Last year Dr. Martin Schultze announced a ‘Mythology of the Hebrews in its connexion with those of the Indogermans and of the Egyptians’[[31]] as about to appear. The method followed by the author in a preliminary specimen[[32]] was not such as to induce me to delay the publication of my work and wait for his, even though he promised to give a complete system, which was not my intention.[[33]] My manuscript was already in the publishers’ hands, when the papers announced the publication of a learned book by Dr. Grill, ‘The Patriarchs of Mankind: a contribution towards the establishment of a Science of Hebrew Archeology;’[[34]] and more than ten sheets were printed before I could gather, from a review of it in the Jenaer Literaturzeitung, in how close a connexion it stood to the subject of my book; for from the title alone I was not likely to suspect anything on Mythology. I cannot pretend to explain in a few lines my opinion of so large a book as Dr. Grill’s. But as he starts with the assumption of the impossibility of a Semitic Mythology, and endeavours to establish the view that the Hebrew Myth is that of an Indogermanic people, that the Hebrews were Indogermans, and that the Hebrew mythological proper names can find an etymology only in Sanskrit, I have great pleasure in referring him to p. [25] and to Chapter [V]. of my book, where he may convince himself that no very daring etymological leaps nor arbitrary assumptions of phonological laws of transformation are necessary to explain the Hebrew mythological figures and their appellations from the Semitic languages themselves. It must, no doubt, be admitted that in some cases—but the minority—the formation of the proper names used in Mythology is not quite in accordance with grammatical analogy. I account for this by the peculiar feature of the Semitic languages, that an appellative on becoming a proper name often takes a peculiar form, differing in some respect from that of the original appellative: ‘al-ʿadl li-l-ʿalamîyyâ,’ as the Arabian grammarians say.[[35]] There will always be cruces. Is it possible to indicate a satisfactory etymon for every proper name of the Greek mythology? and if not, ought we on that account to explain the Greek out of Semitic, whenever a case occurs which tempts us to do so, as our learned ancestors did?[[36]] For transformation is always easy to find; since etymology is allowed to be a science in which the consonants go for but little, and the vowels have nothing at all to say for themselves! It certainly seems a pity to waste ingenuity in trying to banish out of the Semitic stock names which sound Semitic and can be recognised as such without the employment of any law of transformation at all, like Yiphtâch (Jephthah), Nôach (Noah), and Debhôrâ (Deborah), and in dissolving by Sanskrit solvents the Hebrew impress of a word like Yehôshûaʿ (Joshua), produced by Jahveism out of the original Hôshêaʿ, and not even mythical at all, in order to make it into a ‘Dog of Heaven,’ instead of ‘He has holpen’ or ‘enlarged [the people’s possessions],’ i.e. ‘The Helper.’[[37]] Pinechas (Phinehas), no doubt, is a word that might drive the etymologist to despair. But there is far more intrinsic probability in Lauth’s Egyptian interpretation[[38]] than in Grill’s Sanskrit tour de force, especially considering that Egyptian proper names cannot be explained away out of the Old Testament, and have in history a positive reason for existence. Then why hover in the dream-land of a prehistoric connexion with the Aryans?
When the Arabian traditionary stories are once subjected to etymological treatment, it will appear how far Semitism is from utter deficiency of Mythology. In certain instances I have taken occasion to demonstrate this with reference to Arabian tradition in the course of this work (e.g. p. [182] et seq., p. [334] et seq.). In other cases no reference to the etymological meaning of the proper names is required to recognise true Arabian myths. Instances are found especially in the stories about the constellations. Al-Meydânî informs us that ‘the old Arabs say that the star al-Dabarân wooed the Pleiades, but the latter constellation would have nothing to do with the suitor, turned obstinately away from him, and said to the Moon, ‘What must I do with that poor devil, who has no estate at all?’ Then al-Dabarân gathered together his Ḳilâṣ (a constellation in the neighbourhood of al-Dabarân), and thus gained possession of an estate. And now he is constantly following after the Pleiades, driving the Ḳilâṣ before him as a wedding-present.’[[39]] ‘The constellation Capricorn killed the Bear (naʿsh), and therefore the daughters of the latter (binât naʿsh) encircle him, seeking vengeance for their slain father.’ ‘Suheyl gave the female star al-Jauzâ a blow; the latter returned it and threw him down where he now lies; but he then took his sword and cut his adversary in pieces.’ ‘The southern Sirius (al-Shiʿra al-yamânîyyâ) was walking with her sister the northern Sirius (al-Shiʿra al-shâmîyyâ); the latter parted company and crossed the Milky Way, whence her name (al-Shiʿra al-ʿabûr). Her sister, seeing this, began to weep for the separation, and her eyes dropped tears; therefore she is called the Wet-eyed (al-ġumeyṣâ).’[[40]] The existence of similar Hebrew myths may be inferred from the names of constellations in the Book of Job (XXXVIII. 31, 32), especially from the Fool (kesîl, Orion) bound to heaven.[[41]] Are not these genuine Nomads’ myths, produced through contemplation of the constellations and their relations to one another?
In conclusion, I must observe that in many passages, especially of the later chapters, a fuller citation of literary apparatus would have been desirable. The want of this is to be ascribed in part to the peculiar design of the book, and in part to the deficiency of aid from libraries for the exegetical department in my dwelling-place.
MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HEBREWS.
CHAPTER I.
ON HEBREW MYTHOLOGY.
§ 1. At the very foundation of the investigations to which this book is devoted, we find ourselves in opposition to a wide-spread assumption: that in regard to Mythology nations may be divided into two classes, Mythological and Unmythological, or in other words, those which have had a natural gift for creating Myths, and those whose intellectual capacity never sufficed for this end. It is therefore desirable to lay down clearly our position in regard to this assumption, before we advance to the proper subject of our studies.
The Myth is the result of a purely psychological operation, and is, together with language, the oldest act of the human mind. This has been shown conclusively by the modern school of mythologists who are also psychologists. Assuming then, what can scarcely be called in question, that the same psychological laws rule the intellectual activity of mankind without distinction of race, we cannot a priori assume that the capacity for forming myths can be given or withheld according to ethnological categories. As there is only one physiology, and every race of mankind under the influence of certain conditions produces the same physiological functions in accordance with physiological laws, so it is also with the psychological functions, given the stimulus necessary to their production. And this stimulus acts upon mankind everywhere alike. For it is clearly proved that the Myth tells of the operations of nature, and is the mode of expressing the perception which man at the earliest stage of his intellectual life has of these operations and phenomena. These form the substance of the Myth. Consequently, wherever they act as attractions to the youthful human mind, the external conditions of the rise of Mythology are present. Not unjustly, therefore, it seems to me, has a recent psychologist spoken of the ‘Universal Presence and the Uniformity’ of myths.[[42]] Undoubtedly the direction of the myth will vary with the relation of natural phenomena to mankind; the myth will take one direction where man greets the sun as a friendly element, and another where the sun meets him as a hostile power; and in the rainless region the rain cannot act the same part in Mythology which it plays in the rainy parts of the earth. The manners and usages of men must also exercise a modifying influence on the subject and the direction of the Myth. As in the course of our further inquiries we shall recur to this point, I will here only refer to one example of the latter. It is well known that in the Aryan mythology, ‘the milking of cows’ is a frequently recurring expression for the shining of the sun, or as some say for the rain. In tribes which do not milk their cows, like some Negro peoples,[[43]] or the American natives, this mythical expression can of course not arise.
§ 2. There are two points of view, from which the Mythical faculty has been denied to certain sections of the human race—on the one side a linguistic, on the other an ethnological. As to the first, we must especially name Bleek, the distinguished investigator of the South African languages, who, in the introduction to his work on the Story of Reynard the Fox in South Africa, makes the remark that a mythological genius is peculiar to nations in whose languages a distinction of gender in nouns finds expression, whereas those whose languages possess no formal distinction of gender in nouns, have no proper mythology, but their religion stands on that original stage which is the starting-point of all human religion, namely that of the cultus of their ancestors.[[44]] It is obvious that this learned linguist’s distinction involves a confusion of Myth and Religion, which we shall find in the course of our subsequent investigations to be untenable. At present we will disregard this point, and only refer to the mythologies of the Finnish-Ugrian nations—peoples whose languages do not indicate any distinction of gender in their nouns. Or can it be said that the substance of the epos of Kalevala is not proper mythology? To be sure, in nations whose mind never evolved the category of grammatical gender in their languages, the myth will take such a direction as will give to the sexual idea, so charming a feature in the Aryan mythology, much less prominence. For the mode of conception which is conveyed by the distinction of ‘die Sonne’ and ‘der Mond,’ or ‘hic sol’ and ‘haec luna,’ cannot arise where this distinction is not made. But the figures of a mythology not only vary as to sex and genealogy, but act also; they are busy, they fight and kill, and the story of these actions and fights is quite independent of the gender-idea in language. Stories of them, consequently, which we call Myths, may exist even where the genius of language has opposed the distinction of gender.
