It is this ‘Multiplier, Son of the Cloud,’ alone who can bring aid when the earth is visited by long drought and famine. The multiplying Rain gives back to the parched earth her fertility and procures nourishment for starving mankind. This simple idea is formed from the mythic base into the story of the famine in Egypt and Joseph’s aid in allaying it. The myth itself, while it lived, was general, not bound by time or place, limited neither geographically or chronologically. When no longer understood and when lost to human consciousness, it became a locally defined legend, belonging to a certain historical period. This is the same experience which meets us in most of the myths of Hellenic Heroes. The Sun, which daily assails with an iron club and slays the monsters of darkness and the storms, when personified as Herakles does his deeds in a small place in Hellas, Nemea or Lerna. While Joseph imparts fertility to the parched earth, and in his character of ‘Multiplier’ delivers it from the curse which rested on it, the prophetic hero, in whom we have already detected some solar features, does the opposite. Elijah, who ascends to heaven on a fiery chariot with a fiery horse, the ‘hairy man,’ curses the soil of the Hebrew land in the time of Ahab (again a localising and chronological limitation of what the myth had told in general terms without such limitation) with drought, want of rain, and unfruitfulness; he is the cause of a fearful famine (1 Kings XVII. 1).
The ‘Multiplier’ has also severe contests to sustain. The most celebrated of them is that which he maintains against her who loves him dearly, whose name is preserved to us only in legendary tradition—Zalîchâ, the ‘Swift-marching.’[[485]] We know her already. He flies from the temptress, but leaves his cloak in her hand (Gen. XXXIX. 12). This feature, which seems to us only accessory, may have been an important element of the original myth. We shall see further on, that the figures of the night-sky or the dark sky generally are provided with a covering or cloak, with which they cover over the earth or the sun, and thus produce darkness. It is a different battle that he fights against his brothers, the ‘Possessors of arrows,’ i.e. the sun-rays, which shoot at the rain-cloud and try to drive it off. Joseph’s persecution by his own brothers and expulsion to Egypt is only the other side of the Egyptian myth of Osiris and Typhon and the Phenician myth of Adonis; the solar hero being in the latter cases, and the rain-hero in the former case, the object of persecution. While the sarcophagus of Osiris starts from Egypt on its travels, and lands at Byblos on the Phenician coast, Joseph when sold goes in the opposite direction from Canaan to Egypt. Both these myths became local legends, one in Egypt, the other in Canaan; consequently the direction of the wandering is modified in conformity with the locality.
From the battle of the rainy sky against the solar heroes with their arrows our myth makes the Rainbow to arise: just as the lightning was called ‘the Arrow of God,’ so the rainbow was in later times described as the ‘Bow of God’ (ḳashtî, Gen. IX. 13). The later legend of civilisation gives to the rainbow a foundation which is quite foreign to mythology. In mythology the rainbow appears to be attributed to Joseph, who, when overcome and driven off the field by the ‘Possessors of arrows,’ is after all not totally defeated, for ‘his bow abode in strength’ (Gen. XLIX. 24). This expression indicates the following conception. When the rain-cloud was driven from its place by the solar heroes, he fixed his bow in the sky, to be ready for a future fight. Thus in the Hebrew myth the rainbow is a bow belonging to the hero of storms. We find the same idea in the Arabic mythology. Besides other names, the rainbow bears that of ḳausu Ḳuzaḥa, ‘the bow of Ḳuzaḥ’ (who has been proved to be a storm-hero); and it may be gathered from some passages which Tuch has incidentally brought together in his Treatise on Sinaitic Inscriptions,[[486]] that Ḳuzaḥ shoots his arrows of lightning during the storms from this same bow, which after the conclusion of the battle appears in the sky. In the same Hebrew hymn which contains the above mention of the Bow, ebhen Yisrâʾêl ‘the Stone of Israel’ is named. Perhaps I am not at fault in conjecturing that the Stone here has a solar signification, and is used of the Sun which after the victory over Joseph appears on the firmament. We know from Schwartz’s[[487]] demonstrations, which Kuhn has recently confirmed in his academical treatise on the stages of development in the formation of Myths, that in mythical language the sun and other luminous bodies are called ‘stones.’ To the same mythic cycle belongs the circumstance that David slays his giant-foe by casting stones. And tradition[[488]] says that Cain killed Abel by throwing stones. But on the whole we find in the above-quoted hymn (called Jacob’s) only slight hints that can be claimed for the mythic period; for the remains of primeval hymns like that fragment were in later times so overgrown with matter derived from historical circumstances, that we must be content if we can discover what were the points of view and conceptions chiefly represented by these fragments. The reason why it is so difficult to reconstruct the old mythic view of the Hebrews concerning the Rainbow, obviously lies in the fact that it was supplanted by a later theological explanation (Gen. IX. 12–17). It is curious that the reason assigned in this later passage for the origin of the Rainbow was not able to obtain general credence, and that even Christian popular legends frequently appear to flow from ancient mythic conceptions. I will only mention an instance given by Bernhard Schmidt—the Christians in Zante call the rainbow 'the girdle, or the bow of the Virgin, τὸ ζώναρι, τὸ τόξο τῆς παναγίας.[[489]]
§ 13. Now while Jacob’s lawful wives are mythical figures homogeneous to himself, as we have seen, his collateral wives, the two concubines Zilpah and Bilhah represent figures of the ancient myth standing in a position of opposition to Jacob. The mythical character of Zilpah has been already determined, in the Seventh Section of this chapter. For this determination we had no other resource but the etymology of the name, no mythical matter having been preserved concerning this mythical figure. The case is reversed when we enquire into the meaning of Bilhah. The resource of etymology abandons us here; for, even if we assume that the abstract idea represented by the name must here be understood in a participial sense (Bilhâ=‘the Trembling, Terrified’), yet, in the want of analogous cases, the signification of the name brings us to no track worth pursuing. But, on the other hand, we fortunately have a material myth (as opposed to a mere name), relating to Bilhah: ‘Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine’ (Gen. XXXV. 22).
The transition from one aspect of nature to another is not always regarded by the myth from the point of view of a battle, in which the vanishing aspect is represented by the conquered and the approaching one by the conqueror. The myth speaks equally frequently of love and union, i.e. of sexual connexion. The vanishing aspect disappears in that which immediately follows: they become one, as man and wife. In the myths of sexual union, the mythical feature that the two figures one of which follows the other are brother and sister, father and daughter, or mother and son, is sometimes disregarded. We had an example of this in the Hebrew myth of the union of Shechem with Dinah. This is very frequent in Aryan mythology; and it is sufficient to refer to the part of Max Müller’s essay which deals with this subject.[[490]] There is a very fine myth of this kind, preserved in a work ascribed to Plutarch, De fluviorum et montium nominibus (IV. 3). It is there said with reference to the Ganges, ‘Near it is situated the mountain Anatole, or the Rising,’ so called for the following reason: ‘Helios saw the maiden Anaxibia dancing there, and was seized with violent love for her. No longer able to control his passion, he pursued her with desire to force her to yield to his desire. The maiden, surrounded on every side, escaped into the temple of Artemis Orthia on the mountain Koryphe, and was lost to the eyes of her pursuer. He, following after, and unable to overtake his beloved, went up to the same mountain grieving. Therefore the natives call the mountain Anatole or ‘Sun-uprising,’ as Kaemarus narrates in the tenth book of his ‘Indian Affairs.’