MYTHOLOGY AMONG THE HEBREWS.* THIS learned work, applying to the
Bible certain modern methods of myth-interpretation, takes in hand the Old Testament Patri- archs, and reduces them one after another to personifications of the powers of nature. Abraham is the Night-sky, and his wife Sarah is the Moon, who is jealous of Hagar, the Sun. "The battle of the two figures of the Night-sky against Hagar is again that inexhaustible theme of all mythology, the battle of Day with Night." (p. 119.) The hot mid-day Sun destroys his own daughter, the Dawn, which natural event, being rendered into mythological phrase, gives rise to the legend of Jephthah sacrificing his daughter. (p. 104). Noah is yet another personified sun, and if his "intoxication is also to be accounted for, then this prominent circumstance must describe the reeling motion with which the Sun, exhausted by his long course, staggers towards his repose." (p. 131.) We may as well express at the outset our opinion that these particular " identifications " are mere fancies, resting on no scientific foundation whatever. At the same time, Dr. Goldziher's book is deserving of attention, from its ingenuity and the value of the mythological matter it contains, merits which have induced so excellent a scholar as Mr. Russell Martineau to translate it. More- over, it brings an interesting question to a point where it ought to be faced and answered. How far is it safe to use as a philosophical method the interpretation of heroic personages of tradition as mere mythic personifications of nature, according to the theory brought into notice by Kuhn, and after him by Max Milner, and expanded by such writers as Cox, De Gubernatis, and the author of the present work ?
That among the mass of Hebrew stories collected in the Old Testament some are mythical is now generally admitted by educated people who have allowed themselves to weigh the evidence. The Bishop of Manchester, a candid, but not scepti- cally-minded scholar, lately told a medical congregation point- blank that he did not expect them to believe in the historical accuracy of the chapters in Genesis which relate the creation and fall of man. His view seemed to be that these stories embody true principles as to the progress of the human race, which amounts to classing them -as edifying myths or parables. Having once " let in the reasoner " (as the old Quaker phrase goes), Dr. Fraser would probably feel obliged to admit that the story of the Tower of Babel can no longer answer its evident original purpose of explaining the variety of human languages, and that the tale of Lot's guests is no longer to be accepted as really accounting for the physical geography of the Dead Sea district. As creations of early philosophy still clothed in mythic garb, as moral apologues bearing the clear stamp of the Hebrew mind, these legends will hold their place in religious literature, but in the light of modern philology and geology they must be recognised as myth, not history. To say this is to admit in principle that the historical and non-historical elements in the Patriarchal narratives must be judged by critical evidence, and all we now propose to do is to see how far Dr. Goldziher's theory is in accordance with reasonable criticism.
When Dr. Goldziher interprets Abraham and Isaac as being the Night-sky and the Sun, what he has to go upon is that Abram means " High Father " and Isaac means " Laughing."
Mythology among the 17ebrews,and its Historical Derelopment. By Ignaz Goldziber. Translated from the German, with Additions by the Author. by Russell Martineau London : Longmans and Co. 1877.
Then he settles it that the High Father is the sky, and that the sense of sky being mixed up with that of rain, it is the nightly or rainy sky which is referred to in the myth. And as the sun, or the sunrise, or the day, is said to laugh, therefore the laughing or smiling is,—the sunset. "The Smiling one' whom the High Father' intends to slay is the smiling day, or more closely defined, the smiling sunset, which gets the worst of the contest with the night-sky and disappears." (p. 96.) Reading this, it occurs to the bewildered critic that sunsets hardly smile even in poetry, and that the very point of the Biblical story is that Isaac was not killed. But even supposing this method of translating names into mythical ideas to be carried out consistently, what'force of proof is there in it? To try another of the author's arguments, Rachel means "sheep," but men in the mythic stage fancy clouds to be like sheep, so Rachel must mean "cloud," and she has a son, Joseph, that is, " Multiplier or Increaser," so he must be the rain. "It is this ' Multiplier, Son of the Cloud,' alone who can bring aid when the earth is visited by long drought and famine. The multiplying rain gives back to the parched earth her fertility, and procures nourishment for starving mankind. This simple idea is formed from the mythic base into the story of the famine in Egypt and Joseph's aid in allaying it." (p. 167.) But surely much of this is mere juggling with names, and we have .only to do the trick some other way to see what it is worth. Joseph the Multiplier shall mean the Earth, which is quite as good an interpretation as the Rain, and then we shall have it that the earth receives the sown grain for a season and brings it forth again, which will furnish as satisfactory a "mythic base" as Dr. Goldziher's for the story of Joseph storing up the corn for the Egyptians. And as for the author's way of seeing mythic episodes scattered all over the Patriarchal traditions, there is plenty of English history from which the same method would extract similar results. David's ruddy countenance is relied on as a feature derived from solar myth, but look at the pictures of Henry VIII., and see what a solar hero he would make ; how hotly he pursued and how remorselessly he abandoned those poor Dawns of his, Anne Boleyn and the others (of course, we do not look for human morality in cosmic beings like Herakles or Henry), till eventually he falls into the arms of his last spouse, the Night, and there is an end of him. With all our author's learning, he has a defect unhappily common among mythologists (perhaps this is what makes them take to mythology), that he cannot understand how much evidence is required to set up a fair working probability.
What amount of evidence may fairly be demanded to prove that an ancient legend is a nature-myth? Perhaps the best answer is to point to two Biblical stories in which, if any- where, the Israelites seem to have worked such elements into their literature. Mr. Martineau has added much to the value of the present volume by translating, as an appendix, the essay in which Professor Steinthal, of Berlin, argued some fifteen years ago, that Samson was the Sun. Here there is a leading etymology to begin with, for the name " Samson "—more accurately spelt Shimshon—ia derived from Shemesh the Sun, meaning the Sunny or Solar one. Samson's riddle, Steinthal argues, has no natural sense in it, for no bees would make honey in a rotting carcase ; but it has an astronomical sense, for the season for taking honey is when the sun is in the sign of Leo, so honey does come out of the lion. And as to the foxes with the firebrands, we know from Ovid that in Rome at the feast of Ceres they hunted through the circus foxes with lighted torches tied on their backs, and it is argued that this ceremony was to avert from the fields the effects of the "red fox," the mildew (robigo) in wheat caused by hot sunshine after cold nights. As for Samson's hair, one naturally thinks of Apollo's locks and the Sun's rays, which it so weakens him to lose, though Steinthal prefers the decline of nature winter and the new growth in spring. These are among Steinthal's strongest points, and opinions may differ as to whether his argument is, on the whole, convincing, but at any rate he has an arguable case. Another was noticed some years since, and is brought forward again by Dr. Goldziher. The notion of a hero being swallowed by a monster and released again is among the commonest mythical ideas in the world, and the people who talk of it sometimes re- eognisd that what is meant by it is the sun's being swallowed up by the darkness and reappearing. What we call an eclipse of the sun, the Hindus say is the dragon Rahn devouring him and letting him out again. The maw of the monster in some of these stories is a dark region, where there are not only people, but lands and villages ; in fact, it is Hades, and the New Zealanders say in so many words that the monstrous being into whose body the hero Maui crept just as the sunset-bird began to sing may still be seen flashing out on the horizon in the West, and her name is Great-
Woman-Night. It is not difficult to suppose that this well-known idea may have supplied the author of Jonah with an episode for his parable, its sense remaining so clear that the -prophet actually cries "out of the belly of Hades." This is an amount of evidence which Biblical critics are at any rate bound to consider, and if they reject it, to show cause. Had Dr. Goldziher devoted him- self only to points where the reasons for assigning a mythical base are at all considerable, he would have done more for his subject than by his reckless and often groundless guessing. But he is only carrying out in their utmost lawlessness the lawless proceed- ings of his mythological school. When we have read Goldziher and De Gubernatis, we can go back to Kuhn and Max Muller, and already see the original fault in their brilliant conceptions. No doubt they have strong cases to begin upon. There is an irre- sistible ingenuity in Kuhn's argument for Prometheus, the fire- bringer, being a sort of personification of the praniantha, or fire- churn, by which the Brahmans still produce by friction their divine fire. So long as Max Muller does not stray too far from the myths which the Greeks told of Helios the Sun, and Selene the Moon, and Eos the Dawn, and the like transparent personifica- tions of nature, we feel ourselves on solid ground. But even these safer guides soon entice us into boggy places, where we know we should sink in a moment if we stopped to consider. And where Kuhn and Muller will go no further, there is now a whole school of younger guides, each with a Will-of-the-wisp for a lantern, ready to take us on into the open marsh. No, we will not go on, we say, but rather get back to the starting- point, and set off exploring anew, in a slower, safer way. In all seriousness, this is what ought to be done, to begin again at the beginning of comparative mythology, only admitting interpreta- tions so cogent that their contradiction involves a greater im- probability than their acceptance. To trial by such a method we are willing to submit the Old Testament, like any other ancient record, with the expectation that by separating unhistorical parts, new clearness will be given to all real personal traditions of Hebrew life before the monarchy. But this, it will be found, is a very different process from guessing the Patriarchs, at our fancy, into suns and moons.
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