Chapter X: The Hebrew Myth in the Babylonian Captivity (1)

If we limit the term _Myth_ to those old sentences which the ancients used in speaking of physical changes and phenomena, then the period with which we have to do in this chapter lies outside the history of the Hebrew Myth; for the latter ceased to have any further growth to chronicle as the influence of Prophetism extended. Now, in place of the free life, organic development and gradual transformation of the myth, we have it in a final and canonical literary form, which we had to use as the only accessible source for discovering the original, and as a handle to guide us in the analytical treatment of its development. But it is not to be supposed that the parts of the Old Testament which we use as sources of knowledge on the Hebrew Myth contain the entire stock of the mythical treasures of the Hebrews, which these very fragments prove to have been very various. It must rather be assumed that in the period separating the final elaboration of these myths from their ultimate reduction to writing, a large portion of the stock was lost; which seems particularly likely, when it is considered how little importance the new religious school attached to this aspect of the Hebrew mind. Some remnants of unwritten stories have been preserved in Tradition; but the Tradition, again, has come down to us in a form which makes it difficult to discriminate the truly traditional from what belongs only to individuals (see _supra_, pp. 32, 33).

Thus the history of the Hebrew Myth after the rise of the Prophets can only be treated as a portion of the history of literature; _i.e._ it endeavours to discover the influences to which the stories were subjected during their reduction to writing. And at the outset we excluded all such investigations from the circle of our present studies.

But after the cessation of Hebrew independence the cycle of Hebrew stories received from another quarter an addition, which, though neither touching the domain of Mythology proper, nor working with elements already furnished by the Hebrew Myth, nevertheless is attached so closely to those stories which were formed by transformation of the old myths, that it ought not to be passed over in silence when we are considering the cycle of Hebrew stories.

We have already had occasion to observe the receptive tendency of the Hebrew mind, which was manifested in its contact with Canaanitish civilisation. At the first assault made by a mind superior to itself, it willingly opened its gates, and even when struggling for its national character and individuality it did not spurn the intellectual property of its antagonists. In the formation of the thought of Jahveh, and especially of the central idea of that thought, we discovered a productive genius for the first time aroused in the Hebrew people. But Jahveism came upon a nation too far gone in political impotence and dissension to be kindled even by such a spark to spiritual action. It found the nation at the very threshold of that political division which not long afterwards it had to lament beside the streams of Babylon. There the prophetic idea lived on, and indeed reached its zenith in the Babylonian Isaiah. But hieratic influences also continued to operate; and the best that the people could effect was the compromise between Jahveism and the sacerdotal tendencies represented by Ezekiel. This compromise found expression at the restoration of the State, and gave its tone and colour to the larger portion of the Biblical literature.

The receptive tendency of the Hebrews manifested itself again prominently during the Babylonian Captivity. Here first they gained an opportunity of forming for themselves a complete and harmonious conception of the world. The influence of Canaanitish civilisation could not then be particularly powerful on the Hebrews; for that civilisation, the highest point of which was attained by the Phenicians, was quite dwarfed by the mental activity exhibited in the monuments of the Babylonian and Assyrian Empire, which we are now able to admire in all their grandeur. There the Hebrews found more to receive than some few civil, political, and religious institutions. The extensive and manifold literature which they found there could not but act on a receptive mind as a powerful stimulus; for it is not to be imagined that the nation when dragged into captivity lived so long in the Babylonian-Assyrian Empire without gaining any knowledge of its intellectual treasures. Schrader’s latest publications on Assyrian poetry have enabled us to establish a striking similarity between both the course of ideas and the poetical form of a considerable portion of the Old Testament, especially of the Psalms, and those of this newly-discovered Assyrian poetry.[713] It would be a great mistake to account for this similarity by reference to a common Semitic origin in primeval times; for we can only resort to that in cases which do not go beyond the most primitive elements of intellectual life and ideas of the world, or designations of things of the external world. Conceptions of a higher and more complicated kind, as well as esthetic points, can certainly not be carried off into the mists of a prehistoric age. It is much better to keep to more real and tangible ground, and to suppose those points of contact between Hebrew and Assyrian poetry which are revealed by Schrader’s, Lenormant’s, and George Smith’s publications, to form part of the contributions made by the highly civilised Babylonians and Assyrians to the Hebrews in the course of the important period of the Captivity.

We see from this that the intellect of Babylon and Assyria exerted a more than passing influence on that of the Hebrews, not merely touching it, but entering deep into it and leaving its own impress upon it. The Assyrian poetry of the kind just mentioned stands in the same relation to that of the Hebrews as does the plain narrative of King Mesha’s Inscription and of some Phenician votive tablets to the narrative texts of the Hebrews, and as does the sacrificial Tablet of Marseilles to the Hebrews’ beginnings of a sacerdotal constitution. The Babylonian and Assyrian influence is of course much more extensive, pregnant and noteworthy.

The most prominent monument of this important influence is presented to us in the Biblical story of the Deluge. It was attempted long ago to discover points of contact between the respective narratives of the universal flood by the guidance of Berosus; but the only possible result of these endeavours was to encourage the old theory of an idea common to all mankind, which expressed itself in the story of a great general flood. To be sure, no obvious reason appears why this idea should force itself unbidden upon the reflexion of ancient humanity. For, with all that we know of the oldest subjects of the thought of mankind from the unquestioned results of Comparative Mythology, we must ask why the idea of an all-destroying flood, or even of a partial one confined to a limited territory, should necessarily occupy the foreground in the oldest picture of the world? In point of fact, a great number of nations are found destitute of any story of a flood. For instance, the oldest Greek mythology has no such idea; it cannot be proved to have been known to the Greeks earlier than the sixth century B.C. Whether it is indigenous and of high antiquity in India has also been doubted by distinguished scholars.[714]

On the other hand, the Cuneiform original of the Assyrian story of the Deluge, discovered by George Smith, has so much similarity, or we may rather say congruity, with the form of the story preserved in the Bible, even with respect to the raven and the dove,[715] that we are entitled to express an opinion _a priori_ on these two narratives, to the effect that they point to a greater community of formation than would be the case if the community dated from the primeval Semitic age. For in that case, supposing the elements of the Deluge-story to have been so fully developed in the earliest Semitic age as we find them in the Bible and the Cuneiform Inscriptions, we must find something similar in all other Semitic nations also. It would be almost unaccountable why nothing can be traced among the Phenicians that could be placed side by side with this Deluge-story, and would be the more extraordinary if the conception of such a story took place in the age when the North-Semitic tribes were still living together.

