

nature only.

Footnote 843:

See Preller, _Griech. Mythol._ II. 97; Gerhard, _Griech. Mythol._ §

711.

Footnote 844:

For this assertion I must for the present refer to what I have said in

an article, _Zur Charakteristik der semitischen Völker_, in the

_Zeitschr. für Völkerpsychologie etc._ Vol. I. p. 328 _et seqq._ In

Liebner and others’ _Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie_, V. p. 669 _et

seqq._, there is a long article by Diestel, _Der Monotheismus des

ältesten Heidenthums, vorzüglich bei den Semiten_. He also declares

himself averse to the assumption of a primitive Monotheism, because it

is destitute of all historical proof. He brings many points

judiciously into the light, especially the absence of an accurate

conception of Monotheism (p. 684). But when he objects to me, that in

the above-quoted article (p. 330) I am too hard on the expression

_Instinct_ used by Renan, inasmuch as it is to be understood as

implying only an individual disposition of the religious mind, not a

momentum of half-animal physical life. I must observe in reply, that I

can scarcely imagine how else instinct can be understood but as a

‘half-animal momentum’; and even reason, taken as an instinct, is _eo

ipso_ degraded to a momentum of half-animal physical life. And if

Diestel here means by instinct a ‘disposition of the mind,’ I can see

in such dispositions scarcely anything more than momenta of

_half_-animal physical life. Moreover, I cannot admit any such

‘dispositions of the religious mind,’ which have the special object of

their belief determined beforehand. A disposition to reasonableness in

general, or to religiousness in general, does dwell in the human mind;

but not a disposition so defined as to its object that a limited idea,

such as Monotheism, could be _a priori_ inherent in it.

Footnote 845:

By J. Olshausen in Hirzel’s _Hiob_, p. 60 note.—But Ewald says

expressly (_Ijob_, 1854, p. 126) that Rahab is everywhere _a

mythological name for a sea-monster_, even where it stands for

Egypt.—TR.

Footnote 846:

See pp. 73, 169.

Footnote 847:

See _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1849, III. p. 200 _et seq._

Footnote 848:

Hebrew livyâthân, nâchâs; Sanskrit Vṛtra, Ahi.

Footnote 849:

The literal and only possible translation of the first three words of

the verse, geʿar chayyath ḳaneh, rendered correctly in the Septuagint

and Vulgate; for which the English A.V. unaccountably substitutes

‘Rebuke the company of spearmen,’ while the Prayer-book version goes

even further astray.—TR.

Footnote 850:

Baʿal kûn, see Movers, I. 292.

Footnote 851:

Job IX. 8; bâmothê yâm.—TR.

Footnote 852:

Is. XIV. 14; bâmothê ʿâbh.—TR.

Footnote 853:

It will be inferred from the above reasoning, that I should be

inclined to assign an early age to the writer of the Book of Job. But

I can find no reason for making him older than Amos; indeed, he may

have lived into the lifetime of Isaiah. I must further remark that

Schlottmann (_Das Buch Hiob verdeutscht und erläutert_, pp. 69–105,

especially 101 _et seqq._) has expressed ideas similar to those

propounded by me, though starting from assumptions utterly different

in principle. To the passages of Job which he places side by side with

corresponding ones of Amos (p. 109), the following may be added: Amos

V. 8 and IX. 6, ‘who calleth to the water of the (Cloud-) Sea,’ and

Job XXXVIII. 34, ‘wilt thou lift up thy voice to the Cloud?’

Footnote 854:

_Prometheus_, p. 391.

Footnote 855:

Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers etc._, p. 30.

Footnote 856:

P. 392.

Footnote 857:

Preller, ib. I. 438; Kuhn, ib. p. 24, 243.

Footnote 858:

See p. 399.

Footnote 859:

See p. 425.

Footnote 860:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 251.

Footnote 861:

In English Tues-day, Wednes-day, Thurs-day, Fri-day, Satur-day, from

Anglo-Saxon names of gods, Tiu or Teow, Wôden, Thunor, Frige,

Sætern.—TR.

Footnote 862:

E.g. the Lady-bird, in German Marienkäfer; its Danish name, Marihöne,

was, according to Grimm, anciently Freyjuhöna ‘Freyja’s hen.’ So

Venus’ Looking-glass (Speculum Veneris) is also called Lady’s Glass;

Pecten Veneris is Lady’s Comb. There are very numerous plants named

after Our Lady, which were probably originally dedicated to Freyja or

Venus, as Lady’s Mantle; Lady’s Thistle or Lady’s Milk (Carduus

Marianus: ‘distinguished at once by the white veins on its leaves....

A drop of the Virgin Mary’s milk was conceived to have produced these

veins, as that of Juno was fabled to be the origin of the Milky Way.’

