USE OF THE AGÂDÂ FOR MYTHOLOGY.

33

In the course of our investigations, it will become certain that Jacob belongs to the series of mythical figures which are connected with the nightly heaven. How easily would this conception be disturbed, if we were to accord to all the Agâdâ an absolute voice among the sources of Hebrew mythical investigation! For there it is said in reference to Gen. XXVIII. 11: 'He (Jacob) reached that place and passed the night there, for the sun was come (kî bhâ hash-shemesh), i.e. had set.' On this the Agadist Chaggî of Sephoris remarks, 'This sentence indicates that Jacob, when he was in Bethel, heard the welcoming voices of the angels: "The Sun is come, the Sun is come," i.e. