That Dualism as a religious conception is a further development of the myth, and not first excited by the moral problem of the strife of the good against the evil, becomes evident also from the consideration of a peculiar form of dualistic religion which we find in many Semitic nations. We here frequently find a deity regarded as male, who has a corresponding female to represent, as it were, the reverse side of the same natural force, and then the two forces unite to produce a natural phenomenon. So, for instance, Sun and Earth, Baal and Mylitta, the factors of procreation. This likewise is a dualistic tendency, in which however the two deities are not represented as mutually hostile. We are justified in placing this phenomenon in the chapter on Dualism, because two such deities in the course of history are often joined together into one.[[71]] Now this side of dualistic religion can be traced back only to Mythology as its source and point of departure. The Hebrew myth of Judah and Tamar, which we shall consider further on (Chap. V., [§ 14]), exhibits a mythical prototype of such dualistic views of religion.
CHAPTER II.
SOURCES OF HEBREW MYTHOLOGY.
§ 1. If it is now established that we are justified in speaking of a Hebrew Mythology, in the same sense as of the mythologies of Indians, Hellenes, Germans, &c., then the question naturally arises, Can we come upon the track of those forms of expression and those figures which generally make up the elements of the Hebrew Myth; and Are these elements when found recognisable as elements of myths, i.e. Are they expressions and stories in which the ancient Hebrew, standing on the myth-creating stage of his intellectual development, spoke of the operations and changes of Nature? That in the abstract he was as capable as the Aryan on the same stage of development of speaking myths, we have admitted in assuming the universality of the formation of myths; and of what those expressions exactly consist, and what are the mythical figures which he formed, it will be the business of a subsequent chapter to exhibit.
In this chapter our task will be limited to the discovery of the sources which we have to estimate by the method of Comparative Mythology, in order to discern the various expressions and figures of the Hebrew myth. Now both the incitement to the formation of myths and the course of development through which they pass before they are noted down in a literary age and then stiffen and undergo no further change, are based on psychological operations, the laws of which are not governed by categories of race and ethnology. It is therefore obvious, that for the understanding of the Hebrew myths we must betake ourselves to the very same class of sources which the mythologist finds fruitful on Aryan territory. Fortunately such sources are open to us on Hebrew ground also. They have, indeed, a less copious stream than those of Aryan mythology, but yet suffice to give us a picture of what the ancient Hebrew on the mythic stage thought and felt, and how he found expression in language for these thoughts and feelings. It is true, this investigation cannot be separated from another closely connected with it—what method we must employ to arrive at the germ of the myth hidden in these sources. But for the present we must still put off this second question, and content ourselves with the search for the sources of mythical matter. It will, however, not be always possible to avoid an indication of the method; and this is the case now with the first of the sources which we have to bring forward.
§ 2. a.) We shall have to speak again further on of the question, What factors in the minds of the Hebrew people produced the conception of those Patriarchs, whose destinies form the most illustrious portion of their national historic writing? It will then become clear that this Patriarchal character represents only a later historical stratum of mythical development, produced by those very factors. Originally the names of the Patriarchs and the actions which are told of them signified nothing historical, but only something on the domain of Nature. The names are appellations of physical phenomena, and the actions are actions of Nature. For surely we must at the outset come to a clear understanding on the question, What is the origin of persons like Abram, Sarah, Jacob and the rest, who fill the Hebrew Patriarchal history? whence, how, and by what psychological law did they enter into the mind of the primitive Hebrews? The facile assumption that these persons and the actions with which they are concerned are mere Fiction with no external foundation, is so cheap and meaningless a way of getting over the difficulties which their existence in poetry presents to the investigator, that it as impossible to adopt it as to admit the opposite equally arbitrary opinion, which makes them historical in the same sense as Goethe or Frederick the Great. Certainly they are fictions, if by that we mean that no historical persons correspond to them as human individuals; but by no means in the sense that their origin, or rather the conception of them, has no other foundation but the fancy of the poet or writer. In this sense they have actual realities corresponding to them—the events and operations of Nature, which are the main-springs of mythical language. And it is not conceivable that the oldest utterances of the human mind should have begun from anything else but from the sensations which the operations of Nature aroused in their breasts. As soon as they perceived these, occasion for myths was present; and the myths show how they became fully conscious of the operations of Nature.
The Patriarchal stories are therefore an important source for the knowledge of myths. If we loosen stratum after stratum which has been formed through the agency of psychological and historical factors over the primitive form of the myth, and have at length penetrated back to the stage at which many of the mythical appellations, through the disuse of multifarious synonymous terms, were individualised and personified, then it is easy to pick the primitive germ, the original mythic elements, out of the shell in which they had been encased. Hence it appears that the most fruitful field for mythological investigation on Hebrew territory is the Book of Genesis, the greater part of which brings together the stories which the Hebrew people connected with the names of the Patriarchs.
§ 3. b.) The Patriarchal legends, in such fulness and artistic finish as the remains of old Hebrew literature have preserved for us, are a distinguishing characteristic of this literature. Other nations have failed to transform their myths into such a wealth of reports about their first progenitors. What meagre accounts the Hellenes give of their national ancestors, in comparison with this rich and varied Patriarchal history! A special peculiarity of the historical development of the Hebrew people was active here, bringing the national idea into the foreground, and exerting its influence in this direction on the transformation of the primitive mythological materials.[[72]] But instead of this, other nations, among whom our above-named example, the richly endowed Hellenes, are to be reckoned, have chosen rather to transform the figures of their myths into Gods and godborn Heroes.
The figures of Gods, which were developed out of Hebrew myths, very early retired into the background. It was partly the Canaanite influence to which the Hebrew people very early succumbed, and partly the progressing monotheistic tendency, that allowed no theology consistently developed out of mythology to maintain itself for any length of time. Of Heroes, however, there is no want in the memory of the Hebrews. In that region as well as elsewhere, the Heroes had originally borne a different meaning and belonged to mythology; and their heroic character is, on the Hebrew as well as on the Aryan domain, secondary, produced by the psychological and linguistic process which caused the natural meaning of mythological figures to vanish from the mind.
Now although these Heroes are originally gigantic persons bound to no definite place or time, yet they are gradually condensed into individuals and regarded as more and more concrete and definite. What is told of them puts off its generality and indefiniteness. They are conceived as belonging to certain places where their heroic deeds were performed—in other words, the legends of Heroes are localised. Their activity is assigned to a definite time, they are inserted in a chronological frame, in which they take up a definite position as to time. What more natural localisation of the activity of the Heroes could there be than to imagine them living in the same geographical districts as those who tell of them? The localisation of heroic legends is always enlisted in the service of patriotic feeling. Herakles and Theseus are Greek patriots, heroic benefactors of the Grecian people. The determination of the time when they lived was influenced mainly by the endeavour, natural to every civilised nation, to gain a clear, comprehensive, and continuous picture of its own history. But truly historical memory does not generally go far enough back to explain with proper fulness the entire past doings of a nation. The historical beginnings of a people are lost in the mist of indefiniteness and uncertainty. What is easier than to fill up this obscure period of history by telling of the doings of the Heroes? Why, the human temper in its pessimistic mood is always inclined to fancy the very oldest age peopled with men of gigantic proportions of both body and mind, in comparison with whom the enervate present generation is a mere shadow. So we find the stories of Heroes always at the head of the national history. The history of the Greek people begins with their heroic age; and the obscure period of Hebrew history between the first entrance into Canaan and the creation of the Monarchy, the so-called time of the Judges, is likewise the frame which must hold the Hebrew heroic legends. The stories of the Hebrew Heroes group themselves round the history of this period. The second important source of knowledge of the materials of the Hebrew mythology is accordingly the cycle of stories to be found in the canonical Book of Judges. This is the mine of mythology, whose treasures Professor Steinthal has brought to light with such critical acuteness in his dissertation on the story of Samson,[[73]] which breaks up entirely new ground. Here for the first