[[491]] Here, where the sunrise is not even the result of a union, but very characteristically that of disappointed love, Helios is no relative whatever of the Dawn, any more than Shechem of Dinah, or Abimelech, the later Sun-god (Melekh, compare Abhîbaʿal and Baʿal), of Rebekah, whom he loves (Gen. XXVI), or of Sarah, ‘Moon,’ whom he takes to himself (Gen. XX). However, the view which we shall encounter in the myth of Lot, that the lovers or united couples are blood-relations, brother and sister, or parent and child, is more prevalent. The idea of a son in love with his mother is quite general in Asiatic mythology, as Lenormant proves: in the old Babylonian mythology Dâzî, the Hebrew Tammûz, is lover of his mother Istar, &c.;[[492]] among the Egyptians Amôn is called the husband of his mother Neith; and among the Hindus Pûshan is described as both his sister’s lover and his mother’s husband. When after long darkness a mysterious Twilight slowly advanced, followed by the Dawn with ever-increasing rapidity, the Aryan said, ‘Prajâpati loves his own daughter Ushas and forces her,’ or ‘Indra seduces Ahalyâ the Night,’ or forms a union with his mother Dahanâ.[[493]] To the same class Sarah also seems to belong, as she is not only wife but also sister of Abram. Reuben marries Bilhah, his mother, or more correctly his father’s wife. Reuben is a figure homogeneous to Jacob, and therefore belongs to the night, as we discover most certainly from the circumstance that in the battle of the ‘Possessors of arrows’ against Joseph he is on the side of the latter and tries to save him, while Judah, a solar man, proposes to sell Joseph (Gen. XXXVII. 21, 26). In a myth such sympathy indicates that the subject and object of it are at all events not hostile figures: we have already seen this in the relations between Isaac and Esau and between Rebekah and Jacob. However, Reuben here seems not to be the night in general, but the twilight which forms the beginning and the end of the night, if we attach weight to the fact that Reuben is Jacob’s son. Though unimportant and not even necessary for the appreciation of the myth, this is very probable. The Sun is the mother of the Twilight, for the twilight proceeds from the sun. So when at the end of the night the morning-darkness gives way to the sun or dawn and disappears in them, Reuben and Bilhah are united. Whatever part the twilight may play here, it is at least clear that this myth speaks of the union of Night with its mother Day: when Night gives place to Day, from whose womb it was born but yesterday, then the myth says ‘Reuben is marrying his mother.’
§ 14. But before we continue the chapter on love and sexual union, the materials of which are mainly drawn from the history of Jacob’s family, it is desirable to insert some remarks on the mythological significance of that family. Our mythological observation leads to the following result. From its first commencement the myth speaks of twelve children of Jacob, i.e. of the dark night-sky. These children, on whose names the myth lays no stress, can hardly be anything else than the shining troop which has its home in the night-sky—the Moon and the Eleven Stars (comp. Gen. XXXVII. 9, achad ʿâsâr kôkhâbhîm). These are Jacob’s children, though in a different sense from that in which Isaac is the son of Abraham, or Joseph the son of Rachel. In these latter instances the conception of a parental and filial relation was the result of the impression produced upon the creators of myths by constant succession; in the case of Jacob’s sons it is only meant that the eleven stars and the moon together form the Family of the Night-sky. This conception having once been grasped, there was nothing to hinder creators of myths from speaking of a son of Jacob who did not belong to that Family. And if there were a myth which said that Jacob fought with his son, as is said of Abraham, then we could not seek such a son in the family of stars which fills Jacob’s house. It is a general rule which must never be lost out of sight in the investigation of myths, that mythology does not present a system, whose separate elements are comprehensive results, or abstractions from continuous observation of nature. What is told in the myth expresses how each single observation affects the mind of man. Hence the various modes in which the myth speaks of a phenomenon; viewing it from various positions, it constantly changes the names, and recognises different relations. Whoever finds contradictions in all this must not turn against the interpreter and reconstructor of the myth, but against the mind of man itself which created myths: his dispute lies with the latter, not with the method of mythological science.
Jacob’s twelve sons, who are mentioned by name in the document in Genesis, can hardly have had their separate existence acknowledged at so early an age as that of the myth which comprised them under the general name of the twelve sons of the starry sky. Fathers of tribes with twelve or thirteen children (even in the numeration of Jacob’s children this uncertainty of number occurs) are frequently met with in Biblical genealogies, e.g. Joktan, Nahor, and Ishmael. The same tendency towards the number twelve is encountered in genealogies in other parts of the world. In the Ojibwa legend Getube has twelve children, of whom the eldest is called Mujekewis, and the youngest, who obtains great power and successfully repels the evil spirits, Wa-jeeg-e-wa-kon-ay.[[494]] At a later time, when a harmonising of the legendary matter, not from a set purpose, but from the acknowledged tendency of the human mind to bridge over contradictions, was going on, then a desire was felt to know the names of the twelve sons. When mythic consciousness and the stage when the mind was self-impelled to mythic conception were long passed, and the real meaning of names connected by mythology with certain deeds was no longer known, twelve such names, most of which had no longer any meaning, were taken at random and called Jacob’s twelve sons. Thus were obtained twelve names to answer the general proposition, ‘The Twelve form the Family of Jacob.’ Among these names there are true sons of Jacob, i.e. some who are declared by the myth itself to be so: here the genealogical narrator employed data derived from the myth. Next, there are some among them whom the myth treats not as sons of Jacob but as sons of his wives. For we must not forget that when Joseph is said to be son of Rachel, the myth does not trouble itself to ask who the father was. The conception that ‘the Rain is the son of the Cloud,’ which is expounded in the mythic description of Joseph’s birth, is not the result of any consideration of the names of the two parents who gave life to him; but the myth-former, seeing the cloud heavy with rain and observing the rain dripping from its lap, combined these two impressions and said, ‘The Cloud has borne the Rain.’ The later genealogical story could then easily find a father for the children of Zilpah, Rachel and others, in him whom the myth introduces as husband of those female figures.
Other Hebrew tribes have names totally free from any mythical character, and ethnographical (Judah) or geographical in nature. The last especially must of course have originated after the conquest of Canaan, since they are connected with geographical peculiarities of that land. One of these is Ephraim, whose name we shall see in the Fourth Section of the Eighth Chapter to be derived from the name of the town Ephrathah; another is Benjamin. The name Bin-yâmîn is associated with the division of the land, and signifies Son of the right side. The tribe was probably so called by the leading tribe of Judah, on whose right side Benjamin was his next neighbour.[[495]] Yet myths have attached themselves even to these geographical and ethnographical names, as they have to many historical ones. Concerning some no mythical features have been preserved, which is most to be regretted in the case of Gad. This name occurs in a later age with a religious signification (Is. LXV. 11), and would doubtless yield much instruction if a fuller myth gave us insight into its original meaning and connexion. Gad is commonly held to be the so-called Star of Fortune (Jupiter); but it is difficult to determine whether Gad’s sons, when they were called his sons, were put into connexion with the Star. If they were, we should have a case analogous to the Arabic appellation ‘Daughters of the star al-Ṭâriḳ’ (see above, p. 57). As some Arabian tribes call themselves ‘Sons of the Rain’ (benû mâ al-samâ), &c. so the Hebrew tribes, at the time when the myth still lived in the understanding of all, took names from the mythical figures, one calling itself ‘Sons of the Longhaired,’ another ‘Sons of the Multiplier’ &c. I think I cannot be wrong in assuming this nomenclature of the tribes to be older than the assignation of names to each of Jacob’s twelve sons. When the names of tribes had long been in existence, they were brought forward to serve as names for Jacob’s sons; and thus they laid the foundation of the genealogical tradition which traces the people of Israel to its first father Jacob, and thence goes back to his father and to Abraham.[[496]] But the mythical matter transmitted to us concerning the twelve who are introduced as the sons of Jacob, independently of what we have already discussed, is very little. Some names resist any reasonable etymology, or at least any etymology consonant with the character of mythical appellations. Still, even from these scanty materials we can pick out some single points that seem worthy of preservation as relics of the old Hebrew mythology. If the investigation of this subject is to be successfully pushed further than I can pretend to do in this treatise, the accurate enquirer will have especially to adduce the forty-ninth chapter of Genesis, known as ‘Jacob’s Blessing,’ from which I have already borrowed materials. In this ancient piece I am convinced that many fragments of hymns are contained which originally had for their subject those mythical figures to which in their present form as blessings they refer. We have in this fragment a sort of Hebrew Veda before our eyes.
