262 



KNOWLEDGE 



[Sept. 26, 1884. 



5£lfbieiiiS4 



BIBLE FOLK-LORE.* 



By Edward Clodd. 



BUT a few years ago such a book as this, which will 

 probably fall as a brutum fulinen, would have 

 brought down the anathemas alike of Archbishops and 

 local preachers on its author, and have been put on the 

 Index of every Little Eethrl library. When Dean Milman 

 published his very harmless " History of the Jews," he 

 withheld his name, and with a sound decanal instinct, 

 for its orthodox readers were shocked when they found 

 Abraham described as an Arab Sheik. Well for such 

 timid souls that they have gone where the wicked Kuenen 

 and Goldziher cannot trouble them, or the author of 

 •"Rabbi Jeshua" disturb their abiding calm by his resolu- 

 tion of well nigh every venerated name among patriarch, 

 king, and prophet into solar phenomena. 



Books like Dean Stanley's "Jewish Church," Baron 

 Bunsen's " God in History," and Ewald's great but incon- 

 clusive work, paved the way for the application of the same 

 scientific criticism to the Hebrew Scriptures which has been 

 applied with such success, in the removal of ditficulties, to 

 cognate early histories of other races. 



The epoch-making book in this matter is Kuenen's 

 masterly " Religion of Israel," since it marks the nearest 

 approach to the settlement of questions as to the age, 

 fiources, and general credibility of the documents which 

 comprise the Old Testament. Following him, came the 

 less sober work, so far as its speculations were concerned, 

 •of Dr. Ignaz Goldzihei's " Mythology among the Hebrews," 

 which thus, on its outside, challenged M. Renan's now 

 generally discredited dictum that " The Semites never had 

 any mythology."! Goldziher was, however, moderate in 

 his application of the solar theory to the explanation of the 

 historical books of the Bible, as compared with our author, 

 whose cock-sureness (the term is Shakspearean) awakens a 

 feeling of irritation almost fatal to any calm consideration 

 of his book. The effect, as with Cox, Gubernatis, and 

 others of the school, can only be to letsen the force of the 

 inherently sound elements in the theory, and to deepen the 

 resulting scepticism about its validity, when it explains 

 everything so completely that it may mean anything else 

 iust as well. 



" Bible Folk-lore " is crammed with information, though 

 this is not always well digested. It has throughout evi- 

 dence of much leatning, gathered with no small labour, and 

 the matter is often, as in the opening chapter, where the 

 seasonal changes in Syria are described, presented in a pic- 

 turesque and vigorous style. But the unsoundness of some 

 of the etymological speculations, as e.g., where the author 

 asserts that, •' Osiris is the Sanskrit Asuras, the ' breathing 

 one'"; Isis is Ushas, "the dawn"; Horus, the Indian 

 Hari, " the golden one, son of God " (p. 52), excites distrust 

 in regard to the rest ; and the choice of title is unfortunate, 

 for it is only here and there (pp. 131, 143, 183, ic.) that 

 the subordinate subject of folk-lore is dealt with. The 

 book seeks to cover the field embraced by Jewish and early 

 Christian history ; to discover what proportion of the 

 mythical, illustrated by similar myths in more ancient 

 writings, has entered into the record of that stretch of time, 

 and the title and sub-title should have changed places. 

 Although the pages of this Journal are properly closed 



* " Bible Folk-Lore : an Essay in Comparative Mythology." By 

 the author of " Rabbi Jeshua." (London : Kegan Paul, Trench, 

 K Co. 18S4.) 



t " Les Semites n'ont jamais eu de mythologie." 



to the discussion of theological topic?. Knowledge would 

 strangely belie its title if it did not, in the recognition that 

 a science of man is possible, set before its readers from 

 time to time some account of the results at which historical 

 critics, dealing with the Old Testament as with any other 

 ancient document, have arrived concerning the sources 

 and character of its contents. The light shed, more 

 especially on its earlier portions, by comparing them with 

 kindred legends in other sacred books ; the bringing out of 

 correspondences which point to the common origin of the 

 whole, or to the borrowing of the many from one primi- 

 tive source ; the assignment of the several influences from 

 without which profoundly affected Jewish belief, and re- 

 shaped and coloured the narratives which embody it ; these 

 are of the utmost value as guides along the tortuous path 

 by which we would track the emergence of the Hebrews 

 and their fellow- Semites from the mythopoeic and poly- 

 theistic stage. 



Apart from the existing ignorance on these matters, one 

 feels that the decay of Bible-reading — for the fact is un- 

 doubted — among the intelligent classes nowadays is much 

 to be regretted. There is always a large section of people 

 who read for edification, but with these we are not con- 

 cerned. It is in the neglect of the Bible as a venerable 

 record of human experience and speculation concerning 

 the unseen ; as preserving poetry which yet moves us like 

 a solemn chant ; as embalming the beauty and vigour of our 

 English tongue before the hardening influence? of classic 

 terms ; as a great literary force, that it is to be deplored 

 people do not know their Bibles. One has only to read the 

 masters of felicitous style and happy illustration, like 

 Huxley, Clifford, and Matthew Arnold, to see whence is 

 due the inspiration of sonorous word and stately figure 

 which moves through their writings. 



Any abstract of the contents of " Bible Folk-lore " 

 would extend over some pages, and it must suffice to illus- 

 trate the author's concliisious by a few examples. As the 

 names of twelve antediluvian patrisrclis and the related 

 myths are said to correspond to the natural phenomena of 

 each month, he sees in this group the legend of the year. 

 Cain and Abel are the day and night. Cain, as the sun, 

 producer of corn and wine, is the foe of Abel, the night- 

 vapour, whose fleecy clouds are flocks on the horizon, and 

 when the sun slays him, and his dark red blood stains the 

 morning sky, the murderer wanders like Indra and other 

 sun-gods, " in eternal vagabondage." In the legend of 

 Jubal we have the music of heaven made Viy the winds and 

 the thunder, and in that of the Deluge, with which the cycle 

 of legends ends, the author, after comparing it with variants 

 of the Flood-tales, finds that " Noah, in his coffer of ever- 

 green wood, like the Persian Yima in his paradise, repre- 

 sents the hopes of the coming spring, when, the winter 

 floods over, he emerges with the seeds of plant and animal 

 life. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, " the »un-heroes of the 

 three season?," into which the Accadians and other peoples 

 divided the year, are triads corresponding to solar and 

 meteorological deities of ludia, Assyria, ic, and the names 

 of the celebrated twelve sons of Jacob, from Reuben to 

 the " wintry Joseph " and Benjamin, indicate their astro- 

 nomical origin. The destruction of the cities of the 

 plains is the eternal battle of the heavens, localised by the 

 sterile aspect of the dreary region round the Dead Sea. 



It is quite refreshing, after all this, to learn that " the 

 immigration of the Semitic tribes into Lower Egypt before 

 2,000 B c. is a well-known fact," but the author hastens 

 to state his conviction that Mo?es is a sun-myth. He is 

 found, like the new-born Horus, in his local cradle ; ho 

 appears as sun-god to give laws from Sinai, and on Nebo 

 sinks to his rest in the west All the plagues of Egypt 