The conclusion is accordingly almost irresistible, that the Hebrews borrowed this whole story of the Deluge from the Babylonians, and propagated it in a form resembling the Babylonian original, even in its details and mode of expression. Moreover, Babylon is the district most of all suited to the working-out of a story of Deluge; for it is certain from Von Bohlen’s and Tuch’s demonstrations, that such fully developed stories of floods can only occur in nations which have in their territory rivers liable to great overflows. Consequently the region of the great twin streams of Mesopotamia is the most likely cradle for an elaborate Deluge story.[716] A.H. Sayce, one of the most eminent English Assyriologists, in the _Theological Review_ of July 1873, propounds the view that the Biblical account of the Deluge consists of two narratives: the older being Elohistic and based on a Hebrew Deluge-story, the other being placed by its side by a Jahveistic narrator in the Babylonian Captivity, and being identical with the Babylonian story preserved in the document consulted by George Smith.[717] Now, independently of the doubt as to the existence of an exclusively Hebrew Deluge-story, and of the fact that identity with the Babylonian stories has been proved of the Elohistic account also,[718] even Sayce’s conception of the matter quite suffices to establish the view that the Hebrews in Babylonia at least amplified, if they did not actually construct, the Biblical story of the Deluge. It cannot be true, as Max Duncker[719] lately wrote, ‘that these stories present to us an _ancient_ and _common_ possession of the Semitic tribes of the Euphrates and Tigris country.’ We cannot assume that in those primeval, prehistoric times when the Semitic tribes, or at least the Northern group of that race, lived all together before the separation, it matters not where, they formed in common stories which presuppose a high and advanced view of the world, like the Cosmogonies and the story of the Deluge connected therewith. At that earliest stage of human life, man labours with far simpler apperceptions than those which are requisite to form such stories. The myth in its very earliest mould, in which it is connected with the formation of language, occupies him first. But at all events, the Babylonian story received in its Hebrew transformation a purification in a monotheistic sense; or as Duncker himself appropriately adds, ‘the account of the Deluge lies before us in a purer and more dignified shape in the writings of the Hebrews.’

I showed in a previous section that Noah is one of those Solar figures of which the Biblical source has still preserved some mythical features. There is no intrinsic reason why the story of the Deluge should be particularly tacked on to the person of Noah; the Assyrian tablets give Hasisadra as the name of the man saved from the flood. If the connexion of Noah with the Deluge were to be maintained at all hazards, it would be best to argue that ancient mythical traditions called him (as well as Adam) the progenitor of the human race; the other Solar figures generally assume a position hostile to the nation. The harmonising tendency, which I have already had occasion to notice, might then easily make use of Noah as hero for the story of the Deluge learned at Babylon, since here was an excellent opportunity to establish his title as ancestor of the human race. But it may be taken for granted that this use was made of Noah’s name, not only at the later period when the Deluge-story was inserted in the great mass of traditional stories, but as soon as ever the Babylonian story was borrowed by the Hebrews. This is guaranteed by the Prophet of the Captivity, who calls the Deluge mê Nôach ‘the water of Noah.’ ‘For like the water of Noah is this (thy distress) unto me, of which (water) I swore against the water of Noah coming again over the earth [Gen. VIII. 21 _et seq._]: so do I swear against being wroth with thee and rebuking thee’ (Is. LIV. 9). In Babylon, also, the Hebrews appear to have received an impulse to work out such a history of Creation, intricate and plastically jointed, as is contained in the opening passages of Genesis. I do not mean that the cosmogony of the Babylonians was the original from which that of the Bible was copied, for in this particular matter of cosmogonies the construction of the Biblical account exhibits great individuality. But the tendency of the mind to inquire after the first beginning of both the physical and the moral order of the world was first fully roused during the residence at Babylon, so far advanced in speculations of this nature. I am confirmed in this assumption by the Babylonian story of Creation, lately discovered and edited by George Smith, which, as presented by that learned pioneer, shows great accordance with the corresponding account in Genesis.[720] It is at all events an element of the subject in hand which cannot be left unnoticed, that the notion of the bôrê and yôṣêr ‘Creator’ (the terms used in the cosmogony in Genesis), as an integral part of the idea of God, are first brought into common usage by the Prophets of the Captivity, especially the Babylonian Isaiah, who is particularly fond of the expression bôrê.[721] The older Prophets also know Jahveh as Creator of the world; but it is self-evident that they do not so strongly emphasise the idea, or refer to it so frequently, as for instance the Isaiah of the Captivity. Amos IV. 13, for example, says, ‘For lo, he that formeth mountains and createth wind, and declareth to man what is his meditation, that maketh the dawn winged and walketh on the high places of the earth—his name is Jahveh the God of Hosts.’ This passage stands in no relation whatever to the cosmogony of Genesis; indeed, in speaking of the dawn as gifted with wings (see _supra_, p. 116), it refers rather to the mythical conceptions of antiquity, as also the older Isaiah frequently does. The Prophet of the Captivity, on the other hand, refers to the ideas of the cosmogony in Genesis, as is clear in Is. XL. 26, XLV. 7 (where he speaks of the Creator of light and darkness), XLII. 5, XLV. 18, especially this last passage, which refers to the banishment of the tôhû through the act of creation. By the story of creation the celebration of the Sabbath was established on entirely new grounds. Whilst in the older conception (which finds expression in the Decalogue in Deuteronomy V. 15) the Sabbath has a purely theocratic significance, and is intended to remind the Hebrews of their miraculous deliverance from Egyptian slavery after long servitude, the later version of the Decalogue (Ex. XX. 11) justifies it by referring to the history of the Creation, in which after six days of work the Creator took rest.

We cannot here enter into the question of the geographical position of the ʿÊden of the Bible, nor even inquire whether the original of the idea of Eden is found in the corresponding feature of Iranian tradition; but it may be assumed that the Biblical account of Eden also arose at Babylon. It may indeed be generally presumed that the Biblical accounts of the Cosmogony and the origin of all things had not, like the matter of the old mythology, lived a long life of perhaps many thousand years in the mouths of successive generations, before the first beginnings of literary record were reached. On the contrary, we find in these parts of the Bible so artistic a perfection of description, such a harmonious roundness of narrative, that we are justified in presuming that they were not preceded by the oral concatenations of a long life of tradition, but are rather sublime imaginations which were written down soon after they were conceived in the educated circles of the nation, so as to become the common property of the whole people. There was in this a double stimulus received from the Babylonians: first, to meditate on the earliest things—the origin of the world, man, and other things of a general nature—and secondly, to produce writings on these things. The Prophets of the Hebrews at Babylon unquestionably exercised a great influence on the production of these narratives, and gladly admitted whatever tended to promote the deepening of the idea of Jahveh, as elements in their religions conception of the world. For the Prophet did not occupy a position towards the masses like the member of a corporation which opposes the people; he grew up out of the people, and raised himself above them by his individual power of thought. Yet it is easily intelligible that the Prophet, while gladly appropriating the idea of Jahveh as bôrê ‘Creator,’ would not set much store by the petty details of the cosmogonic imagination. The second Isaiah, the Prophet of Babylon _par excellence_, goes so far as to exhort his people, ‘Record ye not beginnings, and antiquities contemplate ye not’ (Is. XLIII. 18); still he does not go into open opposition to this mental tendency, and sees nothing dangerous in it—the less so, as he has himself unconsciously adopted its conclusions and often employed them in his masterly addresses.

Thus also the story of the Garden of Eden, as a supplement to the history of the Creation, was written down at Babylon, and therefore not long after the previous stories. A reference to the passage in Gen. II. 14, where the first three of the four rivers of the garden of Eden have their geographical position accurately defined, but the fourth is only mentioned by the words, ‘And the fourth river is Perâth (Euphrates),’ is of itself sufficient to show that those for whom the story was written must have known the Euphrates as their own river, requiring no further designation, and consequently that this must have been written on its banks. Now, although the expression ‘Garden of Eden’ occurs also before the Captivity (Joel II. 3), yet the Prophets of the Captivity make the first reference to that character and quality of Eden which is conspicuous in Genesis. In Joel’s words only the general idea of a ‘pleasure-garden’ appears to be connected with the name Eden. But in Ezekiel (especially frequently in Chap. XXXI.) we find the appellation ‘Garden of God’ used to designate Eden more fully; and in the parallelism of the members of the verse the Babylonian Isaiah (LI. 3) puts the ‘Garden of Jahveh’ in the succeeding member to correspond to ‘Eden’ in the preceding:

He makes her desert like _Eden_,
And her dry land like the _Garden of Jahveh_.

It is also evident from the same Prophet’s words (Is. XLIII. 27), ‘Thy first father sinned,’ that he connected the story of the Fall with Eden, or at least that he knew the story. The mention of the doctrine of the Fall takes us to a domain which has a close connexion with the subject of this chapter. I refer to the ideas of dogmatic religion pervading the stories formed during the Captivity, which subsequently, while the canon of Scripture was being drawn up, were admitted even into those parts of Scripture whose matter dated from an earlier period, came into full life in the second Hebrew commonwealth, and continued to live in the later Jewish Synagogue. Through the growth of Persian power and Persian influence in Western Asia, where there existed many states in a condition of vassalage to Babylon, the Iranian views of religion could not but exert a great influence on the parent-state also, even before Babylon was quite overwhelmed by them through its conquest by Cyrus at the end of the Captivity of the Hebrews. Opportunity was therefore not wanting to the Hebrews to become well acquainted with the main ideas of Iranian theology; and desire was also present, as their minds were then intent upon obtaining clear views on the origin of the physical and moral order of the world, and on the chief questions concerning the ‘Origins.’ This influence of the Iranians on the Hebrews was exhibited not only in relation to matter, but also to forms. For there is great probability in favour of the idea, that the first suggestion to codify the sacerdotal laws of sacrifice, purification and others, came to the Hebrews from the example of the Persians.[722] One portion of these ideas has found a place in the Babylonian sections of Genesis—that which belonged to the cosmogony; others were not expressed in the Canon at all, but lived in tradition, until tradition itself was fixed in writing. This question, which would at last shed light on the details of Iranian influence on the narratives of the Pentateuch, is perversely enough not grappled with at its starting-point by many persons who labour with nervous eagerness to discover in the Iranian writings every letter of the Jewish Agâdâ, even in cases in which such a proceeding is utterly unjustifiable, and borrowing can only be suggested through the wildest guesswork. Equally perverse is the unhistorical assumption, which point-blank denies the very possibility of the Hebrews having borrowed anything from the Persians, ‘among whom they never lived.’[723] Professor Spiegel, by referring to an acquaintance of Abraham with Zarathustra, has spirited the question off into the atmosphere of so distant a time that it is impossible with any regard for critical history to build upon his foundation,[724] and preferable even to adopt Volney’s forgotten theory,[725] which makes the influence of Magism on the Hebrews begin with the destruction of the Northern kingdom. Others, by assuming an influence exerted by the Semites on the Iranians, and by a mistaken reverence for Hebrew antiquity, have cut away the ground from any scientific investigation of the question.[726] It is a mistaken, and anything but the right sort of reverence, when we would rather leave unknown or misunderstood a region of literature which we all love and venerate, and to which we owe most of our moral and religious ideals, than trace its elements and analyse their psychological and literary history, so as to understand the object of our love. Has Homer lost his attractiveness since we have subjected him to critical analysis, or the divine Plato forfeited any of his divinity since we have discovered some of the sources of his ideas? For the fact of Originality is not the only criterion of the admirable. Not only that which is cast in one piece from top to toe, is one whole: an alien substance which becomes a civilising agent to that in which it rests, and a patchwork which has turned out a harmonious whole, are not less admirable or perfect. Julius Braun says very justly,[727] ‘There is another and indeed the highest kind of originality, which is not the beginning but the result of historical growth—the originality of mature age. We have this, when an individual or a nation has gathered up all existing means of culture, and then still possesses power to pass on beyond them and deal freely with all elements received from the past.’

Thus, then, it was quite possible for many Iranian elements to be received into the system of the literature and cosmic conceptions of the Hebrews; and we do nothing towards saving the honour of the Hebrew nationality by using force to make the Iranians pupils of the Hebrews. Karl Twesten saw the truth as to their mutual relation; and I quote his words, to show the impression made by the coincidences of Iranian and Hebrew antiquity on a sober-minded historian who considers the question free from any previous pledges to either side. ‘It cannot be pleaded that the Iranians may have borrowed from the Hebrews or drawn from the same source. For, on the one hand, these things are there an essential part of a system, whereas the Pentateuch makes no further use of them; and, on the other, they existed in times and places where, even if the possibility of a very early formation of these stories be conceded, the Hebrew theology could not possibly have any influence. The Israelites were so little known, and so rarely in contact with other nations, and the priesthoods of antiquity so exclusive, and oriental Îrân so distant, that no early influence of Mosaic doctrines on the theories of the Zend books is even conceivable. But Iranian influences on the nations of Western Asia are probable and inevitable, from the time when the Medes and Persians became the dominant powers.’[728]

Such, in general terms, were the causes which yielded an increase of matter to the Hebrew store of legends during the Captivity. Through the revision and literary elaboration of the old legends in the period of the Captivity also, many Babylonian features naturally entered into the picture. I may mention Nöldeke’s plausible idea (in his _Untersuchungen_), that the years and cycles of years in the Patriarchal history point to Babylon and are connected with astronomical systems. The last systematic revision of the Table of Nations (Gen. X.) may also be referred to the same time and influence. The preparation of such a survey of all known nations of the earth seems to have been possible in that ancient time only in an empire which through its wide-spread dominion had an extensive circle of view open to it in relation to geography and ethnology, and would be almost impossible within the limits of the kingdom of Judah. Although we have at the present day good reasons for treating as a mere fable the more extravagant ideas that were long current, and gave rise to many lamentable prejudices, of the utter seclusion of the Hebrews in Canaan, yet their view can hardly have reached to such a distance, and, if it did, cannot have taken in such special points, as are met with in the Table of Nations. But we should exaggerate the possible influence of the connexion with the Phenicians, if with Tuch[729] we were to derive from it the ethnographical information requisite to produce that Table. And we should be applying the measure of modern expeditions to David’s and Solomon’s navigation—to which Mauch attributes a colonisation of Africa by Jews in connexion with the discovery of Ophir—if we were to suppose that navigation to have yielded this same geographical and ethnographical knowledge as its scientific result.

The attention of the Hebrews could not be directed to ethnographical problems on so large a scale before their residence among the confusion of nationalities in the empire of Babylon and Assyria. That period is also the first at which interest could be felt in another problem—Biblical answer to which is avowedly given at Babylon. I mean the story of the Confusion of Tongues at Babel (Babylon) in Genesis XI. 4–9.

It is not difficult to understand that the Hebrews, who in Canaan, a country of such linguistic uniformity, had no occasion to pay attention to the fact of the variety of tongues, on entering the Babylonian empire with its varying languages were naturally led to ask the question to which the eleventh chapter of Genesis offers a reply. Why, even earlier than this the Northern empire was a nation whose tongue they did not understand (Deut. XXVIII. 49),[730] ‘a nation from afar, an ancient nation, a nation from of old, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say’ (Jer. V. 15). Whilst even in Hesiod’s time men were already called by the Greeks μέροπες ‘speaking variously’ (_Works and Days_, 109, 142), to the ancient Hebrew ‘the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.’ Now, as the impulse to ask this question arose in Babylon, the place where such a problem must force itself most irresistibly on the attention, so Babylon was found to be also the scene of the solution of the problem. It is so natural to place the origin of an event or a phenomenon at the place where it has first occurred to us or we have first perceived it. But, in fact, we find the story of the building of the Tower taking its place among the latest Cuneiform discoveries.[731] That the origin of the Table of Nations hangs together with the story of the origin of the diversity of languages is evident, not only from the inner connexion between the respective problems, but also from the fact that the Table of Nations always distinguishes the various races ‘after their families, _after their tongues_, in their countries, in their nations’ (Gen. X. 5, 20, 31).

The attempted etymology of Bâbhel from bâlal ‘to mix,’ which is tacked on to the story, is quite secondary; it is impossible to approve the notion that this etymology was itself the cause of the invention of the story that languages had their origin at Babylon. On the contrary, the essential part of the story is the origin at Babylon; the etymology is a secondary point, by which it was attempted to leave no part unexplained. People in antiquity, and even in modern times those who are more affected by a word than a thought, were fond of finding in the word a sort of reflexion of the corresponding thing. Indeed, many component parts of ancient stories owe their existence only to such false etymologies. Dido’s ox-hides and their connexion with the founding of Carthage are only based on the Greek _byrsa_, a misunderstood modified pronunciation of the Semitic _bîrethâ_ ‘fortress, citadel.’ The shining Apollo, born of light, is said to be born in Delos or Lycia, because the terms Apollon _Dêlios_ and _Lykêgenês_ were not understood. The Phenician origin of the Irish, asserted in clerical chronicles of the middle ages, only rests on a false derivation of the Irish word _fena_, pl. _fion_, ‘beautiful, agreeable.’ Even the savage tribes of America are misled by a false etymology to call the Michabo, the Kadmos of the Red Indians (from _michi_ ‘great’ and _wabos_ ‘white’), a White Hare.[732] Falsely interpreted names of towns most frequently cause the invention of fables. How fanciful the operation of popular etymology is in the case of local names is observable in many such names when translated into another language. By the lake of Gennesereth lies Hippos, the district surrounding which was called Hippene. This word in Phenician denoted a harbour, and is found not only in Carthaginian territory as the name of the See of St. Jerome, but also as the name of places in Spain. The Hebrew chôph ‘shore,’ and the local names Yâphô (Jaffa) and Ḥaifâ, are unquestionably related to it. But the Greeks regarded it from a Grecian point of view, and thought it meant Horse-town. Did not they call ships sea-horses, and attribute horses to the Sea-god? Then, the Arabs directly translated this ἵππος Hippos into ḳalʿat al-Ḥuṣân: ḥuṣân being _horse_ in modern Arabic.[733] The Persian town Rey was made the subject of a fable, which I mention here partly because it exhibits some similarity with the subject of the ‘Tower of Babel.’ The Persian chroniclers relate,[734] that the old king Keykâvûs had a chariot constructed, by which, after various preparations, he intended to ascend to heaven. But God commanded the wind to carry the king into the clouds. Arrived there, he was dashed down again, and fell into the sea of Gurgân. Keychosrau, son of Shâwush, coming to that coast, employed the same chariot to convey him to Babylon. When he came to the locality of the modern Rey, people said, bireyy âmed Keychosrau, ‘on a chariot came Keychosrau.’ He caused a city to be built at this place, which was called Rey, because a chariot is so called in Persian.[735]

Granting all this, it is generally only accessory features added to the main stem of the story that owe their origin to a mistaken attempt at etymologising. The existence and first origin of an entire story can scarcely be produced by an unsatisfactory etymology. With regard to the Hebrew stories, in which etymologising plays a considerable part, the same rule is, generally speaking, to be observed. There also the story is enriched in details by etymological attempts suggested later. But it is not brought into life in the first instance by this factor. On the contrary, as a connexion must be discovered between the name and the circumstances of its bearer, and the original mythical relation between them has been long lost to memory, features quite foreign to the name itself, but characteristic of the story, are sometimes brought into etymological connexion with the name and fitted on to the story. From this source emanates the striking insufficiency of many of these etymological explanations, _e.g._ of the interpretation of Abhrâhâm by Abh hâmôn ‘Father of a multitude,’ and Nôach (Noah) by nicham ‘to comfort.’ In the Hebrew Myth of Civilisation, Noah is the most prominent founder of agriculture and inventor of agricultural implements; consequently it is he that procures comfort for men against the curse imposed on the soil. This feature is not etymologically expressed in the name Noah; but the later formation of the story about him invented a false etymology, in order to connect it with the name. The case is the same with the story of the Languages, in which Bâbhel is derived from bâlal ‘to mix.’ The etymology relates quite as frequently to a very subordinate feature in the story, as for instance in the interpretation of most of the names of Jacob’s sons in Gen. XXIX, XXX, or in the derivation of the name Ḳayin (Cain) from ḳânâ ‘to gain.’ Sometimes, lastly, the etymon is given correctly, while its original relation to the person bearing the name is lost with the loss of the mythical consciousness. In such cases there frequently arises a new feature of the story. Thus, for instance, it is quite correctly affirmed that Yiṣchâḳ (Isaac) comes from ṣâchaḳ ‘to laugh:’ but it is no longer understood that the word designates the ‘Laughing one’ (the Sun), and so the laughter of the aged mother to whom the birth of a son is announced beforehand, or the laughter of other people on hearing the announcement, is introduced. In the etymology of the name Yaʿaḳôbh (Jacob) both the etymon and that to which it refers (ʿâḳêbh ‘heel’) are correctly preserved, not however without the introduction of a foreign etymological element (ʿiḳḳêbh ‘to cheat’), which became prominent in the subsequent development of the story. The same phenomenon also appears on the domain of the Arabian stories, a region of Semitism which has still to be explored for mythological questions. I have no doubt that the genealogical tables of the Arabs contain names which will be discovered by sound etymology to be Solar designations. This seems to me, for example, to be the case with Hâshim. The story that he and his twin-brother ʿAbd Shams were born with their foreheads joined together, or with the forehead of one joined to the hand of the other,[736] resembles the myths of the birth of Jacob and Esau, and of that of Perez and Zerah.[737] It was worked out with an object during the later dynastic rivalry between the Hâshimites and Ummayads (descendants of ʿAbd Shams). But Hâshim is ‘the Breaker,’ thus answering perfectly to Pereṣ (Perez) or Gideʿôn. When the mythical consciousness was lost, a story bearing an obviously apocryphal character was fabricated to give it an etymology. It is this. On occasion of a famine resulting from a bad harvest, Hâshim went to Syria, where he had a quantity of bread baked. This he put into large sacks, loaded his camels with it, and took it to Mekka. There _hashama_, _i.e._ he broke up the bread into bits, sent for butchers, and distributed it among the people of Mekka. Therefore, it is said, he was called Hâshim, ‘the Breaker.’[738] We have here the very same process in the history of etymology which we had occasion to observe in the etymological explanation of Biblical names. Thus, as is obvious in the above-quoted Hebrew examples, it must be admitted that the later etymological conception frequently forced itself into the foreground so much as to obtain recognition as a portion of the narrative.[739] But no entire story, such as that of the Confusion of Tongues at Babel, can be proved to have been formed upon no other basis than an indifferent etymology. So we may with confidence hold to the above-suggested occasion for the origin of this story of the variety of languages. There is good ground for hoping that before very long the recently discovered mythical texts of the Assyrian and Babylonian literature will pour an increasing flood of light on the question discussed in this chapter. The richness of the stores contained in the two latest works of the meritorious scholar George Smith—‘Assyrian Discoveries: an account of exploration and discoveries’ (1876), and ‘The Chaldean Account of Genesis’ (1876)—allow us to entertain the best hopes of this result. It is greatly to be desired that an unprejudiced conception of the matter of Hebrew mythic stories may be promoted by these discoveries. But to attain to the result of true freedom from old errors, it is essential to put away all fears, and to be guided solely and simply by the interests of the Holiest of Holies, namely, scientific truth, in forming a judgment on the priority or simultaneous origin of such stories in different nations.

-----

Footnote 713:

See Supplement to the Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_ of June 19, 1874.

Footnote 714:

I will here cite a passage of Ibn Chaldûn, although not decisive on
questions like the present: ‘Know that the Persians and Indians know
nothing of the Ṭûfân (deluge); some Persians say that it took place
only at Babylon.’ (History, vol. II.) Edward Thomas, in the _Academy_,
1875, p. 401, quotes a passage of al-Bîrûnî, in which it is said that
the Indians, Chinese and Persians have no story of a Deluge, but that
some say that the Persians know of a partial deluge. Burnouf believed
the idea of a Deluge to be originally foreign to Indian mythology, and
to have been borrowed, probably from Chaldaic sources (_Bhâgavata
Purâṇa_, III. XXXI., LI.). A. Weber (in the _Indische Studien_, Heft
2, and on occasion of a critique of Nêve’s writings on the Indian
story of the Deluge, in the _Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1851, V. 526)
declares himself in favour of the indigenousness of the Indian story,
in opposition to Lassen and Roth, who agree with Burnouf.

Footnote 715:

The similarities and differences of the respective stories of the
Deluge are lucidly placed side by side by George Smith in _The
Chaldean Account of Genesis_, p. 286 _et seq._

Footnote 716:

Tuch, _Commentar über die Genesis_, 1st ed. 1838, p. 149; 2nd ed.
1871, p. 47.

Footnote 717:

_Academy_, 1873, no. 77. col. 292.

Footnote 718:

See _Westminster Review_, April 1875, p. 486.

Footnote 719:

_Geschichte des Alterthums_, 4th ed. 1874, I. 186.

Footnote 720:

_The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, pp. 60–112.

Footnote 721:

Consult also Dr. Jacob Auerbach’s article _Ueber den ersten Vers der
Genesis_ in Geiger’s _Zeitsch. für Wissenschaft und Leben_, 1863, Bd.
II. p. 253, who, I now see, comes very near to these ideas, but does
not express them fully or clearly.

Footnote 722:

This view is expounded by Kuenen in his _Religion of Israel_, II. 156.

Footnote 723:

This appears to be Bunsen’s opinion: _God in History_, I. 101.

Footnote 724:

See Max Müller’s essay _Genesis and the Zend-Avesta_ (_Chips_, I. 143
_et seqq._). The Dutch scholar Tiele occupies nearly the same position
as Spiegel on this question, which he discusses fully in his book _De
Godsdienst van Zarathustra_, Haarlem 1864, p. 302 _et seq._

Footnote 725:

_Les Ruines_, XX. 13. System.

Footnote 726:

I must mention a third view on the concurrence of the Hebrew with the
Aryan story of the primeval age; it is that which was first declared
by Ewald in his _History of Israel_, I. 224 _et seqq._, and is adopted
by Lassen and Weber among the Germans, and by Burnouf and (with some
hesitation) Renan among the French. In this view the coincidences in
the respective primitive stories are to be accounted for by common
prehistoric traditions which the Aryans and the Semites formed in
their original common dwelling-place concerning primeval history.
Renan speaks shortly on the subject in his _Histoire gén. des Langues
sémitiques_, pp. 480 _et seq._

Footnote 727:

_Naturgeschichte der Sage_, I. 8.

Footnote 728:

_Die religiösen, politischen und socialen Ideen der Asiatischen
Culturvölker, etc._, edited by M. Lazarus, Berlin 1872, p. 590.

Footnote 729:

_Commentar zur Genesis_, 1st ed. 1838, p. 200; 2nd ed. 1871, p. 157.

Footnote 730:

It should be observed that in the postexilian imitation of this sermon
of castigations (now called in the Synagogue tôkhâchâ) in Lev. XXVI.
14–43, the circumstance that the people would be carried off by an
enemy ‘whose language they understood not’ is omitted. Other points in
the tôkhâchâ of Leviticus indicate that it was imagined by one who had
a knowledge of the Captivity; so e.g. the especial accentuation of
residence in the land of an enemy, as in vv. 32, 36, 38, 39.