§ 3. The second point of view, from which some have denied to a section of the human race the faculty and tendency to form myths, is ethnological. Either the Semites in general or the Hebrews specially fell a sacrifice to this view. The exclusion of the Semites from the domain of Mythology is announced most emphatically by the ingenious member of the French Academy, Ernest Renan, in the words, ‘Les Sémites n'ont jamais eu de mythologie.’[[45]] This arbitrary assertion is deduced from a scheme of race-psychology invented by Renan himself, which at the first glance seems so natural and sounds so plausible when described with all the elegance of style of which he is master, that it has become an incontestable scientific dogma to a large proportion of the professional world—for even the territory of science is sometimes dominated by mere dogmas—and is treated by learned and cultivated people not specially engaged in this study as an actual axiom in the consideration of race-peculiarities.[[46]] The foundation of this scheme is the idea that in their views of the world, the Aryans start from multiplicity, the Semites from unity; and not only in their conception of the world, but also in politics and art. On intellectual ground, therefore, the former create mythology, polytheism, science, which is only possible through discursive observation of natural phenomena; the latter create monotheism, (‘the desert is monotheistic,’ says Renan), and have therefore neither mythology nor science. ‘If it is difficult,’ justly observes Waitz, ‘to estimate the capability of single individuals well known to us, it is a far more dubious task to gauge the intellectual gifts of whole nations and races. It seems scarcely possible to find available standards for the purpose, and consequently the judgment is almost always found to be very much founded on personal impressions. The various nations stand at various times on very different stages of development, and if only actual performances permit a safe induction as to the measure of existing capabilities, then this measure itself seems not to remain the same in the same nation through the course of time, but to vary within very wide limits, especially if we are to assume in all cases that a state of original savageness preceded civilisation.’[[47]] In fact, the words of this cautious psychologist apply admirably to Renan’s scheme of race-psychology; for history is just what that scheme disregards. He does not observe that Polytheism and Monotheism are two stages of development in the history of religious thought, and that the latter does not spring up spontaneously,[[48]] without being preceded by the former stage, and that Polytheism itself is preceded by a preliminary stage, that of the mythological view of the world, which is in itself not yet a religion, but prepares the way for the rise of religion.
To form some idea of the arbitrariness of schemes founded upon some universal characteristics, we have only to glance over the literature which sprang up as soon as Renan’s dictum was uttered, either to refute it, or to work his hypothesis still further—a regular host of dissertations fighting on this side or on that.[[49]] On reading these, we see clearly how worthless such clever fancies are, that enable one to embrace with a stroke of the pen a domain which geographically fills more than half of the inhabited world, and chronologically stretches from the highest antiquity down to the most recent time. For even Renan’s antagonists have fallen into his radical error: they have taken one-sided schemes and characteristics, only different ones from Renan’s. How passive and elastic these schemes are, shall be shown by an example of some importance, which will convince us that the inferences drawn from ethnological characteristics are never anything higher than arbitrary sleight-of-hand, which any investigator can manipulate to his own purpose. To this end we will place side by side the inferences which Renan has tacked on to his hypothesis, and a talented German’s conclusions, which also essentially take Renan’s basis as the correct starting-point. We speak of Lange, who also starts from the principle that the Semites grasp natural phenomena in combination, the Aryans in multiplicity, and that therefore the former naturally incline towards Monotheism, and the latter towards Polytheism. But let us see to what windings and deductions this dogma leads on both sides. We hear Renan say: ‘Or la conception de la multiplicité dans l’univers, c’est le polythéisme chez les peuples enfants; c’est la science chez les peuples arrivés à l’âge mûr.’[[50]] Quite the contrary is affirmed by the German historian of Materialism, who says: ‘When the heathen sees gods everywhere, and has accustomed himself to regard every separate operation of nature as the domain of a special demonic action, he throws in the way of a materialistic explanation difficulties a thousandfold, like the offices in the Divine household.... But Monotheism here stands in a very different relation to science.’ ‘If a uniform mode of work on a large scale is attributed to the one God, the mutual connexion of things in their origin and action becomes not only a possible, but even a necessary consequence of the assumption. For if I saw a thousand and again a thousand wheels in motion, and believed them to be all driven by one agent, then I should have to conclude that it was a piece of machinery, the minutest portion of which had its movement absolutely determined by the plan of the whole.’ [[51]] ‘The fact that Islâm is the religion in which that advancement of the study of nature, which we attribute to the monotheistic principle, shows itself most clearly, is connected with the peculiar talents of the Arabs, ... but also undoubtedly with the circumstance that Mohammed’s monotheism was the severest of all.’[[52]] Auguste Comte also draws the same inferences from the tendency of Monotheism to develop a scientific conception of the world, and makes Monotheism and Scientific treatment exert a reciprocal influence on each other.[[53]] To which of these opposite deductions from the same premisses shall we hold? ‘Which is right?’ every educated man will ask, and immediately infer the inadequacy of such general characterisations, and the wide room thereby opened to arbitrariness and error, in case it should be attempted to erect upon them a history of civilisation or an ethnology.