The task of the following chapter will therefore be to find a place in the category of what is common to the whole of human kind for the myth of the Hebrews; in other words, to prove the existence of the myth-plots on Hebrew ground. As it is not my object to exhaust all the materials, to present a system already perfectly worked out on every side, or to erect a building with all its rooms and stories stuffed full, I shall confine myself to that which, after competent and sober philological criticism, can be acknowledged as certain and indubitable. I hope that other investigators, who will gain from the method pursued here a rich treasury of material, will then follow up these safe results by gleanings of their own.
§ 1. In the designation of the Heaven the Semite starts from the sensuous impression of height, and therefore forms the names denoting it from the roots samâ (shama) and râm, both of which express the idea of ‘being high.’ To the latter group belongs e.g. the Ethiopic rayam,[[244]] which denotes heaven. Both roots are combined in the Phenician Shâmîn-rûm. One of the most prominent figures of Hebrew mythology belongs to this category: Abh-râm the High Father, with his innumerable host of descendants.[[245]] We have seen above that in his view of nature the nomad begins with the sky at night. The sky by itself is the dark, nightly, or clouded heaven; the sunshine on the sky is an accessory. Hence it comes that in Arabic the word Sky (samâ) is very often used even for ‘Rain;’ and the notions of rain and sky are so closely interwoven that even the traces of rain on the earth are called sky.[[246]] In the language of the Bongo people there is only one word for sky and rain, hetōrro.[[247]] On Semitic ground the Assyrian divine name Rammanu or Raman must be mentioned here. If this name has any etymological connexion with the root râm ‘to be high,’ as Hesychius and some modern scholars say, though others derive it from raʿam ‘thunder,’ Raʿamân ‘the Thunderer,’[[248]] then we find here again the primitive mythological idea that the intrinsically High is the dark stormy sky, or, personified, the God of Storms. So also in the old Hebrew myth the ‘High’ is the nightly or rainy sky. The best known myth that the Hebrews told of their Abh-râm is the story of the intended sacrifice of his only son Yiṣchâḳ, commonly called Isaac. But what is Yiṣchâḳ? Literally translated, the word denotes ‘he laughs,’ or ‘the Laughing.’ In the Semitic languages, especially in proper names and epithets, the use of the aorist[[249]] (even in the second person, e.g. in the Arabic name Tazîd) is very frequent where we should employ a participle.[[250]] So here. Now who is the ‘He laughs,’ the ‘Smiling one'? No other but 'He who sits in heaven and laughs’ (Ps. II. 4), whom the mythology of almost all nations and their later poetry too likes to call the Laughing or Smiling one. When, as Plutarch tells in his Life of Lycurgus, that legislator consecrated a statue to Laughter (γέλως) and Laughter enjoyed divine honours at Sparta, we are certainly not to understand it of the laughter that plays round the lips of mortals, but of the celestial smile with which Mythology endows the Sun, as when the Indian singer calls Ushas (the Sun[[251]]) the Smiling (Rigveda, VI. 64. 10). With regard to the Sun’s laughing in the Aryan mythology, we can refer to the learned work of Angelo de Gubernatis, ‘Zoological Mythology’ (vol. I. i. 1).
But there is a primitive connexion between the ideas ‘to laugh’ and ‘to shine,’ which is not, as might be thought, brought about figuratively by a mere poetical view, but rather, at least on the Semitic field, established at the very beginning of the formation of speech. An extraordinary number of the verbs which describe a loud expression of joyousness (to shout, bellow, laugh &c.), originally denoted to shine, dazzle, be visible, and the like; affording another confirmation of Geiger’s thesis, that language owes its origin more to optic than to acoustic impressions (see supra p. [40]). I give a series of linguistic facts as examples to prove this assertion. The Hebrew ṣâhal signifies both ‘to shine bright’ and ‘to cry aloud,’ and its phonetic connexion with ṣâhar, zâhar &c., proves the priority of the optical meaning. Similarly hillêl, which means ‘to cry out, to triumph,’ was originally ‘to be brilliant,’ as is proved by the derivative nouns hilâl (Ar.) ‘new moon’ and hêlêl (Heb.) ‘morning star,’ and the employment of the verb itself in Hebrew. Ṣârach, ṣerach, ṣaraḥa, denotes ‘to cry’ in the chief representatives of Semitism; but the Arabic has also preserved the original sense ‘clarus, manifestus fuit,’ which appears in the Hebrew noun ṣerîach ‘a conspicuous eminence,’ or ‘a high tower.’[[252]] The roots yâphaʿ (in Hiphʿîl) ‘to be bright’ and pâʿâ ‘to cry,’ are through their etymological connexion brought into this group. The root of the Hebrew hêdâd ‘cry of joy’ is the same from which Hadad, the name of the Syrian god of the shining sun, can be etymologically derived. This root undoubtedly represents a reduplicated form of the radical of the solar name Yehûdâ ‘Judah’ (see [§ 14] of this chapter). The verbal root from which nahâr (Ar.) nehârâ (Heb.) ‘daylight,’ is derived has in one Arabic derivative form the meaning ‘to cry.’ So also ṣâchaḳ ‘to laugh aloud’ (compare ṣâʿaḳ ‘to cry’) must have originally expressed the idea of ‘being bright, clear,’ which is proper to the primitive Semitic root ṣaḥ, ṣach. If this be admitted, it follows that the name Yiṣchaḳ as a solar epithet was not formed by mere figurative or poetical metaphor, but is based on the original signification of the group of roots to which it belongs. Poetical phraseology then brought into general use what was based on etymology.
There is nothing more universal and more generally pervading all nature-poetry than the idea ‘Like one laughing gaily the world shone,’ as the Tatar poet says of the sunrise;[[253]] and in Arabic poetry, which has to be especially considered on these subjects, it is met with at every step. In the charming Romance of ʿAntar, the cessation of night and the break of day is dozens of times expressed by the words ‘until the black night went off and the laughing morning (al-ṣabâḥ al-ḍaḥik) arose;’ or ‘the morning arose and smiled (ibtasama) out of dazzling teeth.’[[254]] The old poet al-Aʿsha says of a blooming meadow that it rivals the sun in laughter (yuḍâḥik al-shams);[[255]] and in the last maḳâmâ of Ḥarîrî (de Sacy, 2nd ed. p. 673. 2,) it is even said that ‘the tooth of the daybreak laughs’ (ibtasama thaġr al-fajr), i.e. becomes visible, as the teeth of a person laughing become visible. This mythic view has become so incorporated in the Arabic language that the word bazaġa, denoting that the teeth are prominent, is also used of the rising of the sun. In a small Arabic tract[[256]] by the Sheikh ʿUlwân b. ʿAṭîyyâ of Ḥamâ, which brings forward the contest between Day and Night, a subject not infrequent[[257]] in Oriental literature, in which the two champions engage in a battle of respective excellence in prose and poetry, there also occurs a passage suitable for quotation here. The Night says in the course of her dispute: ‘To the string of these thy blameworthy qualities this must yet be added—that thou art changeable and many-coloured in thy various conditions, and not stedfast; thy beginning contradicts thy end, and thy interior is different from thy exterior. O what an utterly culpable quality is this, which scratches out the face of every merit! Thou laughest at thy rising, when thou rememberest weeping and mourning; and at thy extinction thou clothest thyself in thy most gorgeous of raiments, instead of putting on mourning garments.’ And the Day replies, in his own defence to his black antagonist: ‘What rank takest thou in comparison with me? What is thy gloominess and thy sombre seriousness in comparison with my gay smiles (ḍaḥikî wabtisâmî)?’[[258]]
It is not only the clear shining sunny sky that is called by the Arab poet ‘the Smiling;’ this attribute is applied also to other luminous things, e.g. to the glittering Stars (not to the night-sky itself),[[259]] and to the Lightning, which is even called al-ḍâḥik, ‘the Laughing.’ In the Romance of ʿAntar there frequently occurs the expression ‘the Lightning laughed’ (al-barḳ yaḍḥak, e.g. XXIV. 65. 6).[[260]] Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî, an excellent Arabic poet, says in an elegy on the death of his father:
I disapprove of merriment even in the laughing (i.e. lightning) cloud,
And let no cloud bring me rain, except a gloomy, dark one.[[261]]
We have in passing treated the words ‘He who sits in heaven laughs’ in the second Psalm as a mythical reminiscence, which originally referred to the Sun, but then, like similar instances which we shall see, was employed by the poet in another sense. But there is nothing to exclude the possibility that the Laughter of him who sits in heaven may refer in this passage not to the sweet smile of the bright sunny sky, but to the wild raging of the Thunderer, pictured in the myths as scornful laughter, as F.L.W. Schwartz[[262]] shows by many examples from classical antiquity. This conception would also be more suitable to the context of the passage in question in the second Psalm, where mention is made of derisive laughter. However this be, the ‘Smiling one’ whom the ‘High Father’ intends to slay, is the smiling day, or more closely defined the smiling sunset, which gets the worst of the contest with the night-sky and disappears.
§ 2. The same myth is also given as follows: ‘Jephthah sacrifices or kills his daughter.’ In its later ethical or religious transformation given in Judges XI. 29–40, it is known to everyone. This story is especially worthy of consideration in connexion with the science of Mythology, because a Hebrew custom similar to the mourning for Osiris or Adonis and Tammûz was fastened on to it, as appears in v. 40; and it is well known that these latter rites stand in a very close connexion with physical phenomena, and with the myth which speaks of these phenomena.
What means Jephthah (Yiphtâch)? We have again an aorist form[[263]] exactly similar to Yiṣchâḳ; it denotes literally ‘he opens, he begins,’ thence ‘the opener or beginner.’ For the understanding of this mythical person we must note by anticipation that this Opener has a correlative in the After-follower Jacob (Yaʿaḳôbh), ‘he follows his heels.’[[264]] Both these expressions belong to one group of mythic conceptions; and it is remarkable that in these designations we find mythology already advanced to the stage which we characterised in the previous chapter as belonging to the ideas of the Agriculturist. For these two names and the cycle of myths coupled with them presuppose the view that in the order of time the Day is the earlier and is followed by the Night; and the very circumstance that the idea of time is impressed on these myths with something of precision (see above, p. 44), also indicates a relatively late formation of these designations and of the views that led to them. The Opener is the Sun, which first opens the womb (see Gen. XXX. 22; Ex. XIII. 2, 12), while the Night is called the After-follower; just as in the Rigveda (II. 38. 6) the Night follows on the heel of Sâvitri. To establish more certainly the meaning of the name Yaʿaḳôbh it may also be mentioned that in Arabic the participial form of the same verb, ‘ʿÂḳib,’ is exceedingly frequent in the same signification. According to Mohammedan tradition one of the many names of the Arabian Prophet is Al-ʿâḳib, with the sense that Moḥammed, the last of the prophets, followed after and concluded their line.[[265]] We will now first return to Jephthah, the Opening Sun. This conception of the Sun as Opener receives a remarkable illustration in a passage of the Persian national epic by Firdûsî, in which occurs an expressive echo of this mythical view. The sun is there actually a golden key, which is lost during the night.[[266]] As the lighting up of the sun is conceived as an unlocking, so the darkness is a locking up. ‘Who commandeth the sun and it riseth not, and who locketh up the stars,’ is said in Job IX. 7, of the God who brings on darkness. The solar character of Jephthah receives confirmation from another side, but likewise on Semitic ground. In the version of the Phenician Cosmogony furnished by Damascius[[267]] it is related, on the authority of Mochus, that the spiritual God Ulômos begot Chrysoros τὸν ἀνοιγέα, ‘the Opener.’ The Sanchuniathon of Philo Herennius identifies this Opener with Hephaestus, who was the first inventor of iron implements (Tûbhal-Ḳayin of the Hebrews). Now, although in its latest development this cosmogony does not pretend to mean anything else than the opening of the Egg of the world,[[268]] there can be no doubt that this version belongs to a very late, perhaps the last phase of development of the myth which lies hidden in the background—a stage at which all that makes the myth a myth is quite washed out and changed by the prevalence of theological ideas into an artfully systematised cosmogony. But originally nothing else can have been understood by the Opener than the firstborn brother of the pair, Sun and Night. Another mythic trait which we know of this Opener testifies to his solar signification in the myths on which the Phenician cosmogony was based. Philo Herennius’ authority, who calls the opener Chrysôr, says of him: ‘He was the first man who fared in ships.’ This trait, which is far from fitting into the frame of the portrait of Hephaestus presents a very attractive and simple conception held by the men of the myth-forming age. We generally find in myths of the rising and setting of the sun, that the view which lives longest and conforms most naturally to the nature of the phenomenon is that the rising sun ascends out of the river or the sea, and that the setting sun sinks into the water.