Footnote 731:

George Smith, _The Chaldean Account of Genesis_, pp. 158 _et seqq._

Footnote 732:

Fiske, _Myths and Myth makers_, pp. 71, 154. See Tylor, _Primitive
Culture_, I. 357 _et seq._

Footnote 733:

From Sepp’s _Jerusalem und das heilige Land_, II. 157.

Footnote 734:

In Yâḳût, _Geogr. Dictionary_, II. 893. The explanation of the name
Thakîf in Yâḳût, III. 498, quite reminds one of the Old Testament way
of giving etymologies of names.

Footnote 735:

See some useful quotations in L. Löw’s _Beiträge zur jüd.
Alterthumskunde_, Szegedin 1875, II. 388; and very interesting
references in Pott’s _Wilhelm von Humboldt und die
Sprachwissenschaft_, Berlin 1876, p. CIX. _et seq._

Footnote 736:

_Zeitsch. d. D. M. G._, 1853, VII. p. 28.

Footnote 737:

See supra, pp. 133, 183.

Footnote 738:

Ibn Dureyd, _Kitâb al-Ishtîḳâḳ_, ed. Wüstenfeld, Göttingen 1853, p. 9.

Footnote 739:

See Ewald, _History of Israel_, I. 19 _et seq._

-----

EXCURSUS

A. (_Page 30._)
_Agadic Etymologies._

In another direction also the Agâdâ is wont to supply the omissions of the Scripture. In passages where the Bible itself gives no reason for the choice or origin of a name, the Agâdâ quite independently gives its own etymological reason: this peculiarity occurs excessively often (e.g. in the etymology of the name Miriam in the Midrâsh to the Song of Songs, II. 12, that of the names of the two mid wives Shiphrah and Puah, who in addition are identified with Jochebed and Miriam, in the Talmûd Bab. tr. Sôṭâ, fol. 11. b, etc.).[740] Here I will bring forward out of a great number of instances one which affords an opportunity of exhibiting an interesting coincidence between the Jewish and the Mohammedan Agâdâ, and affords a proof how extensive and how far-reaching into the smallest detail are the loans taken by the Mohammedan from the Rabbinical theologians, and on the other hand how independently and how completely in an Arabian spirit these borrowed treasures were worked up.

In Gen. XLVI. 21, Benjamin’s sons are enumerated without any etymological observations. The Agâdâ supplies the deficiency, and puts every one of the names of Joseph’s nephews into connexion with Benjamin’s melancholy remembrance of his lost brother. The interpretations in question are contained in the Talmûd and Midrâsh; and they are found in a different, but probably the most original form in the Targûm Jerus. on the passage; and it is sufficient to refer to this. According to this, Benjamin named his ten sons ʿal perishûthâ de-Yôsêph achôhî ‘for the separation from his brother Joseph:’ thus Belaʿ, ‘because Joseph was devoured-away (i.e. _torn away_) from him,’ de-ithbelaʿ minnêh: Bekher, ‘because Joseph was his mother’s first-born,’ bukhrâ de-immêh: Ashbêl, ‘from the captivity into which Joseph fell,’ de-halakh be-shibhyâthâ: Gêrâ, ‘because Joseph had to live as a stranger in a foreign land,’ de-ithgar be-arʿâ nukhrâʾâ: Naʿamân, ‘because Joseph was charming and dear to him,’ da-hawâ nâʿîm we-yaḳḳîr: Êchî, ‘because he was his brother (achôhî):’ Rôsh, because he was the most excellent in his father’s house: Muppîm, because he was sold to the land Môph (Egypt): Chuppîm, because Benjamin had exactly reached the age of eighteen years, that of maturity for marriage (chuppâh) in men:[741] Ard, from yârad ‘to go down,’ because Joseph had to go down to Egypt.

The Arabic pendant to this Agâdâ I found in a book Zahr al-kimâm fî ḳiṣṣat Yûsuf ʿaleyhi al-salâm, by the learned Mâlikite ʿOmar b. Ibrâhîm al-Ausî al-Anṣârî. It is the same book as Ḥâjî Chalfâ quotes (V. 381, no. 11386) by the name Majâlis ḳiṣṣat Yûsuf,[742] although the commencement given by him does not agree with the initial words of our Codex (No. 7 of the Supplement, in the Leipzig University Library). The book is divided into seventeen majâlis, or sessions—an arrangement not uncommon in Arabic works of a hortatory character or touching on religious knowledge. Each mejlis contains a portion of the life of Joseph, always introduced by a verse of the Ḳorân, and abundantly mixed with poems and other episodes and intermezzos. It is an instructive source for the legend of Joseph among the Mohammedans. It would take us too far from the subject if I were to give a full characterisation of the book. I will therefore only mention that it betrays a close relation to the Jewish legend, and that the author generally gives frequent occasion for the conjecture that the Bible and the Jewish tradition were not strange to him or to the sources from which he drew. But everything appears here curiously altered. For example, the cry of Isaac when deceived, ‘The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau’ (Gen. XXVII. 22), is there given (fol. 5 _recto_) thus: al-lams lams ʿAysau w-al-rîḥ rîḥ Yaʿḳûb ‘the touch is the touch of Esau, but the smell is the smell of Jacob’ (see Gen. XXVII. 27). The passage with which we have to do here occurs fol. 149 _recto_.

The scene is the brothers’ dinner in Joseph’s house. Each sits beside his full brother; Benjamin alone has none, and begins to weep bitterly. Then Joseph approaches him, and after a long dialogue makes himself known to Benjamin as his full brother, and talks with him. Afterwards Joseph asks him, ‘Youth, hast thou a wife?’ ‘Yes,’ replies Benjamin. ‘And children?’ ‘I have three sons.’ ‘What name gavest thou to the eldest?’ ‘Ḏîb (Wolf).’ ‘And why didst thou choose this name?’ ‘Because my brothers were of opinion that a wolf had devoured my brother, and I wished to have a memento of the catastrophe.’ ‘And what didst thou call the second?’ ‘I named him Dam (Blood).’ ‘And wherefore?’ ‘Because my brothers brought a coat dipped in blood, and I wished to preserve the memory of it.’ ‘And what is thy third son’s name?’ ‘Yûsuf, that my brother’s name may not be forgotten.’

But even names whose etymology occurs in the Bible itself are provided by the Agâdâ with new etymological explanations: so e.g. Yiṣchâḳ, is explained by yâṣâ or yêṣê chôḳ ‘A statute has gone or will go forth.’[743]

B. (Page 34.)
_A Hermeneutical Law of the Agâdâ._

The hermeneutic principle to which we have referred in the text, although not so well known to the Agadists as it was in other circles (for they have nowhere expressly declared it), is to be traced throughout their whole conception of Scripture. It is the principle that _the intensity of the sense of a word increases with the enlargement of its from_. This law was also set up by the Greek etymologists, and applied even to the point of pedantry by one of the oldest grammarians, Tryphon.[744] With the Arabic grammarians it controls the entire grammatical field: ziyâdet al-lafẓ (al-binâ) tadullu ʿala ziyâdet al-maʿna ‘the increase of the word (the form) points to increase of the meaning.’ In Agadic exegesis also it is often accepted as a valid rule of Scriptural interpretation. In the case of reduplicated forms especially, the reduplicated indicates a fuller concept than the unreduplicated: e.g. lêbhâbh compared with lêbh (both denoting ‘heart’) is treated as signifying a ‘double heart,’ comprising the good and the evil impulse (yêṣer ṭôbh and yêṣer hâraʿ: Sifrê on Deuter. VI. 5. § 32). So also in shephîphôn compared with shephî, the doubled _ph_ is supposed to point to an enlargement of the signification.

But this word shephîphôn contains besides the reduplication of a radical letter an affix _ôn_. This affix is also generally brought into connexion with an enlargement of the signification, exactly as is done by the interpreters of the Ḳorân with the corresponding Arabic affix _ân_.[745] An example from the Agâdâ is as follows: in Berêshîth rabbâ, sect. 97, Yôsê b. Chalaphtâ says, 'The labours of bread-winning are double as laborious as the labours of child-birth, for of these it is said "With pain (beʿeṣebh) thou shalt bear children" (Gen. III. 16), while of those it is said, "With painfulness (beʿiṣṣâbhôn) thou shalt enjoy it [its fruits] all the days of thy life"' (_ib._ v. 17). Hence the _ôn_ affixed to ʿeṣeb is taken to indicate a doubling of the pain; just as the _ôn_ added to shephî in shephîphôn denoted lameness in both feet.

C. (_Page 100_.)
_Pools and Whips of the Sun._

There is no doubt that the ancient idea which associates Pools with the rising and the setting sun was based on the conception that the rising sun emerged from water and the setting sun sank into water. In later times, when the original mythical circumstances had lost their clearness, the conception of the Sun’s Pools underwent a considerable modification. On this subject we must notice two different conceptions, both of which sound quite mythical, which are preserved in the Jewish and Arabic tradition. One of these supposed that the Sun exhibited such an eagerness for the performance of his work, that the whole world would be set on fire if its consequences were not moderated by various means for cooling down the heat; and these means are the Pools of the Sun. In the Midrâsh on Ecclesiastes, I. 6, it is said: ‘It is reported in the name of Rabbi Nâthân that the ball of the Sun is fixed in a reservoir with a pool of water before him; when he is about to go forth he is full of fire, and God weakens his force by that water, that he may not burn up the whole world.’ A similar account is found in the Shôchêr ṭôbh on Ps. XIX. 8, and in the same Midrâsh on v. 8 the Talmudic theory of the _upper waters_ (mayîm hâ-ʿelyônîm, which are said to be above the heaven) is brought into connexion with this idea. Another conception is diametrically opposite to this. According to this view, the Sun at first resists the performance of his business, and is only moved to do it by force and violent measures. In the Midrâsh Êkhâ rabbâ, Introduction, § 25, the Sun himself complains that he will not go out till he has been struck with sixty whips, and received the command ‘Go out, and let thy light shine.’ Among the Arabs the poet Umayyâ b. Abî-ṣ-Ṣalt discourses at length on the compulsion which must be exerted on the Sun before he is willing to bestow the benefit of his light and warmth on mortals:

W-ash-shamsu taṭlaʿu kulla âchiri leylatin * ḥamrâʾa maṭlaʿu launihâ
mutawarridu.
Taʾba falâ tabdû lanâ fî raslihâ * illâ muʿaḏḏabatan wa-illâ
tujladu.
‘The Sun rises at the close of every night * commencing red in colour,
slowly advancing.
He refuses, and appears not to us during his delay * until he is
chastised, until he is whipped.’[746]

According to the tradition of ʿIkrimâ seven thousand angels are daily occupied with keeping the Sun in order.[747] The first conception also is represented in Mohammedan tradition. A sentence of tradition quoted by al-Suyûṭî (Tashnîf al-samʿ bi-taʿdîd al-sabʿ)[748] says that the Sun is pelted every day with snow and ice by seven angels, that his heat may not destroy the earth. This mode of cooling is the Mohammedan equivalent for the Pool of the Sun. Mohammedan tradition speaks, moreover, also of a Pool of the Moon.[749]

D. (_Page 100._)
_Solar Myth and Animal-Worship._