February 20, 1919 



NATURE 



483 



ANCIENT PALESTIN1 l.V FOLK-LORE. 



-Lore in the Old Testament: Studies in 

 Comparative Religion, Legend, and Law. In 

 3 vols. H\ Sir James <■. Frazer. Vol. L, 

 pp. x\\ 569; vol. ii., pp. xxi + 571; 

 pp. xviii + 566. (London: MacmiUan and Co., 

 Ltd., 1918.) Price, 3 vols., 375. 6d. net. 

 T N certain parts oi Palestine there used to dwell 

 -L a savage people who were called 'Ibhrim, or 

 Hebrews, whose customs show thai the) were 

 originall) slaves to the same crude and cruel semi- 

 ous observances as may be found in any 

 modern uncivilised tribe. If an explorer, well 

 equipped with all that science can endow for col- 

 lecting, collating, ,nu\ recording primitive folk- 

 lore, had gone among them and studied them, his 

 labours would show that these same Hebrews, 

 who ware to have such an effect on the Western 

 world for at least two thousand years, were 

 el) differenl in their habits and customs from 

 any other barbarians. As, however, this people 

 has passed away from Palestine, the explorer 

 cannot get into direct touch with them, and he 

 must cither dig' up their records from their ancient 

 cities, oi so analyse their writings that he can 

 trace the origins of obscure customs by compari- 

 son with those of other races. 



This latti r method Sir James Frazer has applied 

 to the Old Testament, with all his usual energy 

 anil in his apt, mellifluous style. His three 

 volumes show with a wealth of detail how little 

 was the difference between the original Semite 

 and the savage ol to-day. It is perhaps one of 

 the saddest phases of human adventure that this 

 gery, made respectable by being wedded to 

 subsequent civilisation and veneered with an 

 1 gloss, should have been considered the 

 justification tor s<> much Fanatic cruelty in the lati 

 medieval and earl) Victorian periods. The Pales- 

 tine Exploration Fund excavations at Gezer under 

 [lister showed thai it was the Hebrews who 

 were the real Philistines, in the artistic sense of 

 the word, and their crude productions which were 

 discovered undoubtedly deserved this paradoxical 

 epithet. 



These three volumes should be the household 

 companion of every religious teacher, nay, of 

 everyone who cares or dares to see what that 

 latest daughter of science, folk-lore, has to say 

 about the cherished beliefs from the Old Testa- 

 ment, absorbed in infanc) and rarely visualised 

 differently fn later life-. There are plenty of 

 hmen still who believe- the conservatism ol 

 childhood's religious conceptions to be a virtue, 

 and the danger to humanit; ol such imma 



d naturally by a 

 neglect, is obvious. Not many laymen, for in- 

 stance, even now know that there are two widely 

 different accounts in Genesis of the Creation, the 

 Sacred Tree, and the Flood, welded into composite 

 stories, an 1 yet these- stories arc still believed to 

 i\ ine revelation. 

 How much exercised tin- theologians have been 

 over the apparent iniquity of Jacob, and how 

 2"573, V< iL. I02] 



tic the explanation that, although the deed was 



g, it demonstrated Jacob's cleverer nature, 



thus fitting him for his stupendous future ! Who 



not remember his juvenile disgust at the way 



in which Jacob usurped his brother's right by 

 chicanery? And who would have thought that 

 ality he was merely laying claim to his own 

 on the grounds of ultimogeniture? Many savage 

 tub, s recognise the rights of the last-born in in- 

 heritance, and this custom, according to Sir James 

 frazer, is compatible with both the agricultural 

 and the pastoral way of life : " \s the sons of a 

 family grow up, they successively quit the parental 

 abode and clear for themselves fresh fields in the 

 forest or jungle, till only the youngest is left at 

 home- with his parents; he is therefore the natural 



ort and guardian of his parents in their old 

 age. This seems to be the simplest and most 

 probable explanation of ultimogeniture." It 

 would therefore appear on these grounds plausible 

 that that unamiable Oriental Jacob, as the younger 

 had a certain righteous claim to what he is 

 said to have obtained by fraud, a defence "under- 



n by a compatriot and namesake, Mr. Joseph 

 Jacobs, who has essayed to wipe out the blot on 

 tin ancestral scutcheon." The other part of the 

 story, how he dressed himself in skins, follows 

 naturally from Sir James Frazer's ingenious ex- 

 planation that it was a survival of the custom of 

 re-birth. Primitive peoples, when adopting 

 children, frequently go through a pantomime re- 

 presenting a new birth, anrf this in certain cases 

 includes the ceremony of investing the new son 

 with the skins of sacrificed animals. 



The Brand of Cain is another problem for which 

 a new theory is provided. Robertson Smith 

 thought that it was a tribal mark, a badge which 

 every member of the tribe wore on his person, 

 which served to protect him by indicating that 

 he belonged to a tribe which would avenge his 

 murder. The later explanation, far more 

 plausible, is that it was a mark laid on Cain to 

 prevent the finest of his murdered brother recog- 

 nising him and haunting him. This is obvious 

 from the numerous similarities collected by Sir 

 James Frazer from savages; for instance, among 

 tin- Vahim of New Guinea, when the kinsmen of 

 a murdered man have accepted a blood-wit in- 

 stead of avenging his death, the) take care to be 

 marked with chalk on tin- forehead by the rela- 

 tives of the murderer, "lest tin- ghost should 

 trouble them for failing to avenge his death." 

 It is, in fact, closely allied to an external sign 

 of mourning for the dead which so changes the 

 trance of the mourner that the ghost carlnot 

 tnnoy him. 

 Again, the difficult problem of the slave who, 

 although having the right of freedom after his 

 sixth year of service, elected to remain to serve 

 his master continuously is discussed al length. 

 Everyone will call to mind the curious treatment 

 with which his new undertaking was inaugurated : 

 his ear was to be bored through with an awl at 

 the- doorpost by his master. The parallels from 



ge folk-lore are suffii iently similar to show 