Those figures among Jacob’s sons, of whom I venture to treat,[[497]] so far as there are means available have a solar character, with the exception of those which we have already recognised to be figures of the sky of night and clouds, and of one other figure (Levi) in which we shall discover something antagonistic to solarism. Zebhûlûn was seen even by Gesenius to mean the Round, Globular. Though we cannot find any analogous expression as a name for the sun, it must be acknowledged to be a very natural one. I believe that Zebhûlûn designates the sun at the end of its course when its red ball appears on the horizon of the sea. Anyone who has had the opportunity of admiring a sunset at the sea-side, will understand why people living there should call the setting sun globular; for its true globular form is especially perceptible and striking in such localities. That the name Zebhûlûn owes its origin to such considerations is evident from the language of the Hymn to Zebulun: ‘he rests at the edge of the sea’ (lechôph yammîm yishkôn, Gen. XLIX. 13); and this verse (especially in yishkôn) further confirms what was said on p. 116. Naphtâlî (from the root ptl, ‘to twine, twist,’ whence pâthîl ‘thread’), is ‘he of the plaited locks of hair.’ The Hymn calls him ‘a hind let loose’ (ayyâlâ shelûchâ, ver. 21), which is decisive for the solar meaning of Naphtâlî with the locks of hair. For the Semites call the Dawn a hind—the Hebrews ayyeleth hash-shachar ‘the Hind of the Dawn’ (Ps. XXII. 1), the Arabs al-ġazâlâ.[[498]] Even the Talmûd seeks and finds the reason for the identification of the Dawn with a Hind;[[499]] and another ancient Jewish-Arabic philologist, Moses ben Ezra, in his book on Poetry, also recognised the connexion of this appellation in Hebrew and in Arabic.[[500]] Accordingly, we must think of a solar interpretation when we read that among the furniture of the ancient Kaʿbâ at Mekka, besides various idols, there were golden Gazelles, which were carried off and buried by the Jurhumites, but found again by ʿAbd-al-Muṭṭalib in the well Zemzem.[[501]] The mythical description of the rising sun as a hind or gazelle is explained by the animal’s horns; for the myth which regards the Sun’s rays sometimes as arrows, sometimes as locks of hair, also treats them sometimes as horns. For this reason the Hebrew language has only one word to denote ‘horn’ and ‘ray of light,’ viz., ḳeren; and for the same reason Moses, who received many features of the solar myth, as Steinthal has pertinently proved in his treatise on the Story of Prometheus,[[502]] was imagined provided with horns, i.e., with beaming countenance (Ex. XXXIV. 29, 30, 35), a symbol which sacred art has preserved only too faithfully. In the Edda the point of the horn of Heimdall (the sun) is fixed in Niflheim (abode of cloud), i.e. the rays of the sun come forth out of darkness. The glyptic representation of the Assyrian god Bêl in the Louvre is adorned with a tiara surrounded by a row of ox-horns. In the Accadian mythology the name of the goddess Ninka-si, ‘the Lady of the horned face,’ as Lenormant translates it, has undoubtedly a solar character.[[503]] The same is the case with the Egyptian Isis: Τὸ γὰρ τῆς Ἴσιος ἄγαλμα ἐὸν γυναικήϊον βούκερων ἐστι κατάπερ Ἕλληνες τὴν Ἰοῦν γράφουσι, says Herodotus (II. 41). Lucian, the frivolous scoffer at everything religious, expresses his surprise to Zeus why he is represented with ram’s horns;[[504]] to which he makes Zeus reply by referring to a mystery into which the uninitiated cannot penetrate.[[505]] In a word, Naphtali of the long locks, Naphtali the swift hind, is certainly identical with the ‘Hind of the Dawn.’
Whether the name Yehûdâ (Judah) belongs to mythology, or was an early ethnical name before tradition introduced it as that of a Patriarch, is difficult to determine. If the name Yehûdâ could be referred to an etymon which exhibited a solar signification, we should decide for the former alternative, on account of the solar characteristics which are attached to the name. The most plausible etymological explanation would be ‘the Splendid,’ or (on account of the feminine termination â, added to the passive participle with an abstract force) ‘Splendour.’ But if the second alternative be correct, and the name Yehûdâ had from the first only an ethnographical force, then, as in the case of other names not belonging to primeval myths, we must suppose that the solar myths, in company with which we find these historical names, were attached to them in later times.