Sept. iG, 1861.] 



• KNOWLEDGE 



263 



Jiave reference to tlie daikness and the sunset; "the 

 children shiin before the infant sun appears are probably 

 the countless ttars who are swallowed up by the sun at his 

 rising." Passing to the heroic period, the destruction of 

 Jericho's walls is the moon-city whose cloud-buildings fall 

 in the fair moonlit night. And as the twelve months 

 have their mythical symbols in the patriarchs, and the 

 ^Jgns of the Zodiac in Jacob's sons, so the four seasons have 

 theirs in Joshua, Barak, Abimelech, and Jeplithah ; the 

 story of Samson, in the undoubted solar incidents of 

 which our author is on solid ground, summing up the cycle 

 ■of the year. And the ground is tirm, too, in his discussion 

 of the nature aspects which lie thinly veiled behind the 

 .Semitic gods, the ghastly character of the sacrifices to 

 which show the fear of the unknown, unmeasured powers 

 of the universe which possessed the hearts of the warlike 

 sons of the desert. On the ve.cata quceslio of the origin of 

 the Jehovah cult the author has much of interest to say, 

 but he is in error, if the authority of Mr. Page Renouf is 

 to be recognised, in identifying the Nuk-pu-Nuk of the 

 Egyptians as the exact equivalent of " I am that I am." * 

 Even if slaying the slain, he is, however, doing good 

 service in refuting M. Kenan's untei able theory of a 

 monotheistic in.stinct in the Semitic race, for the records of 

 the various members of that family show that their mode 

 of religious development has, speaking broadly, betn iden- 

 tical wiih that of other races. That it has been parallel 

 IS not pretended, for allowance has to be made for different 

 conditions inducing ditleient phases ; but this is not con- 

 tradictory, rather is it confirmatory of the general doctrine 

 that the type of religion is largely determined by physical 

 conditions producing subtle variations. Speaking of the 

 influence of the Persian religion on Jewish belief, the 

 .-■iuthor remarks, " Strange indeed is the irony of religious 

 history which has led us to consider the idea of mono- 

 theism, so taught to Semitic demon worshippers, as being a 

 truth specially revealed to a small Semitic tribe, and a 

 great idea distinctive of the Semitic genius" (p. 118). He 

 contends that not until the foundation of the Hebrew 

 kingdom have we left the niythopueic age and entered 

 the tiaditional, al'.hough with thi=, as with many real 

 persons and events, the mythical still largely lilends. How 

 much so, the canon " the marvellous is the measure of the 

 mythical " helps us to determine. 



The fundamental changes wrought in Jewish theodicy 

 •during the captivity in Babylon, notably in the transforma- 

 tion of Satan, a messenger of deity, into an arch-fiend ;t 

 the substitution of Abaddon, a hell of torment, for the old 

 Sheol or Hades where good and bad alike go ; the more 

 precise formulating of a doctrine of immortality and of a 

 resurrection ; the impetus given to the hope of a Deliverer, 

 and to the general eschatology, are admirably e.^plained. 



The allegorical features of the literature of the Greek 

 aad Herodian periods, Tobit, Bel and the Dragon, itc, are 

 expounded ; Daniel's escape from the den of lions is the 

 old Sun's deliverance from the tierce cloud-animals. The 

 general conclusions at; which the author arrives are 

 sppositely expressed in this sentence: — "It is not a 

 divinely-inspired record which we have examined, but a 

 mythology of Egyptian and Assyrian origin, a ritual based 

 on the most ancient laws and customs of the Aryans, a 



* It is distinctly on grammatical grounds that I reject the trans- 

 lation in question, which is not a literal but simply an erroneous 

 line. Neither in the Book of the Dead nor in any other known Egyp- 

 tian text do the words Xuk-pu-Xuk occur as a sentence. I do not 

 t»elieve that it could under any circumstances be translated '' I am 

 that I am." — Letter to the Academti, June 26, 1880. 



t The author, perhaps by a lapsus calami, speaks of the Indian 

 ilfvil, M:ira, as King of Death (p. 153). Tama is the ruler of 

 Death; Mara ia thj spirit of evil, who tempts the Buddha. 



poetry whose most noble thoughts and images may be 

 matched, if not excelled, by the hymns of the Vedas and 

 of Egypt, or even by those of Babylon and Chaldea." In 

 his chapter on the Essenes, the author's sympathies, ever 

 expanded, as those of each one of us must be the more we 

 know of the great Gautama the Buddha, are manifest in 

 the account of his gradual apotheosis in the lapse of time 

 when to refracted vision it seemed that in the past "the 

 gods came down in the likeness of men." In pointing 

 parallels for our consideration, the author, however, in- 

 spires mistrust in virtue of the untenable canon which is 

 laid down in bis appendix. He says, •■ The doctrine of 

 evolution teaches us that where features are found common 

 to two developments, they are generally due to a direct 

 connection of growth between the two." The doctrine of 

 evolution teaches exactly the contrary. As Bastian re- 

 marks, " Where no historical transference can be proved, 

 the uniformity must be referred to the organic law of the 

 growth of the mind, which will everywhere put forth 

 similar products, corresponding and alike, but variously 

 modified by surrounding influences.'"' 



In the World-wide discovery of stone implement3 of 

 similar design, the question of borrowing between 

 one race and another does not arise, it suffices that the 

 same needs excite the same methods of supi)ly among rude 

 peoples, past and present. And the like applies to tlie 

 satisfaction of man's immaterial neids. We find that 

 among the Incas, when any nun violated her vow of chastity 

 or allowed the SHcred fire to go out, she was buried alive. 

 The same punishment was iiiflicted for the same offences on 

 the Roman vestai. But no one suggests that the Peru- 

 vians borrowed this custom fiom the llomans ; still less 

 the Romans from the Peruvians. The virgin had proved 

 herself false to her spouse the Sun; let her, therefore, become 

 the spouse of Darkness, and let the earth swallow her up. 



Into the question of the proportion of mythical element 

 which has become mixed with the early Christian records, 

 we cannot here enter, especially as the author again falls 

 back upon his first princijiles of interpretation, and summons 

 the hosts of heaven as witnesses, as when in the story of 

 the Transfiguration, illustrated by variants from other 

 scriptures, he sees the triad of the rising, and noonday, 

 and the setting sun. 



The weakness of the book lies in its fantastic etymologies 

 (one has only to turn to Goldziher to see how varied are 

 the meanings of the proper names), and in ihe wholesale 

 application of the solar theory to events which, whilst with- 

 out doubt charged with the mythical and legendary, have a 

 body of fact corresponding to what we know to be the con- 

 ditions under whicli wandering tribes pass to a settled 

 state, and under which they advance from animistic to 

 monotheistic belief. 



The strength of the book lies in its insistance on the 

 application of the comparative method to the interesting 

 and priceless records of this ] progress amoni; the Hebrew 

 members of the Semitic family, and in its witness to the 

 absence of all arbitrariness from the successive evolutions 

 of the human mind as from every other department of 

 nature. 



Whatever the reason, be it indolence or false economy, 

 much blame attaches to the issue of a book so crowded with 

 topics as this without an index. 



SOME BOOKS ON OUR TABLE 



Natural Law in the Spiritual World. By Henry Drdm- 

 MOND, F.R.S.E., F.G.S. Eleventh Edition. (London : 

 Hodder & Stoughtou. 188i.) — Amid the mass of decla- 



* Cf. Goldziher, xvi. 



