14 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



of the Hebrew tradition recorded in the Holy Scriptures, or otherwise preserved 

 among the Jews down to later times, appear in the Olympian court of Homer. 

 The traditions traceable in Homer which appear to be drawn from the same 

 source as those of Holy Scriptures are chiefly these : (i) a deliverer, conceived 

 under the double form, first of the seed of woman, and secondly of the logos, the 

 word or wisdom of God. (2.) The woman whose seed the Redeemer was to be. 

 (3 ) The rainbows considered as a sign of communication between God and 

 man."* 



He also says, "Certain special features are traceable most of all in the 

 Athene and Apollo of the Homeric poems, but also in Zeus, and in Leto, and in 

 Iris, as well as one or two other Olympian personages, and these features impart 

 to the pictures of them an extraordinary elevation and force, such as to distin- 

 guish them strongly from the delineations of other gods. 



The features in themselves are in the most marked correspondence with the 

 Hebraic traditions as conveyed in the books of Holy Scripture." 



It is very remarkable that in the Greek mythology these later Messianic ideas 

 should have found a place in connection with these early traditions, yet there 

 does not seem to be any doubt that the story of the garden, and of the woman, 

 and of the seed of the woman, can be traced in the poetry of Homer. But it is 

 probable that the advance of Jewish* thought may have had its effect on these 

 productions of the Greek mind which were so much later in time, and yet so near 

 in geographical location, and, therefore, we do not dwell upon these coincidences 

 referred to by Gladstone. 



There is, however, a great contrast between the Greek mythology and the 

 Scandinavian in this particular. The latest remnant of primitive heathenism is 

 here found surviving the Greek and the Roman by nearly a thousand years, and 

 yet for symplicity of the narrative and for striking resemblances to the earliest 

 traditions nothing is equal to it. The story of the creation, and of the garden, 

 and the flood as it is found in the Scandinavian myths furnish the most striking 

 coincidences to the sacred narrative. It seems, indeed, like passing over a whole 

 day of history thus to turn from the earliest book of the Vedas to the late date of 

 the Eddas, and from the distant and warm region of the East to the frozen re- 

 gions of Iceland and the North, yet the story seems to have retained its peculiar- 

 ities in all its long wanderings. 



Iceland was peopled and civilized by the Norsemen in the ninth century. 

 The early emigrants were, however, Pagans, and* Max Muller says that their 

 religious system " may be called one of the various dialects of the primitive relig- 

 ions and mythological language of the Aryan race." (Chips from a German 

 Workshop, Vol. II, p. 191.) He says, too, "There are passages in the Edda 

 which seemed like verses from the Vedas." There are, also, several mythologi- 

 cal expressions common to the Edda and to Homer. 



Mr. Kelly has also drawn the parallelism between the Indian and the Iranian 



"'Inventus Mundi, pp. 207 and 274. 



