The Dawn of History: An Introduction to Pre-Historic Study

by C. F. Keary

When the reader has made up his mind upon this subject he will be in a position, we have said, to estimate the weight which we ought to attach to discoveries of this kind in reference to historic creeds; because the heroes of these creeds are evidently in the position of historic personages for those who hold the belief. As long as the Norsemen think that they hear Odin rushing along at night upon his horse Sleipnir, Odin is for them an historic personage; as long as Greeks think that it is Zeus who is ‘thundering from Ida,’ Zeus is as real to them as William the Bastard was to the English nation—more real than Hasting was to Dudo. And I maintain that an understanding of what the Greeks thought about Zeus, or the Norsemen about Odin, is very little furthered by (in Mr. Tylor’s words) a vague notion that at some other time they thought something quite different.

We may, however, legitimately go a little way behind the date of our documents. Our comprehension of the feudal system of land tenure is not much assisted by comparing it with systems in use among the Zulus; but it is useful to study the land tenure prevalent among the German nationalities before the feudal system properly so called was introduced. In the same way, behind the actual religious ideas shadowed forth in the Vedic hymns, in Homer, or in the Eddaic poems, we may, I maintain, legitimately go back to a time when the divine beings of these creeds were more nearly identified with natural phenomena out of which they sprang. It is just this condition of the Aryan creeds which I have sought to portray in the chapters devoted to the subject. In the actual documents before us the gods of Greece or Scandinavia do not take the guise of the heaven, or the sun, or the wind. But enough remains in their natures to show that it was out of these phenomena that they emerged to become the independent personalities which we know. This is what is meant by the nature or origins of Indra, Zeus, Odin, etc., as the expressions are used above.

[P. 195]. I take the liberty of transcribing a passage from Mr. Max Müller’s Lectures on the Science of Religion.

‘One of the oldest names of the deity, among the Semitic nations, was El. It meant strong. It occurs in the Babylonian inscriptures as Ilu, God, and in the very name of Bab-il, the gate or temple of Il. In Hebrew, it occurs both in its general sense, as strong, or hero, and as a name of God. We have it in Beth-el, the House of God, and in many other names. If used with the article as ha-El, the Strong One, or the God, it always is meant in the Old Testament for Jehovah, the true God. El, however, always retained its appellative power, and we find it applied therefore, in parts of the Old Testament, to the God of the Gentiles also.

‘The same El was worshipped at Byblus, by the Phœnicians, and he was called there the Son of Heaven and Earth. His father was the son of Eliun, the most high god, who had been killed by wild animals. The son of Eliun who succeeded him was dethroned, and at last slain by his own son El, whom Philo identifies with the Greek Kronos, and represents as the presiding deity of the planet Saturn. In the Himyaritic inscriptions too the name of El has been discovered.

‘With the name of El, Philo connected the name of Elohim, the plural of Eloah. In the battle between El and his father, the allies of El, he says, were called Eloeim, as those who were with Kronos were called Kronioi. This is no doubt a very tempting etymology of Eloah; but as the best Semitic scholars, and particularly Professor Fleischer, have declared against it, we shall have, however reluctantly, to surrender it.

‘Eloah is the same word as the Arabic Ilâh, God. In the singular, Eloah is used synonymously with El; in the plural, it may mean gods in general, or false gods: but it becomes in the Old Testament the recognized name for the true God, plural in form but singular in meaning. In Arabic Ilâh without the article means a god in general; with the article Al-Ilâh, or Allâh, becomes the name of the God of Abraham and Moses.’

[P. 197]. Nature-Worship.—The part which the phenomena of nature play in training the thoughts of uncultivated men toward religion, and poetry, and hero-worship, and legendary lore, has been made the subject of warm controversy. And it may not be altogether amiss if we bestow a little thought upon the question, and upon the character of evidence by which this nature-worship is thought to be established.

That it is in no sense a degradation of our estimate of man to suppose that his thoughts were led upward from the contemplation of the objects of sense which lay around to the contemplation of a Higher Being beyond the region of sensible things, will become, it is to be hoped, clear upon a little reflection, and upon a candid examination of what has been said in pp. 173-176. But still it may fairly be asked, Did this process of deifying the powers of nature take place? Why should not the human mind have come independently by the direct revelation of God’s voice speaking in the hearts of men to a notion of a God ruler of the world, and then, by a natural process of decay, proceed thence to a polytheism, a pantheon of beings who were supposed to rule over the different phenomena of nature, just as the different members of a cabinet hold sway over the various branches of national government?

This was, until comparatively recent years, the received opinion concerning mythology, and it is one which tacitly keeps its place in the writings of many scholars, especially of those who have been brought up almost exclusively upon the study of classical languages and classical religions: for it is only after a wide study, and a comparison of many different religions in many different stages, that the conviction of the opposite truth forces itself upon one. It is obvious that for the purpose of a scientific knowledge of the formation of religious systems, we must not observe them in their fullest development, but rather turn to such of their brother-religions as have remained in a more stunted condition. Nor, again, should we deal, except very cautiously, with an extremely imaginative people, like the Greeks; for with them changes from any primitive form will be much more rapid and more complete than the changes in some more meagre systems. The fragmentary Teutonic myths, and the relics of these in mediæval superstition, are for this purpose sometimes more trustworthy than those of Greece; and partly on this account, partly because they are less familiar to the reader, we have drawn largely upon them for illustration in our chapters upon Aryan religion and Folk-tales.