Hooker and Arnott, _British Flora_, p. 231); Lady’s Smock (Cardamine);

Lady’s Bower or Virgin’s Bower (Clematis); Lady’s Fingers (Anthyllis);

Lady’s Tresses (Spiranthes or Neottia); Lady’s Slipper

(Cypripedium).—TR.

Footnote 863:

As this German example will not be familiar to all English readers, it

is necessary to give a few words of explanation. The great Deluge

(Gen. VI.-VIII.) is called in modern German _Sünd-fluth_, which seems

to be Sin-flood = Flood on account of sin. But in Old High German it

is written Sin-vluot and Sint-vluot, which cannot be identical with

the assumed meaning of the modern word, since _sin_ (peccatum) is in

Old High German _sunta_. Moreover, _sin_ is a prefix well known to

most of the Teutonic languages, denoting (1) always, (2) great. In the

former sense we have it in the Old English _singrene_ ‘evergreen;’ in

the latter in the Anglo-Saxon _sinhere_ ‘great army.’ Hence it is

assumed that the word in German altered its pronunciation when the

prefix _sin_ became obsolete, being then supposed to be intended for

_Sünd-fluth_, as is shown in the text. See Grimm, _Deut. Gram._ II.

554, Graff, _Althochd. Sprachschatz_, VI. 25, _Ettmüller, Lex.

Anglosax._ p. 638, Vigfusson, _Icelandic English Dict._ s. v. Sí.

Prof. Steinthal appears now (in a letter to the translator) to doubt

whether this history of the word is tenable; but the assumption that

it is so may at least be allowed, in order to retain this excellent

example of the psychological progress.—TR.

Footnote 864:

See _supra_, p. 426.

Footnote 865:

Ps. XIX. 6 [5].

Footnote 866:

Judges XVI. 28: ‘Give me strength only this once, O God, and I will

avenge myself with _the vengeance of one of my two eyes_ on the

Philistines.’ This is the only possible meaning of the very simple

Hebrew words nekam achath mishshethê ʿênay, which were misunderstood

by the LXX and Vulg.; and the German and English versions have merely

followed the latter.—TR.

Footnote 867:

Jer. X. 12, V. 24; Gen. VIII. 22.

-----

------------------------------------

INDEX.

Aaron, grave of, 280–282

ʿAbd Duhmân, 73

Abel a herdsman, 110;

his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition) at Ṣâliḥiyyâ, suburb of

Damascus, 280;

figure of the Dark Sky, 111;

Jabal another form of the same, 111–2

Abraham denotes the Heaven at Night, 32;

myth of his sacrifice of Isaac, 45–47;

his journey to Egypt on account of a famine, when Jahveh plagued

Pharaoh—a type of the later residence in Egypt, 275;

his grave at Hebron, 278–280;

at Berze near Damascus, 280

Abram (‘High Father’) originally denoted Heaven, 91;

changed into Abraham, 230

Abram and Jacob, mythical ideas connected with these names not quite

obsolete, 229

Adam, grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), on Mt. Abû Ḳu-beys,

280

Agâdâ contains mythology, 29–32;

but must be used with caution, 32–34;

a hermeneutic law of the A., that ‘the intensity of a word’s sense

increases with the enlargement of its form,’ 339;

etymologies in A., 337;

given even in opposition to others in the Bible, 339

Agni, ‘fire’ and ‘God of fire,’ 367–8, 382, 386–9;

hidden, and brought back by Mâtariśvan, 369–70

Agricultural civilisation, speculation on, 211–14

Agriculture, Fall of man connected with, 87

Agriculturists love the Day and the Sun, 58–60;

refer the arts of civilisation to the Sun, 202

Akra (Gold Coast), people of, identify God with clouds, 224

ʿAlî b. Jaʿfar al-Razî wrote a book on the graves of the Patriarchs at

Hebron, 279

Allâh, idea of, similar to that of Jahveh, 290–1

Amnon’s liaison with Tamar, its mythical element, 181–2

Ancestors, originally mythical figures, 229, 254, 257

Aṅgiras, mythical family of, connected with Agni, 371–2

Anschauung (_Conception_), 377

ʿAntar, the black hero, compared with the Night, 147–8

Apperception, 376

Aptûchos, of Cyrene, identical with Jephthah, 104

Arabian children educated in the tents of Bedâwî, 88

Arabs travel by night, 56;

proud of Nomadism, 79 _et seqq._;

their poetry always conveys the scenery of the desert, 84–8

Archer who shot an apple from his son’s head, a Teutonic legend, 442

Aryan gods, their names date from the original unity, proved by Kuhn,

363–4

Ascension to heaven, characteristic of Solar heroes, 127

Ash-tree of the world, in the sky, 366

Asher is the ‘Marching’ (the Sun), 120–2;

his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition), at Kafarmandâ, 280

Ashêrâ, the ‘Marching,’ consort of Asher (and therefore the Moon),

122–3, 158

Ass, called from his red colour, 181

Ass’s Jawbone, used as a weapon by Samson;

originally name of a locality, 400;

similar to Onugnathos in Lakonia, 400–1;

denotes the Lightning, and is therefore thrown, 402

Assyria and Babylon exerted an intellectual influence on the Hebrews

during the Captivity, 319

Assyrian poetry, very similar to the Hebrew Psalms, 318

Assyrians have gradations of authority among gods as among men, 267

Aztecs adopted Toltec civilisation, 236

Babel (Babylon), confusion of tongues at, story of, arose at Babylon,

330–1, 335

Babylon and Assyria exerted an intellectual influence on the Hebrews

during the Captivity, 319

Babylonian story of the Creation, very similar to the Hebrew, 323

Baghirmi, people in Central Africa, identify God with the Storm, 224

Balaam (Bilʿâm) as interpreted in the Agâdâ, 33–4

Barak, ‘Lightning,’ is made a national hero, 256;

the Judge (Lightning), 430

Bedâwî, their Sun-worship, 72;

they are regarded as the true Arabs, 82–4;

they regard God as a great Chief or Sheykh, 266

Bedouins. See Bedâwî

Bel, in the Louvre, with ox-horns on his tiara, 179

Benjamin, ‘Son of the right side,’ 176;

his sons’ names, their origin given in the Agâdâ on etymological

grounds, 337;

a similar story in Arabic, 339

Bernstein’s theory on the differentiation of the legends between North

and South, 286

Bhṛgu-s, same as Phlegyans, Lightning, 372–3;

the first man, 389

Bilhah, a Solar figure, loves or marries Jacob and Reuben, figures of

Night, 171–3

Bird, denotes Lightning, 384

Black, the colour of Night, 146–9

Bochica, Solar hero of the Muyscas, author of civilisation, 204–5

Bunsen confounds religion and mythology, 12;

does not admit any Hebrew mythology, 12–13

Cain, with Abel, 110–2;

the ‘Smith,’ 113, and so in the Myth of Civilisation, 213–4, 217;

Solar hero, 113–4, 126–7;

his descendants Solar, 126 _et seqq._;

progenitor of the human race, 210;

grave of (according to Mohammedan tradition), at Ṣâliḥiyyâ, suburb of

Damascus, 280;

called in Arabic Ḳâbil in assonance to Hâbil, according to a frequent

practice, 347–9;

although the name Ḳâyin is also known, 349

Calabar legend of the first human pair, 87

Canaan is cursed for Ham’s fault, 255;

his grave (according to Mohammedan tradition), near Hebron, 280

Cats draw Freyja’s car, 342

Cat-worship of the Egyptians, Solar, 342

Caves in Canaan, traditions relating to, 278

Cherub perhaps denotes the Covering Cloud, and is of Hebrew origin,

196–7

Chiun. See _Kiyyûn_

Chrysoros the ‘Opener,’ hero of the Myth of Civilisation, 216–7

Civilisation, Myth of, 198 _et seqq._

refers the higher civilisation to the Sun, 200–6

Clouds, forms and names of, 163–5;

clouds groaning, 164,

weeping, 165;

worshiped by nomadic Hebrews, 227;

mythologically called ‘Heights of the Sea,’ 426, 443

Clouds and Serpents, Hebrew observers of, 227–8

Coalescence of psychological Motions or Combinations, 375

Colours only imperfectly distinguished and expressed in the mythic age,

141–155

Combination of psychological elements, 375

Comparative Mythology not limited by distinctions of race, 9

Conception (_Anschauung_), 377

Concubines in mythology are of opposite natures to their men, 158

Confusion of tongues at Babel (Babylon), story of, arose at Babylon,

330–1, 335

Conquered impose their superior civilisation on their conquerors, 236–40

Cow in mythology denotes the Sun, 343–4

Creation, Hebrew story of, conceived at Babylon, 323–6;

established the Sabbath on a new basis, 324;

Babylonian story very similar, 323

Creator, idea of a, essential conception of Jahveh, 299

Crocodile, mythologically identical with the Sun, worshiped in Egypt,

342–3

Ćyavana, son of Bhṛgu, is Lightning, 372–3, 391

Dagon, ‘Fish,’ Solar god of civilisation, 215

Dan, the ‘Moving,’ the Sun, 123–4

Darkness expressed by words meaning ‘to Cover,’ 190–4

Darkness and Blackness associated, 147–9

David’s story has features belonging to the Solar Myth:

redness, beautiful eyes, throws stones, 109;

he kills Goliath as Thor kills Hrungnir, 430

Dawn and Sunset expressed by the same words, 43

Dawn flies, or is a bird, 116;

the name denotes ‘moving,’ 120;

it is in Aramaic ṣafrâ (Arab, aṣfar), ‘golden,’ 150–1;

its colour saffron, 152;

changes from red to white, 152;

or from white to red, 153

Dawn (or the Sun) is called the ‘Uncoverer,’ 194