Mr J. F. M’Lennan, who, in his “Primitive Marriage,” 1865 (vide supra), apparently describes mankind as originally in a state of promiscuity, subsequently limited by customs of tribal exogamy and endogamy, in a recent article in the Fortnightly Review (Oct. 1869), “Totems and Totemism,” sees further evidence of his theory in the following traditions from Sanchoniathon:—
“Few traditions respecting the primitive condition of mankind are more remarkable, and perhaps none are more ancient, than those that have been preserved by Sanchoniatho; or rather, we should say, that are to be found in the fragments ascribed to that writer by Eusebius. They present us with an outline of the earlier stages of human progress in religious speculation, which is shown by the results of modern inquiry to be wonderfully correct. They tell us for instance that ‘the first men consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, and judged them gods, and worshipped them upon whom they themselves lived, and all their posterity, and all before them, and to these they made their meat and drink offerings.’[102] They further tell us that the first men believed the heavenly bodies to be animals, only differently shaped and circumstanced from any on the earth. ‘There were certain animals which had no sense, out of which were begotten intelligent animals ... and they were formed alike in the shape of an egg. Thus shone out Môt [the luminous vault of heaven?], the sun and the moon, and the less and the greater stars.’ Next they relate, in an account of the successive generations of men, that in the first generation the way was found out of taking food from trees; that, in the second, men, having suffered from droughts, began to worship the sun—the Lord of heaven; that in the third, Light, Fire, and Flame [conceived as persons], were begotten; that in the fourth giants appeared; while in the fifth, ‘men were named from their mothers’ because of the uncertainty of male parentage, this generation being distinguished also by the introduction of ‘pillar’ worship. It was not till the twelfth generation that the gods appeared that figure most in the old mythologies, such as Kronos, Dagon, Zeus, Belus, Apollo, and Typhon; and then the queen of them all was the Bull-headed Astarte. The sum of the statements is, that men first worshipped plants; next the heavenly bodies, supposed to be animals; then ‘pillars;’ ... and, last of all, the anthropomorphic gods. Not the least remarkable statement is, that in primitive times there was kinship through mothers only, owing to the uncertainty of fatherhood.”[103]
The fragments of Sanchoniathon here referred to are found at earlier date than Eusebius, having been copiously extracted by Philo (vide Bunsen’s “Egypt”).
Sanchoniathon was to Phœnicia what Berosus was to Assyria; that is to say, the earliest post-diluvian compilers of history when tradition was becoming obscure. Let us scrutinise his testimony. We are here told “that the first men consecrated the plants shooting out of the earth, and judged them gods.”... “Next they relate, in an account of the successive generations of men, that in the first generation the way was found out of taking food from trees.” Here, I submit, that we have plainly and unmistakably a tradition of that first commencement of evil, the first man and woman plucking the apple from the tree, thinking they would become as gods (Gen. iii. 4, 5), ... “and the serpent said ... for God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof ... and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Then follows the succession of ages (vide infra, [ch. xiii].), of which there is a curious parallel tradition in Hesiod and Apollodorus, and partial correspondences in the traditions of India, China, and Mexico (infra, [ch. xiii].).[104]
It will be noted, however, that whilst running into the tradition of Hesiod on the one side (in Hesiod and in the Chinese tradition there is trace of a double tradition, ante and post-diluvian), Sanchoniathon still more closely runs in with the narrative of Genesis on the other, thus connecting the links of the chain of tradition.[105]
In the succession of ages we have in outline the history of mankind in the ante-diluvian period—the Fall, supra—followed in the succeeding age by a great drought—[compare this tradition with the following passage in Fran. Lenormant’s “Histoire Ancienne,” i. p. 5, 2d ed., Paris 1868—“and when geology shows us the first ante-diluvian men who came into our part of the world, living in the midst of ice, under conditions of climate analogous to those under which the Esquimaux live at the present day ... one is naturally brought to the recollection of that ancient tradition of the Persians, fully conformable to the information which the Bible supplies on the subject of the fall of man, ... which ranks among the first of the chastisements which followed the fall, along with death and other calamities, the advent of an intense and permanent cold which man could scarcely endure, and which rendered the earth almost uninhabitable.”[106]] It is to this period, and the short period immediately following the Deluge (vide ch. ii. [p. 21], and infra, pp. [136], [137]), that I am inclined to trace the notions of a primitive barbarism—compare, for instance, the facts which Goguet, in his “Origin of Laws,” i. p. 72, adduces in proof of his progress from barbarism, with the above tradition of the Persians recorded by Lenormant.
Goguet says—“The Egyptians, Persians, Phœnicians, Greeks, and several other nations (vide his references, p. 72), acknowledged that their ancestors were once without the use of fire. The Chinese confess the same of their progenitors.... Pomponius, Mela, Pliny, Plutarch, and other ancient authors speak of nations, who, at the time they wrote, knew not the use of fire, or had only just learned it. Facts of the same kind are attested by several modern relations.” Let this latter statement be compared with infra, pp. [136], [137].
In the third age we are told—“Light, Fire, and Flame (conceived as persons) were begotten,” which looks like a tradition of Vulcan, Tubalcain, &c. (vide [ch. xii]. infra); and “in the fourth, giants appeared;” while in the fifth, the corruption of mankind is indicated, as is declared in Genesis vi. 4: “Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men and brought forth children,” &c, ver. 12, “and when God had seen that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth), ver. 13, He said to Noe,” &c. “It was not till the twelfth generation that the gods appeared that figured most in the old mythologies,” says Mr M’Lennan, quoting Sanchoniathon, or what is believed to be his testimony. I trust that this fragment of tradition may be remembered in connection with what I have written in chapters [viii.], [ix.], [x.][107]
“The sum of the statements” then, so regarded, is to confirm the tradition of the human race as recorded in Genesis, that they sprang from three brothers and their three wives, forming three monogamous pairs who accompanied their father Noah into the ark, with his wife; and who again were more remotely descended from a single pair.