Chapter V: The Most Prominent Figures in Hebrew Mythology (4)

He binds to the vine his foal,
To the wine-tree his ass’s young one.
He washes in wine his clothes,
And in blood of the vine his covering.
_Reddish is his eye from wine,_
_And white his teeth from milk._

This is a truly mythic picture of the Sun, pairing at vintage-time with the Vine. The red eyes and white teeth need no further discussion after what has been said in § 11 of this chapter. But a few words are needed in explanation of what is said of the ass and foal. It is sufficient to point to the fact that the reddish-brown ass is one of the animals used in the old mythology to designate the sun.[507] The point of resemblance must be sought in the _reddish_ colour; and hence in the Semitic languages the ass is called the _Red_ (Hebrew chamôr, ‘ass’; Arabic aḥmar, ‘red’).[508] It is probably in consequence of the solar significance of the ass, that Shechem’s father is named ‘the Ass’ (Hamor; and in Arabic ‘Ass’ is a very frequent personal name),[509] and Issachar is described as a bony ass. Therefore to say, as is said in our hymn, that the foal and the colt are bound to the vine is equivalent to saying that ‘the Sun forms a connexion with the Vine;’ it is only a different view of the myth of the connexion of Judah with Tamar. This connexion of the Sun and the Fruit, which is the fundamental thought of the myth of Judah and Tamar, was developed with the aid of other elements into the later form found in the story in Gen. XXXVIII. The same myth was also attached to figures of the historical age in the legend of Amnon and Tamar (2 Sam. XIII. 1–20). David’s son Amnon loves his sister Tamar; and keeping her near him to wait upon him under the pretence of being ill, takes the opportunity to ravish her. Here the myth of the love of the Sun for the Fruit has been transferred to Amnon, a perfect unmythical personage. But Tamar is here quite the same as the personage whose connexion with Judah is described in Genesis; although in the legend of Amnon and Tamar it is Amnon who pursues Tamar, whereas in that of Judah and Tamar the intriguer and seducer is Tamar. When people in ancient times perceived the fruit of the tree gradually change its colour till the autumn-sun shone on it, after which it fell down ripe, they saw in this a love-affair between the Sun and Fruit, which ended with their union. We have here, therefore, to do with that phrase of mythology in which men, as agriculturists, but still standing on the myth-creating stage of intellectual life, speak of vegetation and its causes in terms which later, at the religious stage, will give rise to dualistic religious ideas. Different from the Iranian religious dualism, which sets up two mutually hostile powers, this dualism will put side by side two factors of the course of vegetation (see above, p. 15). This kind of dualism is met with very frequently in the Semitic—especially North and Middle Semitic—religions. Indeed, were we to investigate closely the legends and love-stories which fill the history of the Arabic nation and tribes before Islâm, we should probably discover mythological matter turned into history, which would possess great similarity with the legend of Judah and Tamar. We will select here one only of these stories, which has preserved transparently enough its mythical character. On the mountains Ṣafâ and Marwâ, which still play a part in the pilgrimage to Mekka, there formerly stood two idols named Isâf and Nâʾilâ, who were said to have been two persons of Jurhum who having committed improprieties in the Kaʿbâ were turned into stone in punishment for desecration of the holy place[510]—which, be it incidentally observed, is no rare offence in modern times. It need scarcely be observed that this conformation of the story is due to a distinct Mohammedan tendency imparted to it, and that the interpreter of the myth has to regard only the germ of the story—the sexual union of Nâʾilâ with Isâf. Now the mere translation of these words give us to understand the meaning of the myth. Isâf means _solum sterile, unfruitful ground_, and Nâʾilâ, _she who presents_ (a _nomen agentis_ from nâla ‘to present’). No deep acquaintance with Arabic literature is necessary to convince one that the latter name may be simply an epithet of the Rain, which the Arabs can as readily call the Giver as they compare a liberal giver with the rain (compare geshem nedâbhôth, Ps. LXVIII. 10 [9]). Thus the liberal Rain unites with the unfruitful Ground and encourages vegetation. Out of this, as out of most unions of this sort, sexual licence was evolved at a later time.

The names of Judah’s sons, Perez and Zerah,[511] are solar: the latter denoting ‘the Shining one,’ who comes into the world with a red thread on his hand, and the former ‘he who breaks forth.’ This name is founded on the same idea as is present in the German _Tagesanbruch_,[512] the Hungarian _Hajnalhasadás_, i.e. ‘the breaking through of the dawn’[513] (exactly the same as Perez), the Arabic, fajar (especially infajar al-ṣubḥ or infajar al-fataḳ ‘erupit aurora’).[514] The dawn breaks through, or rather tears asunder, the veil of darkness and breaks forth out of it.

After this survey of the solar figures found among Jacob’s sons, we will conclude this section with the consideration of another mythical name belonging to the class of designations of Jacob’s sons which is connected with the dark sky of clouds and night. This is _Levi_. If we contemplate this name unbiassed by the etymological explanation of it given in the Bible (from lâvâ ‘to cleave to’), I think we shall not be inclined to doubt that Lêvî bears the same relation to the serpent’s name livyâthân, as another serpent’s name nâchâsh bears to the enlarged form nechushtân, which is given as the name of the brazen serpent broken in pieces by King Hezekiah (2 Kings XVIII. 4). The name certainly does not denote ‘brazen;’ for an image is more naturally named from the object it represents than from the matter of which it is made. And the form livyâthân necessarily presupposes a simpler form, from which it could be derived by the addition of the termination âthân (or only ân, if we suppose the original word to have passed through the feminine form livyat), as nechushtân necessitates the preexistence of the simpler nâchâsh. If we have in English a word _earthly_, then, even if no word _earth_ actually existed at the time in the language, we could with perfect justice assert _a priori_ that the word _earth_ must have once existed, in order to make the formation of _earthly_ possible. Similarly the existence of the form livyâthân justifies the assumption of a simple noun-form, as the basis of that derivative enlarged by suffixes.

Now fortunately this simple form is preserved to us in the name Lêvî, and we may therefore unhesitatingly affirm that Levi means ‘Serpent.’ Mythology speaks of a serpent that devours the sun, of a Storm-Serpent, which the Sun assails with his rays; they are the serpents, dragons and monsters with whom the Solar heroes of the Aryan mythology wage their contests, which Herakles even in his cradle crushes and afterwards overpowers at Lerna and Nemea; the same, which sometimes, on the other hand, keep their ground and come forth victorious from the battle with the Sun, when the Sun, repulsed by a boisterous Storm, is forced to abandon the celestial battle-field.

A serpent on the way,
An adder on the path,
That bites the horse’s heels,
So that the rider falls backwards,

(Gen. XLIX. 17), they are called in the Hebrew hymn of the battle of the Rain-serpent with the Sun-horse.[515] It is this same serpent that bears a ‘fiery flying serpent’ (sârâph meʿôphêph, Is. XIV. 29), i.e. the Lightning; that in common with the lightning is called the ‘Flying Serpent’ (nâchâsh bârîach, Is. XXVII. 1), for whose conqueror the Sun, the monotheistic ideas of later times substituted Jahveh ‘who with his might lashes the sea, and who with his intelligence pierces the monster (Rahab); by whose breath the heaven becomes bright, whose hand has stabbed the _flying serpent_’ (Job XXVI. 12, 13). The hissing of this flying Serpent is said in an American myth to be the Thunder; and the Lightning is called by the Algonquins an immense serpent, which God spat out.[516] The Rain itself is regarded in mythology as a serpent; the columns of water which fall in a serpentine course to the earth are called the ‘Crooked Serpent’ (nâchâsh ʿaḳallâthôn). The flying Lightning, the crooked Serpent (both livyâthân), and the great Monster in the sea, which tries to devour the Sun when he sinks into the sea in the evening, are assailed by the Sun, and the monotheistic prophet transfers the attack upon them to Jahveh (Is. XXVII. 1; compare Ps. LXXVI. 4 [3]). It is to be noted that, in speaking of night and storms, even the later poetry uses the expression that they ‘bite, wound,’ because the Serpent of darkness and tempest bites and hurts the Sun. ‘I said, Surely the darkness will bite me (yeshûphênî), and the night [will bite] the light near me’ (Ps. CXXXIX. 11); and so of the storm (Job IX. 17). Everywhere here the verb is used which is employed in Gen. III. 15 to denote that the serpent wounds the heel of the man. In these passages of poetry, therefore, we find an echo of the myth which declares that the Serpent of the storm, when victorious, bites, wounds, or even swallows down the hero of the Sun. We encounter the Rain described still more clearly as a serpent in the sacred literature of the Parsees, in the first chapter of the Vendidâd, verse 2, where it is said that Ahuramazdao created Airyana-vaêjô to be the best of all lands, whilst in opposition to his act the Deadly Aegrô mainyus created the ‘flowing serpent’ (azhim raoidhitem) and the snow. Professor Haug was the discoverer of this explanation of the _azhim raoidhitem_;[517] nevertheless he translates it ‘a powerful serpent,’ as he thinks that the word ‘flowing’ can be only understood of the ejection of the venom, or of the writer’s remembrance of a warm spring which may have existed in the land Airyana-vaêjô. It is a very obvious conjecture that the _flowing_ serpent means the Rain; the more so because it is mentioned in conjunction with Snow.[518] The last shoots of this mythological conception are discovered in the system of the Ophites, in which the serpent represents a _moist substance_.[519]

Levi (with Simeon, whose etymological value is no longer determinable), is introduced in the Hebrew myth (Gen. XXXIV.) as the slayer of Chamôr ‘the Ass’ and Shekem (see above, p. 125). Of the same two brothers it is said in the fragments of hymns already quoted, sometimes that ‘for their amusement they destroyed the bull’ (XLIX. 6)—the horned solar animal whose horns (rays) the storm-serpents eradicate (ʿiḳḳerû). It is at the same time perfectly clear in this interpretation that no difficulty at all resides in what is always troubling the expounders of these passages—in the fact, namely, that these brothers are said in the hymn (or Blessing) to have killed a bull (shôr), whilst no mention is made in the narrative of any such act.

§ 15. In the Biblical story of the family of Jacob we have met with a few of those myths of Love which the Aryan mythology developed in such variety and richness. One of the best known myths of this kind is the story of Oedipus and Jokaste. The king of Thebes received a sad oracle, declaring that he would be exposed to serious danger from a son who would be born to him by his wife Jokaste. He therefore exposed Oedipus, his new-born son; and the latter, having been marvellously saved from death and educated at Corinth, travelled to Thebes when grown to manhood, but killed his father on the way. Arrived at Thebes, he delivered the city from the terror of the Sphinx, and was proclaimed king, after which he married his mother Jokaste. When he received information of the two horrible crimes that he had unconsciously committed, the murder of his father and the incest with his mother, in despair he put out his own eyes and came to a tragic end. Everyone knows this celebrated Hellenic story, which in the Oedipus-Tragedy was worked out powerfully in its ethical bearings so as to excite the emotions and touch the heart.

Oedipus kills his father, marries his mother, and dies, a blind and worn-out old man. The hero of the Sun murders the father who begot him—the Darkness; he shares his bed with his mother—the Evening-glow, from whose womb (in the character of the Morning-glow) he had been born; he dies _blind_—the Sun sets. We have seen above that the setting sun loses the bright light of its eyes.[520]

What a universal act of the human mind, and how little affected by ethnological distinctions, the production of myths is, and what agreement is consequently discovered in the direction taken by this myth-formation among the most dissimilar peoples and races of the earth, will be most strikingly brought home to us by the discovery that this very myth of marriage with a mother occurs among the Hebrews just as much as among the Aryans. We have already seen that Reuben marries his father’s wife Bilhah. We observe that in the Hebrew myth the hero of Darkness occupies the central position, whereas in the Hellenic it is the Solar hero who shares his mother’s bed. But while the myth of Reuben and Bilhah is only mentioned quite shortly in the Old Testament, there is another myth which has grown into a long story in the Biblical narrative—that of Lot’s daughters. But before we pass to this, I wish to call attention to a concurrence which I believe has never yet been noticed, but which may excite to further meditations. The whole story of Oedipus, quite in the form in which we find it among the Hellenes, occurs also as an _Arabic tradition_, without change except in the persons. One of the many Nimrods which the Arabic legend seized upon (six Namâridâ ‘Nimrods’ are commonly reckoned),[521] son of Kenaʿan and Salchâ, is the Oedipus of the Arabic story. In consequence of an intimidating prophecy, he is exposed by his parents, that he may die and not be a source of danger to his father. But he is miraculously suckled by a tigress (whence his name Nimrûd is said to be derived, for nimr is ‘tiger’ in Arabic), and subsequently brought up by the inhabitants of a neighbouring village. When grown to manhood he contrives to bring together a great army, and becomes involved in a war against his father Kenaʿan, whom he slays in the decisive battle. He marches in triumph into his capital, and marries his mother Salchâ. Thus the outlines of the Oedipus-story have been attached to the solar hero of the Semites, Nimrod the hunter. The story is told at full length in the long introduction to the Romance of ʿAntar (I. 13 _seq._), and I leave it to readers competent to judge, to decide between two possibilities. Either the Arabs borrowed from the Greeks and simply took to themselves this version of the Oedipus-story; in this case the remarkable fact of such a transference would provoke a searching enquiry into the middle points between Greece and Arabia, which made it possible to borrow mythology, and also into the extent and nature of such borrowings. Or we may assume that the story was independently and gradually formed by the Arabs without external influence, so that the elements of the Arabian as of the Greek story reach back to the primeval age of the creation of myths, and that with the Arabs also it was originally a myth of the war of the Sun with the Night, and his union with the Evening-glow. The latter view is favoured by the circumstance that in the Arabian version the story of Oedipus putting out his eyes is wanting—a feature which would certainly have been taken if the Arabian story were only a borrowed one. But the above-mentioned questions ought to be investigated before any decision in favour of one of these possibilities can be arrived at, however inclined I may be from personal feeling towards the assumption of borrowing.[522]

The story of Lot and his daughters as told in Genesis in one of the Biblical passages most notorious for its obscenity; let us see, however, what appears to have been its original meaning. When the aged Lôṭ and his family were saved from the Divine judgment on Sodom and Gomorrha, which converted those cities into a sea of bitumen, he left his wife behind him, converted into a pillar of salt, at a point of the coast of the Dead Sea, which is still shown to credulous travellers, and lived in a cave with his two unmarried daughters. These made their old father drunk in two successive nights, and perpetrated with him an act of unchastity which is to us almost unmentionable (Gen. XIX. 30–38). But the science of Mythology has often saved the honour and moral worth of primitive humanity by restoring the original mythological meaning of many a story; and so here we shall be able to prove that the Lôṭ-story, in the form in which we have received it, is only the tradition of the myth of the Sun and the Night, the understanding of which was lost in a later unmythological generation. Through the clever succession of ideas suggested by the solar theory, the science of Mythology on Aryan ground at one blow caused the ideal heights of Olympus to tower in their original purity above the endless chain of scandalous acts which mythology misunderstood attributed to the immoral inhabitants of the mountain of the Gods; and the method which guides us in these studies will aim at the same result on the domain of Hebrew mythology.

We return to Lôṭ. This name (formed from the root lûṭ ‘to cover’) denotes ‘he who covers.’ ‘Darkness _covers_ the earth, and clouds the nations’ (Is. LX. 2). ‘For I did not shrink before the Darkness, when thick darkness _covered_ (everything) before my face’ (Job XXIII. 17). ‘Thou hast pressed us down to the dwelling-place of the sea-monsters, and _covered_ us _over_ with deep shadow’ (Ps. XLIV. 20 [19]). The Semitic designations of darkness are mostly formed from roots denoting ‘to cover’: so e.g. ʿalâṭâ in Hebrew, ʿishâ in Arabic;[523] and the most prominent Semitic word for Night, layil, laylâ, etymologically means only something that _covers_.[524] In Aryan languages also, the Sanskrit Varuṇa and the Greek οὔρανος, which denote the overclouded sky, are formed from the root _var_ ‘to cover,’ in opposition to the bright day-sky, Mitra.[525] Keeping on Semitic ground, we find in Arabic copious illustrations of this conception. The words ġashiya, damasa, ġatha, saja, etc. (compare ġardaḳat al-leyl, taʾaṭṭam al-leyl), combine the notions of Darkness and Covering-up. Accordingly the coming on of night is expressed by janna al-ẓalâm, literally ‘the darkness has covered up’ (e.g. Romance of ʿAntar, V. 80. 3); and for the simple words ‘of an evening,’ or ‘at night,’ the Arabic expression is taḥt al-leyl ‘under the night,’[526] or fuller taḥt astâr al-ẓalâm ‘under the veils of the night’ (ʿAntar, X. 70, 1); and the Night is above the day, ‘aleyhâ.’[527] The Night is a garment or carpet spread out over the Day. ‘It is he,’ it is said in the Ḳorân (Sûr. XXV. v. 49), ‘who made the Night as a garment or veil for you.’ ‘We have made the Night as a clothing’ (Sûr. LXXVIII. v. 10).[528] The Arabic poet Abû-l-ʿAlâ al-Maʿarrî uses the most palpable expression for this conception of the darkness of night. Describing his swift camels, on which he traversed great distances at Night, he says (I. 131. v. 4) ‘in their swift course they tore the mantle of night,’ i.e. they ran so quickly that they unrolled the garment which covers the surface of the earth at night. On this conception of the nature of Night I believe a peculiar expression in the Arabic language to be based. In the old classical Arabic, nights which either have no moonshine at all, or have none at the beginning and only a little quite at the end, are called layâlin durʿun; and when a verb is required, adraʿa al-shahr is said. This adraʿa is unquestionably a denominative verb from dirʿ, which signifies a ‘breast-plate,’ or a breast-covering of any sort. The Arabic expressions just quoted are founded on the idea that the breast (al-ṣadr), i.e. the upper side, the first part, of such nights is dark, covered by a garment, so that only the uncovered lower side or end is visible. In the cosmogony of Mohammedan legends, Night is represented as a _curtain_, ḥijâb.[529]

The clothing of the Night is of black colour, leylâ ḥâlikat al-jilbâb, as is said in Arabic,[530] (compare μελάμπεπλος νύξ[531]), a ‘pitchy mantle,’ as Shakespeare says,

The day begins to break, and night is fled
Whose pitchy mantle overveil’d the earth.
_King Henry VI._ First Part, II. 2.[532]

And in Arabic poetry also we meet with night described as a ‘pitchy mantle.’ For the poet Abû-l-Shibl says in a remarkable elegy[533]:

Shamsun kaʾanna-ẓ-ẓalâma albasahâ * thauban min-az-zifti au min-al-ḳîrî
A sun, as if darkness had clothed him
With a garment of resin or pitch.

The darker the Night, the thicker is the black cloak with which it is provided. Even modern languages have expressions like _thick_ darkness (Hungarian _vastag setétség_); in Arabic a very dark night is called a night with a heavy covering, leyl murjahinn.[534]

The name Lôṭ, accordingly, signifies, like the Hellenic female forms Kalyke, Kalypso (from καλύπτω), the _Covering Night_. It is very significant of the Night that the Greek figures are represented as weaving clothes for the Thunderer:[535] they weave the cloak with which they cover over the world when they spread darkness over it. Surely no one will after all this doubt that the name Lot is a designation of the Covering Night. Should this be still doubtful, perhaps the following fact from the domain of the Arabic language may bring conviction. Everyone knows the Arabic word kâfir, at least in its usual meaning of Infidel. Even the earlier Arabian philologians, who, notwithstanding frequent amusing whims and hobbies, often exhibit a fine feeling and very sober judgment as to etymology, said that this word received the meaning Infidel only through the dogmatism of Islâm, that it originally denoted the _Coverer_, and that the transition of meaning was founded on the idea that the Infidel covers up God’s omnipotence. Similarly in Hebrew the verb kâphar is said of God when he _forgives_ (i.e. covers) the sins of men; in Arabic ġafar.[536] In Arabic the Unthankful is also a kâfir, a ‘Coverer,’ since he _covers_ the blessings he has received: and in late Hebrew he is similarly termed kephûy ṭôbhâ ‘one who covers up the good.’[537] In short, the kâfir is properly the Coverer. Now the darkness of night is called kâfir by old Arabian poets. We have already (in the Tenth Section of this chapter, p. 134), quoted for another purpose the verse of the poet of the tribe Mâzin: ‘The Shining one stretches his right hand towards him who _covers up_,’ where the latter is kâfir, the Night. The celebrated poet Lebîd, too, says in his prize-poem (Muʿallaḳâ, v. 65): ‘Until the stars stretch out their hands towards the kâfir, and the weaknesses of the boundaries are covered over by their darkness,’

Ḥatta iḏâ alḳat yadan fî kâfirin * waʾajanna ʿaurâti-th-thuġûri
ẓalâmuhâ.

And the poet al-Ḥumeyd says, ‘They (the camels) go to water before the breaking of the morning, whilst the son of splendour (the dawn) is still _hiding in the cloak_,’ i.e. before it is yet day,

Fawaradat ḳabla-nbilâji-l-fajri * wabnu ḏukâʾa _kâminun fî kafri_.[538]

A very witty use of the application of the epithet _kâfir_ to the Night is make by the poet Behâ al-Dîn Zuheyr. He would fain prolong the duration of the night, which passes away far too soon for all the pleasures that it brings him in the midst of a merry circle, and so he says: ‘To me is due from thee the reward of a Champion of the Faith [in battle against the infidels], if it is true that Night is a _kâfir_ (an infidel, properly a ‘coverer’),

Lî fîka ajru mujâhidin * in ṣaḥḥa anna-l-leyla kâfir.[539]

As the Darkness of night is what covers over and hides, so on the other hand the Dawn, or the Sun in general, is that which uncovers and discloses. We have met with this conception before in the case of Noah (p. 131). In Arabic safara or asfara is said of the _uncovering_ of any concealed object, and the same words are used of the breaking-forth of the morning sun. There is no doubt that this latter usage is deduced from the signification ‘to reveal, uncover;’ the instance quoted in the lexicons, ‘The night which removes the cover from the morning of the Friday’ (yusfir ʿan), i.e. which precedes Friday, shews by the preposition ʿ_an_ that ‘to uncover’ is the fundamental signification. Thus the Arabic etymologists whom I mentioned in a former work[540] may be right in a certain sense in tracing back most of the derivations of the root safar to this sense. But in Egyptian and in the Arabic of the desert the word al-sufrâ denotes the Sunset, the reason of which is by no means clear.[541] No doubt can now be entertained that our Lot is identical with his namesake the Arabic Kâfir the Concealer, the Covering Night. Now we can consider the myth. ‘The daughters of Night form a sexual connexion with their father.’ When the evening glow, which is a daughter of the Night (for, as we have seen, the myth identifies the morning and the evening glow), unites with the shades of night and becomes darker and dimmer, so as at length to lose itself in the night, the myth-creators said, ‘The daughters of Lot, the Coverer, are going to bed with their father.’ From the bright, lively character, which the myth must have attributed to the Glow in comparison with the dark, heavy Night, they would naturally regard the aged Lot as the victim of an intrigue of his lustful daughters; whereas in the Aryan myth it is Prajâpati who uses force against his daughter Ushas. The names of Lot’s daughters are not given in the Old Testament; but we know them from another source. The Arabic legend in which the story of Lot, communicated by Jews, likewise finds a place, tells us their names. It is scarcely credible that these are pure inventions of the Arabs; it is much more probable that they received them, as they did much else, from the traditions of the Jews. But the Jewish tradition itself has lost the names, as it has lost much else that was not written down. In the Arabic statements, however, there occur such various versions of the names as to show clearly that they are instances of the corruption by which foreign names are constantly ruined beyond recognition in Arabic manuscripts. One version gives Rayya as the name of the elder, Zoġar as that of the younger (see Yâḳût, II. 933. 22, 934. 16); and from the latter a town is said to be named, which is mentioned in some ancient Arabic poems. Ibn Badrûn (ed. Dozy, p. 8) calls them something like Rasha and Raʿûsha (or Raʿvasha?); Masʿûdî (_Prairies d’or_, II. 193) Zaha and Raʿva. Among these differing forms, every one of which is probably based on a corrupt text, Zaha is the only one that may confirm the solar character of Lot’s daughters in the myth. But I think the myth of Lot is clear enough in itself to dispense with any such problematic confirmation.

If the conception of Kerûbhîm (Cherubim) is native to the Hebrews, and not borrowed at a later period from foreign parts—a question which must be regarded as still an open one—then we may find here also the _Coverer_ (compare kerûbh has-sôkhêkh ‘the cherub that covereth,’ Ezek. XXVIII. 14), the covering cloud; and hence may be derived the function of concealing and covering which was given to the cherubim in the later ceremonial, as also their connexion with the curtains.[542] ‘Jahveh rides on the Cherub,’ says one of the later religious poets (2 Sam. XXII. 11), ‘and appears on the wings of the wind; he makes darkness round about him, tents, collections of water, gloomy clouds.’ Here the dark overclouded rainy sky is described; and when Jahveh sends rain over the earth, he rides on the Cherub, and ‘mists are beneath his feet,’ and the dust which he turns up while riding, forms the shechâḳîm (properly the dust), the overcast sky. Jahveh is described in other passages also as riding on clouds (Is. XIX. 1). Accordingly kerûbh would originally denote the covering cloud, and whatever is connected with the Cherubim in later theological conceptions would be a transformation of ancient mythological ideas.[543] Now the root _krb_ is used in Himyarite inscriptions in titles of kings, as Mukrib Saba, or Tobbaʿ kerîb, i.e. as Von Kremer explains them,[544] ‘_Protector_ of Saba,’ ‘_Protecting_ Tobbaʿ.’ This is easily explained by the fact that in the Semitic languages words signifying ‘to protect’ are often derived from the fundamental idea of ‘covering.’ ‘The Cherubim spread forth their wings’ (1 Kings VIII. 7), i.e. they cover. To spread out the wings (kenâphayîm) over some one is in Biblical language the usual expression for the protection which is allotted to him. In Arabic the same word (kanaf) signifies not only a bird’s wing, but also concealment, shade (compare Ps. XCI. 1–4), and protection.[545]

The opinion that the Cherubim were borrowed from foreign parts is accordingly much less probable than that which maintains that they originated with the Hebrews;[546] and the latter view receives further support from the fact that the Cherubim can be easily fitted without any violence into the system of Hebrew mythology. It is again supported by the connexion between Cherubim and Seraphim, the latter of which are originally Hebrew. This connexion agrees moreover with the results of our mythological researches. As Kerûbh as ‘Coverer’ belongs to the dark cloudy sky, so the Serâphîm must be a mythological conception pertaining to the same series, if we adopt the correct interpretation of them as _Dragons_,[547] and remember the mythological meaning of serpents and dragons (_supra_, p. 27, 184, _sq._). It then becomes probable that the theological significance of Cherubim and Seraphim belongs to the remains of the very earliest form of Hebrew religion, and approximates to the facts of which I shall speak at Chapter VI. § 5, pp. 224, 5.

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Footnote 244:

Osiander (_Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1853, VII. 437) is inclined to
combine with this the old Arabic _Rayâm_ or _Riyâm_.

Footnote 245:

The added Abh in Abhrâm, compared with the other expressions in which
the quality of _father_ is not emphasized, finds an exact parallel in
Δη ( = Γη)-μητήρ and Γαῖα.

Footnote 246:

_Opuscula Arabica_ (ed. W. Wright, Leyden 1859), p. 30. 2; 34. 5. This
usage is made possible by the signification _Cloud_, which is peculiar
to the word samâ in Arabic (Sprenger, _Das Leben und die Lehre des
Mohammed_, I. 544).

Footnote 247:

Schweinfurth, _The Heart of Africa_, I. 311.

Footnote 248:

See the Count von Baudissin, _Studien zur semitischen
Religionsgeschichte_, Leipzig 1876, I. p. 306 _et seqq._

Footnote 249:

Or Future, or Imperfect, as it is more generally termed.—TR.

Footnote 250:

It is worthy of note that in Arabic _pluralia fracta_ can be formed
from this class of proper names. An interesting example of this is
Tanʿum^u b. Ḳamiʾata, the name of the ancestor of the tribe Tanâʿum.
See Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ_, p. 85 and gloss _h_.

Footnote 251:

Strictly the Dawn.—TR.

Footnote 252:

This theory explains the connexion of ṣârach with zârach ‘to be
bright.’ Accordingly, I should like to place the Hebrew ṣâraʿath
_lepra_ in this same etymological group, as the relationship between ע
and ה does not require demonstration; the signification would then be
that of ‘whiteness’ (see Lev. XIII. 3, 4).

Footnote 253:

Hermann Vámbéry, _Uigurische Sprachmonumente und das Kudatku Bilik_,
Innsbruck 1870, p. 238 _a_.

Footnote 254:

E.g. vol. IV. 26 ult.; XVIII. 3, 11. 19, 93. 11; XXV. 5. 12, 6. 6 &c.
I always quote the octavo edition of the _Romance of ʿAntar_, printed
by Sheikh Shâhîn in thirty-two small vols., Cairo 1286.

Footnote 255:

In De Sacy, _Chrestomathie Arabe_, II. 151. 13.

Footnote 256:

It is entitled _Nuzhat al-asrâr fî muḥâwarat al-leyl w-al-nahâr_, and
is in MS. in the University Library at Leipzig: cod. Ref. no. 357,
fol. 11–18.

Footnote 257:

Of this literature I will now draw attention only to a Ḳasîdâ of the
old Persian poet Asadî, which is now made accessible in the edition of
Rückert’s _Grammatik, Poetik und Rhetorik der Perser_, published by
the care of W. Pertsch, Gotha 1874, pp. 59–63. But it contains little
that harmonises with the argumentation of the above-employed Arabic
tract.

Footnote 258:

_Nuzhat al-asrâr_ &c., fol. 14 _verso_, 17 _verso_.

Footnote 259:

E.g. Abû-l-ʿAlâ’s Poems in the edition with commentary, Bûlâḳ 1286,
II. 107, line 1: wa-tabtasimu-l-ashrâṭu fajran.

Footnote 260:

See Abû-l-ʿAlâ, _ibid_., p. 211, line 5: fî maḍḥaki-l-barḳi.

Footnote 261:

Vol. I. 193. Compare a beautiful passage in a poem of Ibn Muṭeyr,
given by Nöldeke, _Beiträge zur Poesie der alten Araber_, p. 34, to
which we shall recur farther on.

Footnote 262:

_Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 109 _et seq_.

Footnote 263:

Most persons know this tense as Future, or as Imperfect.—TR.

Footnote 264:

Similar correlative names in Hellenic mythology are Pro-metheus and
Epi-metheus.

Footnote 265:

Muslim’s _Collection of Traditions_, edition with Commentary, Cairo
1284, V. 118. The commentator, Al-Nawawî, puts the name al-ʿÂḳib in
combination with another name of the Prophet of identical meaning,
viz. al-Muḳfî. The name al-ʿÂḳib occurs elsewhere also as a proper
name, e.g. as the name of a friend of the poet al-Aʿsha (_Kitâb
al-aġânî_, VI. 73).

Footnote 266:

_Shâhnâmeh_, ed. Mohl, VII. v. 633, according to Rückert’s ingenious
interpretation in the _Zeitschrift der D. M. G._, 1856, X. 145.

Footnote 267:

_De Principiis_, ed. Kopp, p. 385.

Footnote 268:

The sun itself is called a golden egg (Ad. Kuhn, _Zeitschr. für vergl.
Sprachforschung_, I. 456).

Footnote 269:

_King Henry VI._, Part II. Act IV. beginning.

Footnote 270:

Heinrich Heine, _The Baltic_ [_sic!_ i.e. ‘die Nordsee’ = the German
Ocean], Part 2, No. 4 in E.A. Bowring’s translation.

Footnote 271:

In Henne-am-Rhyn, _Die deutsche Volkssage_, Leipzig 1874, p. 292, No.
544.

Footnote 272:

Catullus, LIX. [LXI.] vv. 84–86.

Footnote 273:

Emîr Chosrev of Delhi, in Rückert, _Grammatik, Rhetorik und Poetik der
Perser_, p. 69. 6.

Footnote 274:

See Excursus C.

Footnote 275:

Pauly, _Realencyklopädie_, VII. 1277; Wilhelm Bacher, Niẓâmî’s _Leben
und Werke_, Leipzig 1871, p. 97, note 13.

Footnote 276:

Al-Beiḍâwî, _Commentarius in Coranum_, ed. Fleischer, I. 572. 17.
Bacher, _l.c._

Footnote 277:

Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, II. 170.

Footnote 278:

See Excursus D.

Footnote 279:

See e.g. Brugsch, _Histoire d’Égypte_, 1st ed., I. 37.

Footnote 280:

_De Osir. et Isid._, c. XXXIV.

Footnote 281:

_De Pythiae oraculis_, c. XII., and compare the pseudo-Plutarch, _De
vita et poësi Homeri_, c. CIV.

Footnote 282:

So says Yalḳûṭ. Shôchêr Ṭôbh has the reading Akramânia, which is
difficult of identification (Germania?).

Footnote 283:

Yalḳûṭ and Shôchêr Ṭôbh on Ps. XIX. 7.

Footnote 284:

_Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 273.

Footnote 285:

See p. 15.

Footnote 286:

Compare Eckhel, _Doctrina Nummorum veterum_, V. 15.

Footnote 287:

_Die Religion der Römer_, Erlangen 1836, II. 218. Compare Mommsen,
_History of Rome_ (translation), I. 185, ed. of 1868.

Footnote 288:

Fr. Lenormant, _Les premières civilisations_, Paris 1874, II. 29–31.

Footnote 289:

It is well known that the story of Jonah was long ago connected with
the myth of Herakles and Hesione, or that of Perseus and Andromeda
(Bleek, _Einleitung ins A. T._, Berlin 1870, p. 577). Tylor,
_Primitive Culture_, I. 306, should also be consulted. What Emil
Burnouf says in his _La Science des Religions_, Paris 1872, p. 263, is
quite untenable; he finds in the myth ‘un image de la naissance du feu
divin et de la vie dont il est le principe.’

Footnote 290:

Nonnus, _Dionysiaca_ XL. 443; Movers, _Religion der Phönizier_, p.
394.

Footnote 291:

Aesch., _Prom._, vv. 505, 467, Dind. I must also refer to Tangaloa,
the chief figure in the Polynesian mythology, who is described as the
first navigator. This characteristic, and the fact that Tangaloa is
regarded as the originator of every handicraft (see the chapter on the
Myth of Civilisation), with other features on which Schirren lays
stress in determining his nature, seem to claim for him a solar
character. Gerland (_Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, VI. 242) disputes
this interpretation.

Footnote 292:

_Jahrbücher für die bibl._ Wissenschaft, X. 21; _History of Israel_,
I. 265 _et seq._

Footnote 293:

In his essay _Phönikische Analekten, in the Zeitschr. der D. M. G._,
1865, XIX. 536.

Footnote 294:

Sepp, _Jerusalem und das Heilige Land_, Schaffhausen 1863, II. 687.

Footnote 295:

_Vergelijkende geschiedenis van de egyptische en mesopotamische
Godsdiensten_, Amsterdam 1872, p. 434.

Footnote 296:

Julius Braun, _Naturgeschichte der Sage_, I. 41. See Tylor, _Primitive
Culture_, I. 316.

Footnote 297:

E. Jacques, _Vocabulaire Arabe-malacassa_, in _Journ. Asiat._, 1833,
XI. 129, 130.

Footnote 298:

Gerland, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, VI. 242.

Footnote 299:

‘Wimpern der Morgenröthe,’ and so Ewald translates aphʿappayim in Job,
i.e. eyelashes, _eyelids_ being ‘Augenlieder.’ Yet Gesenius
understands the word as _palpebrae_, i.e. eyelids (though both this
word and _cilium_ are occasionally used indiscriminately in either
sense). Βλέφαρον is only ‘eyelid;’ the Arabic ḥawâjib is only
‘eyelash.’—TR.

Footnote 300:

Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 1003. _a_; compare Orph. VIII. I. 13. In the
_Thesmophoriazusae_ v. 17, Aristophanes makes Euripides call the eye
‘the imitation of the disc of the sun;’ compare _Acharn_. v. 1184: ὦ
κλεινὸν ὄμμα, ‘O glorious eye!’ as an address to the Sun.

Footnote 301:

Al Buchârî, IX. 30, 35.

Footnote 302:

_Yaçna_, I. 35, III. 49.

Footnote 303:

Eberh. Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_, p. 165.

Footnote 304:

Haneberg, _Religiöse Alterthümer der Bibel_, Münich 1869, p. 49;
Movers, _Die Phönizier_, I. 411, where other combinations are given.

Footnote 305:

The seven days of the week are imagined to have a connexion with the
sun. According to Diodorus, I. 272, the inhabitants of Rhodes at the
time of Cadmus worshipped the Sun-god, who had begotten seven sons on
that island.

Footnote 306:

Muir, _Sanskrit Texts_, V. 64.

Footnote 307:

Yâḳûṭ, _Geogr. Wörterb._, III. 762.

Footnote 308:

See Excursus E.

Footnote 309:

Hartung, _Religion und Mythologie der Griechen_, Leipzig 1865, II.
87–94.

Footnote 310:

_al-Meydânî Majmaʾ al-amthâl_, II. 111. 21.

Footnote 311:

Wa-kân auwal mâ asbal al-leyl riwâḳah wa-ḳad iswadd al-ẓalâm
biaġ-sâḳah, _Romance of ʿAntar_, V. 170. 17. Accordingly, insadal is
said of night as well as of a tent, e.g. _ʿAntar_, VI. 60. 14, 95. 5.

Footnote 312:

I wish to mention here a suggestion received in a letter from Prof. de
Goeje of Leyden, to take the name Hebhel in the appellative sense
‘herdsman,’ and compare it with the Arabic abil, the initial breathing
being aspirated. The Hebrew âbhêl, ‘pasture,’ would then belong to the
same group. But see also on the latter word an ingenious conjecture of
Derenbourg in the _Journal Asiatique_, 1867, vol. I. p. 93.

Footnote 313:

Wa-leylatun ṭachyâʾu yarmaʿillu * fîhâ ʿala-l-shârî nadan muchḍallu,
_MS. of Univ. Leyden, Cod. Warner_, No. 597, p. 345.

Footnote 314:

See above, pp. 42, 43.

Footnote 315:

_Die Genesis_, Leipzig 1860, p. 64.

Footnote 316:

Levy, in the _Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1860, XIV. 404.

Footnote 317:

Compare Gelpke’s article _Neutestamentliche Studien_, in the _Theo.
Studien u. Kritiken_, 1849, pp. 639 _et seq._

Footnote 318:

See Excursus F.

Footnote 319:

_Premières Civilisations_, II. 81.

Footnote 320:

We do not wish to overlook the fact that the word Ḳayn in Himyaritic
is a name of dignity, like Prince, Ruler, Lord, and may therefore, if
this signification is adopted, be a synonym for Baʿal. See Prætorius
in the _Zeitschr. der D. M. G._, 1872, XXVI. 432.

Footnote 321:

See Fleischer’s _Nachträgliches_ to Levy’s _Chald. Wörterb. über d.
Targ._, II. 577. _b_.

Footnote 322:

_Yaçna_, I. 35, XVII. 22; _Khordavesta_, III. 49, VII. 4; Spiegel,
_Die heiligen Schriften der Parsen_, III. 27: ‘The beautiful Dawn we
praise; the brilliant, endowed with brilliant horses, who remembers
men, remembers heroes, and is provided with splendour, with dwellings.
The morning Dawn we praise; the cheering, endowed with fast horses.’
_Vendidad_, XXI. 20: ‘Rise up, O splendid Sun! with thy fast horses,
and shine on the creatures.’ In the Sun’s Yast (it is the sixth), in
almost every verse from the invocation to the end of the prayer, this
epithet is applied to the Sun; and in the tenth Yast chariots and
flaming horses are assigned to Mithra (see the references in Spiegel,
_l. c._ III. xxv.).

Footnote 323:

A rough imitation of:

Phöbus in der Sonnendroschke
Peitschte seine Flammenrosse.
_Atta Troll_, XXII. 1.

Footnote 324:

Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, pp. 106–109.

Footnote 325:

According to Rawlinson this conception came from the Assyrians to the
Persians. Put the learned explorer of Assyrian antiquity seems to
ignore the solar significance of the winged disc when he says: ‘The
conjecture is probable that ... the wings signify Omnipresence and the
circle Eternity’ (_History of Herodotus_, note to I. c. 135, I. 215 of
the edition of 1862).

Footnote 326:

Hebrew scholars will observe that I here abandon the usual
interpretation, and understand eshkenâ in the second member of the
setting of the sun. In this way the first member speaks of the rising,
the second of the setting of the sun (= bâ hash-shemesh), which dips
into the water at the further edge (horizon) of the sea (acharîth
yâm).

Footnote 327:

See Excursus G.

Footnote 328:

_Iliad_, VIII. 485. See Plutarch, _De vita et poes. Hom._, c. CIII.

Footnote 329:

E.g. al-Suytûṭi in the _Ḥusn al-muḥâḍarâ_, &c: ‘fa iḏâ achaḏat
fî-l-hubût’ (ap. Weyer’s _Diss. de loco Ibn Khacanis de Ibn Zeidun_,
p. 87, n. 82).

Footnote 330:

The Sun is in all the Semitic as well as in many Aryan languages
grammatically feminine, and the myths frequently assign to the Sun a
female form. It is therefore necessary sometimes to use the feminine
pronoun.—TR.

Footnote 331:

In Ahlwardt, _Chalaf al-aḥmar_, p. 49. I. See _Vita Timuri_, II. 48:
‘ḳad janaḥat al shams lil-ġurûb.’

Footnote 332:

Compare Ps. XVII. 8, LXI. 5 [4]; and accordingly in tastîrêm besêther
pânekhâ, Ps. XXXI. 21 [20], ‘thou hidest them in the hiding-place of
thy _face_,’ we must emend pânekhâ ‘face,’ into kenâphekhâ ‘wings.’

Footnote 333:

_Romance of ʿAntar_, V. 136 ult., 236 penult. In the Babylonian epos
of _Istar’s Descent to Hell_, v. 10 (Lenormant, _Premières
Civilisations_, II. 85), Night is compared to a bird.

Footnote 334:

This interpretation, here erroneously employed, is occasioned by the
fact that in the Semitic languages the notion of ‘part’ is conveyed by
words which properly denote ‘side:’ the two sides of a thing are two
parts of it. Thus, even in literary Arabic the word ṭaraf, and in
vulgar Arabic the word jânib (which is etymologically connected with
the Hebrew kânâph ‘wing’) are used quite in the sense of baʿḍ ‘a
part.’ An interesting modern example of this lies before me in the
Arabic text of the terms of the latest 5,000,000_l._ loan by the
Egyptian Minister of Finance, in which the third article says: 'The
shares fall under the ordinary laws regulating buying and selling and
bequest—sawâʾan kâna fî jânib minhu au fîhi bil-kâmil—equally whether
it concerns a portion of them or the whole' (_al-Jawâʾïb_, a weekly
paper, XIV. No. 695, p. 2, c. 2, of the year 1291).

Footnote 335:

E.g. _Romance of ʿAntar_, V. 80 ult., 168 v. 6: Saarḥalu ʿankum lâ
urîdu sawâʾakum * waʾaḳṣidukum fî junḥi kulli ẓalâmin ‘I go away from
you, I want not the like of you; but I shall seek you under the wings
of all darkness.’

Footnote 336:

_al-Aġânî_, II. 12. 3, is also noticeable: ‘ḳamrun tawassaṭu junḥa
leylin mubridi.’

Footnote 337:

_Deutsche Mythologie_, p. 141.

Footnote 338:

Ebers, _Aegypten und die Bücher Mosis_, p. 70.

Footnote 339:

Fiske, _Myths and Myth-Makers_, pp. 71, 154.

Footnote 340:

The sun is called _celer deus_ by Ovid, _Fasti_, I. 386; and
Herodotus, I. 215, says: τῶν θεῶν ὁ τάχιστος. See Hehn,
_Culturpflanzen_, etc., p. 38.

Footnote 341:

_Berêshîth rabbâ_, sect. 22.

Footnote 342:

Even Philo lays the chief momentum of the story of Hagar on her
flight: μέμνηται γὰρ (sc. ὁ ἱερὸς λόγος) πολλαχοῦ τῶν ἀποδιδρασκόντων,
καθάπερ καὶ νῦν φάσκων ἐπὶ τῆς Ἄγαρ ὅτι κακωθεῖσα ἀπέδρα ἀπὸ προσώπου
τῆς κυρίας (_De profugis_, p. 546, ed. Mangey).

Footnote 343:

I leave it for the present undecided whether the name Terach, given to
Abraham’s father, belongs to this class. Ewald (_History of Israel_,
I. 274) puts it in connexion with ârach ‘to wander,’ though in an
ethnological sense.

Footnote 344:

See above, p. 41.

Footnote 345:

The first to discover this origin of the relative asher was the
Hungarian Csepregi, pupil of the great Schultens, _Dissert._, Lugd.,
p. 171 (quoted by Gesenius, _Thesaurus_, p. 165): he did not, however,
follow out the idea very clearly. Compare also Stade’s view,
essentially the same, in the _Morgenländische Forschungen_, Leipzig
1875, p. 188; I could not get a sight of this till after the above was
ready for the press. On the other side Schrader, _Jen. Literaturzeit_
1875, p. 299.

Footnote 346:

In Assyrian the Moon is called arḥu, with a mere hamzâ (Schrader,
_Assyr.-babyl. Keilinschr._, p. 282). In Arabic the reverse has
happened; from warch (yârêach) has been formed the verb arracha ‘to
fix the time (by the lunar calendar), to date,’ the _w_ (Heb. _y_)
being weakened into hamzâ (aleph). Whether the Coptic Ioh and Arabic
yûḥ are connected with yârêach (the abrasion of _r_ is not uncommon),
is another question.

Footnote 347:

So Böttcher, _Ausführl. Lehrbuch der hebr. Sprache_, I. 516–17.

Footnote 348:

The poet Dîk al-Jinn had a mistress named Dînâ (Ibn Challiḳân. ed.
Wüstenfeld, IV. 96. 7). See also Abû ʿUyeynâ al-Muhallabî (_Agânî_,
III. 128. 2, 6).

Footnote 349:

Edwin Norris, _Assyrian Dictionary_, I. 248.

Footnote 350:

We find also al-ʿulya opposed to al-dunya in Ibn Châḳân ḳalâʾïd
al-ʿiḳyân, ed. Bûlâḳ 1284, p. 60 ult.: ‘wa-dâmat laka-d-dunya *
wa-dâmat laka-l-ʿulya.’

Footnote 351:

Cod. Leyden, Warner’s Fund, No. 597, p. 325.

Footnote 352:

It also deserves consideration whether Dînâ as the feminine of Dân
denotes the Moon: compare Lâbhân, Lebhânâ; Âshêr, Ashêrâ. In that case
the above myth would speak of the abduction of the Moon by the
Morning-dawn, i.e. the disappearance of the moon at sunrise. It would
then be the same myth as the Hellenic one of the abduction of Helenê
(Selênê) by Paris.

Footnote 353:

Angelo de Gubernatis, _ibid._ p. 278 _et seq._

Footnote 354:

See _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._, 1855, IX. 758.

Footnote 355:

Edwin Norris, _Assyrian Dictionary_, I. 347. The signification ‘having
locks’ might also be mentioned as a possibility for zalîchâ. In that
case we should have to notice the Syrian zelîchê of the Peshiṭtô in
_Song of Songs_, I. 11, where the parallelism to gedûlê demands
something like ‘locks of hair;’ and this meaning agrees with that of
zelach in Syriac: _fudit._

Footnote 356:

It is well-known that the gutturals ح ḥ and خ ch often change into ف
f. The Arabic ḳadaḥ ‘cup’ becomes in Turkish ḳadef; the name Yehûd is
pronounced in jest _Jufut_. Compare the Arabic naḳacha with naḳafa,
and the Mehri ehû, denoting ‘mouth,’ with Arabic fû, Hebrew peh, etc.

Footnote 357:

See _Zeitschr. d. D. M. G._, 1855, IX. 758.

Footnote 358:

See Pfleiderer, _Religion und ihre Geschichte_, II. 271.

Footnote 359:

Brinton, _Myths of the New World_, pp. 159 _et seq._

Footnote 360:

2 Kings, I. 8, II. 11. Compare the fiery, flame-red chariot of Ushas
(_Rigveda_, VI. 64. 7).

Footnote 361:

_Das alte Griechenland im neuen_, p. 23.

Footnote 362:

Supplement to the Augsburg _Allgem. Zeitung_, 1874, No. 344. p. 5377.

Footnote 363:

Compare Renan, _Hist. génér. des Langues sémitiques_, p. 28.

Footnote 364:

Called in the English Bible Lamech, which is derived from the pausal
form Lâmĕkh through the LXX. Λάμεχ, as is the case with many names,
e.g. Abel, Japheth, Jared, though not all; cf. on the other side
Jether, Zerah, Peleg. The ordinary form, such as Lĕmĕch, ought to be
preferred.—TR.

Footnote 365:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_, pp. 138–150.

Footnote 366:

See the whole of Chapter VI.

Footnote 367:

See note 364, p. 129:.

Footnote 368:

Ps. XIX. 5 [4]. We have already remarked (p. 111) that the tents which
originally belonged to the sky at night are frequently transferred to
the sky of daytime; see also Is. XL. 22. And Noah uncovers himself,
bethôkh oholô ‘in the middle of his tent’ (Gen. IX. 21).

Footnote 369:

In al-Jauharî, s.r. _kfr_.

Footnote 370:

In Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 193; ḥatta ara aʿnâḳa ṣubḥin ablajâ * tasûru fî
aʿjâzi leylin adʿajâ. The expression aʿjâz al-leyl also occurs in a
verse of Farazdaḳ, _Kitâb al-Aġânî_, XIV. 173. 19, and of Ashgaʿ,
_ibid._ XVII. 35. 13.

Footnote 371:

See also _Shâhnâmêh_, VII. 395, with Rückert’s conjecture suggested in
_Zeitsch. der D. M. G.,_ 1856, X. 136.

Footnote 372:

Lazarus Geiger, _Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschl_. _Sprache und
Vernunft_, I. 447.

Footnote 373:

Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, p. 228.

Footnote 374:

In G. Rawlinson’s _History of Herodotus_, I. 490 _et seq._ One might
also think of the Arabic nafara ‘to fly.’ The Sun is a _fugitive_, as
has been already shown.

Footnote 375:

Lenormant, _Premières Civilisations_, II. 21.

Footnote 376:

On the primary signification of the root _mrd_ in Semitic, see Fried.
Delitzsch, _Studien über indogerm.-semit_. _Wurzelverwandtschaft_,
Leipzig 1873, p. 74.

Footnote 377:

_Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament_, p. 17, and _Die
assyr.-babyl_. _Keilinschriften_, p. 212. Compare Merx, _Grammatica
Syriaca_, p. 201.

Footnote 378:

Levy, _Phönizische Studien_, pt. II. p. 24.

Footnote 379:

Adolf Jellinek, _Bêth ham-midrâsh_, V. 40; see supra, p. 32.

Footnote 380:

I am fully aware that in Hebrew poetry arrows are frequently, indeed
most frequently, to be understood of lightning. ‘He sends out his
arrows and scatters them; lightnings in great number and discomfits
them’ (Ps. XVIII. 15 [14]). But the arrows of Joseph’s adversaries
must from the very nature of the myth be rays of the sun. If the
hunter is the Sun, then the rays can only be something which the
hunter in that ancient time used for shooting. Mythology is not the
product of a well-thought-out consistent system, and so nothing is
more likely than that two different things should be treated in the
same way by virtue of some feature common to both. Thus the solar ray
and the lightning are the same in mythology—an Arrow.

Footnote 381:

See a fuller description in Schwartz, _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, pp.
218–220.

Footnote 382:

J.G. Müller, _Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen_, p. 429.

Footnote 383:

See this question treated and its literature cited in Creuzer,
_Symbolik und Mythologie_, 3rd ed., I. 57.

Footnote 384:

For the description of the Sun as an Opener, I am enabled to insert a
supplementary datum, borrowed from a book which was published when p.
97 of the present work (to which I refer back) was already printed. In
a cuneiform Hymn to Samas, the Sun-god, he is addressed thus:

O Samas! from the back of the heavens thou hast come forth:
_The barrier of the shining heavens thou hast opened;
Yea the gate of the heavens thou hast opened_.

(German translation of George Smith’s _Chaldean Account of Genesis_,
with additions by Dr. Fr. Delitzsch, Leipzig, 1876.) The passage
quoted is one of Delitzsch’s additions, p. 284. I think this Hymn is a
remarkable illustration of our hypothesis that Yiphtâch, ‘the Opener,’
is a linguistic description of the Sun.

Footnote 385:

I owe to the kindness of my honoured friend Dr. Hampel, Custos of the
archeological section of the Hungarian National Museum, the
verification of a reference in the _Bulletino dell’ Instituto di
Correspondenza Archeologica_, 1853, p. 150, to a stone which exhibits
the same representation of the head of Janus as the coin in question,
viz.: ‘una testa doppia, di cui una facie è barbata, l’altra
giovanile.’

Footnote 386:

See _Naphtali_, discussed in § 14 of this Chapter; p. 178.

Footnote 387:

Compare _Sol languidus_ (Lucretius, _De rerum nat._, V. 726).

Footnote 388:

The Arabian historians transfer the entire Biblical story of Samson
(Arabic Shamsûn), to the time of the Mulûk al-ṭawâʾif; and in their
narrative the hero fights against Rûm [i.e. the Greek Empire at
Constantinople]; for the jawbone of an ass is substituted that of a
camel. See Ibn al-Athîr al-Taʾrîch al-kâmil, Bûlâḳ edition, I. 146.

Footnote 389:

Schwartz, _Ursprung der Mythologie_, p. 144, where Sif and Loki of the
Scandinavian mythology are also mentioned. The hairiness of the solar
heroes has been translated into an ethnographical peculiarity in
modern Greek popular legends. Bernhard Schmidt (_Das Volksleben der
Neugriechen_, I. 206) says, ‘In Zante I encountered the idea that the
entire power of the ancient Greeks lay in three hairs on the breast,
and vanished if these were cut off, but returned when the hairs grew
again.’

Footnote 390:

See Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 345, note 1.

Footnote 391: