Nov. 2, 1883.] 



♦ KNOV/LEDGE ♦ 



269 



THE BIRTH AND GROWTH OF MYTH. 



By Edward Clodd. 



'I'lT'ITH the important exception of reference to the 

 VV change effected in the Jewish doctrines of spirits, 

 and its resulting influence on Christian theology, by the 

 transformation of the mythical Ahriman of the old Persian 

 religion into the archfiend Satan, but sliglit allusion has 

 been made in these pages to the myths and legends of the 

 Semitic race. Under this term, borrowed from the current 

 belief in their descent from Shem, are included extant and 

 extinct people, the Assyrians, Chaldeans or Babylonians, 

 Phcenicians, Arabs, Syrians, Jews and Ethiopians. 



The mythology of the Aryan nations has liad the advan- 

 tage of the most scholarly criticism, and the light which 

 this has thrown upon the racial connection of peoples 

 between whom all superficial likeness had long disappeared, 

 as well as upon the early condition of their common 

 ancestors, is of the greatest value as aid to our knowledge 

 of the mode of man's intellectual and spiritual growth. 

 And the comparisons made between the older and cruder 

 forms underlying the elaborated myth and the myths of 

 semi-barbarous races have supported conclusions concerning 

 man's primitive state identical with those deduced from 

 the material relics of the Ancient and Newer Stone Ages, 

 namely, that the savage races of to-day represent not a 

 degradation to which man has sunk, but a condition out 

 of which all races above the savage have, through much 

 tribulation, emerged. An important exception to this has, 

 however, been claimed on behalf of at least one branch of 

 the Semitic race — namely, the Hebrews or Jews. This 

 claim has rested on their assumed selection by the 

 Deity for a definite purpose in the ordering and directing 

 of human affairs ; a theory of the divine government which 

 this journal is concerned neither to defend nor deny. No 

 assumption of supernatural origin can screen documents of 

 disputed authorship and uncertain meaning from the in- 

 vestigation applied to all ancient records ; nor can the 

 materials elude dissection because hitherto regarded as 

 organic parts of revelation. The real difficulties are in 

 the structure of the language and in the scantiness of the 

 material as contrasted with the flexile and copious 

 mythology of the Aryan race. And the investigation has 

 been in some degree checked by the mistaken dicta of 

 authorities such as M. Renan and the late Baron Bunsen ; 

 the former contending that " the Semites never had a 

 mythology," and the latter (although any statement of his 

 carries far less weight) that " it is the grand, momentous, 

 and fortunate self-denial of Judaism to possess none." 



But, independently of the refusal of the student of 

 history to admit tliat exceptional place has been of 

 direct Divine purpose accorded to any particular race, 

 the discoveries of literatures much older than the Hebrew, 

 and in which legends akin to those in the earlier books of 

 the Old Testament are found, together with the proofs of 

 historical connection between the peoples having these 

 common legends, have given the refutation to the dis- 

 tinctive character of the Semitic race claimed by M. 

 Renan. That a people dwelling for centuries, as the 

 Hebrews did, in a land which was the common highway 

 between the great nations of antiquity ; a people 

 subject to vicissitudes bringing them, as the pipkin 

 between iron pots, into collision and subject relations 

 to Egyptians, Persians, and other powerful folk, 

 should remain uninfluenced in their intellectual specu- 

 lations and religious beliefs, would indeed be a greater 

 miracle than that which makes their literature inspired in 



every word and vowel-point. The remarkable collection of 

 cuneiform inscriptions (so called from their wedge-like shape : 

 Lat. alliens, a wedge) on the baked clay cylinders and tablets 

 of the vast libraries of Babylon and Nineveh, has brought 

 out one striking fact, namely, that the Semitic civilisation, 

 venerable as that is, was the product of, or at least, greatly 

 influenced by, the culture of a non-Semitic people called the 

 Akkadians, from a word meaning "highlanders." These 

 more ancient dwellers in the Euphrates valley and uplands 

 were not only non-Semitic, but non- Aryan, and probably 

 racionally connected with the complex group of peoples em- 

 bracing the Tatar-Mongolians, the distinguishing features 

 of whose religion are Shamanistic, with belief in magic in 

 its manifold forms. " In Babylonia, under the non-Semitic 

 Akkadian rule, the dominant creed was the fetish worship, 

 with all its ritual of magic and witchcraft ; and when the 

 Semites conquered the country, the old learning of the land 

 became the property of the priests and astrologers, and the 

 Akkadian language the Latin of the Empire."* 



It was during the memorable period of the Exile that 

 the historical records of the Jews underwent revision, and 

 from that time dates the incorporation into them of legends 

 and traditions which, invested with a purity and majesty 

 distinctively Hebrew, were borrowed from the Babylonians, 

 although primarily Akkadian. They are here, as else- 

 where, the product of the childhood of the race, when it 

 speculates and invents, framing its theory of the beginnings, 

 their when and how ; when it prattles of the Golden Age, 

 which seems to lie behind, in the fond and not extinct delu- 

 sion that " the old is better ; " when it frames its fairy tales, 

 weird or winsome, in explanation of the uncommon, the 

 unknown, and the bewildering. 



The Babylonian origin of the early biblical stories is now 

 generally admitted, although the dogmas based upon cer- 

 tain of them still retard the acceptance of this result of 

 modern inquiry in some quarters. That reluctance is 

 suggestively illustrated in Dr. Wm. Smith's '• Dictionarj- 

 of the Bible," where, turning to the heading " Deluge," the 

 reader is referred to " Flood " and thence to " Noah ! " 



So much for the legendary ; but the analysis of the more 

 strictly mythical, the names of culture-ancestor.s and heroes, 

 sons of Anak and of God, scattered over the Pentateuch, 

 is not so easy a matter. The most important work in this 

 direction has been attempted by Dr. Goldziher,t but even 

 his scholarship has failed to convince sympathetic readers 

 that Abraham and Isaac are sun-myths, and that the twelve 

 sous of Jacob are the zodiacal signs ! Under the Professor's 

 etymological solvent the personality of the patriarchs dis- 

 appears, and the charming idylls and pastorals of old Eastern 

 life become but phases of the sun and the weather. The 

 Hebrew, like the Aryan myth-maker, speaks of the rela- 

 tions of day and night, of grey morning and sunrise, of red 

 sunset and the darkness of night, as of love and union, 

 or strife and pursuit, or gloomy desire and coy evasion. 

 Abh-ram is the High or Heaven-Father (from r&m, 

 " to be high ") with his numberless host of descendants. 

 Yis-chak, commonly called Isaac, denotes "he who laughs," 

 and so the Laughing one, whom the High Father intends 

 to slay, is the smiling da)- or the smiling sunset, 

 which gets the worst of the contest with the night sky and 

 disappears. Sarah signifies princess, or the moon, the 

 queen who rules over the great army glittering amidst the 

 darkness. The expulsion of Hagar (derived from a root 

 Juijara, meaning " to lly," and yielding the word hijra or 

 " flight," whence the Mohammadan Hegira) is tlie Semitic 



* Academy, Nov. 17, 1877, p. 472. 



t " Mytliolop}' among tho Hebrews, and its Historical Develop- 

 ment." (London: Longmans.) 1877. 



