Thus it is poetry when the Psalmist speaks of the sun "as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber"; for there is no confusion in his thought between the two natural objects. The sun is like the bridegroom in the glory of his appearance. The Psalmist does not ascribe to him a bride and children.
It is science when the astronomer compares the spectrum of the sun with the spectra of various metals in the laboratory. He is comparing natural object with natural object, and is enabled to draw conclusions as to the elements composing the sun, and the condition in which they there exist.
But it is myth when the Babylonian represents Bel or Merodach as the solar deity, destroying Tiamat, the dragon of darkness, for there is confusion in the thought. The imaginary god is sometimes given solar, sometimes human, sometimes superhuman characteristics. There is no actuality in much of what is asserted as to the sun or as to the wholly imaginary being associated with it. The mocking words of Elijah to the priests of Baal were justified by the intellectual confusion of their ideas, as well as by the spiritual degradation of their idolatry.
"Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened."
Such nature-myths are not indications of the healthy mental development of a primitive people; they are the clear signs of a pathological condition, the symptoms of intellectual disease.
It is well to bear in mind this distinction, this opposition between poetry and myth, for ignoring it has led to not a little misconception as to the occurrence of myth in Scripture, especially in connection with the names associated with the crocodile. Thus it has been broadly asserted that "the original mythical signification of the monsters tehôm, livyāthān, tannim, rahâb, is unmistakably evident."
Of these names the first signifies the world of waters; the second and third real aquatic animals; and the last, "the proud one," is simply an epithet of Egypt, applied to the crocodile as the representation of the kingdom. There is no more myth in setting forth Egypt by the crocodile or leviathan than in setting forth Great Britain by the lion, or Russia by the bear.
The Hebrews in setting forth their enemies by crocodile and other ferocious reptiles were not describing any imaginary monsters of the primæval chaos, but real oppressors. The Egyptian, with his "house of bondage," the Assyrian, "which smote with a rod," the Chaldean who made havoc of Israel altogether, were not dreams. And in beseeching God to deliver them from their latest oppressor the Hebrews naturally recalled, not some idle tale of the fabulous achievements of Babylonian deities, but the actual deliverance God had wrought for them at the Red Sea. There the Egyptian crocodile had been made "meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness" when the corpses of Pharaoh's bodyguard, cast up on the shore, supplied the children of Israel with the weapons and armour of which they stood in need. So in the day of their utter distress they could still cry in faith and hope—
"Yet God is my King of old,
Working salvation in the midst of the earth.
Thou didst divide the sea by Thy strength:
Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces,
And gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Thou didst cleave the fountain and the flood:
Thou driedst up mighty rivers.
The day is Thine, the night also is Thine:
Thou hast prepared the light and the sun.
Thou hast set all the borders of the earth:
Thou hast made summer and winter."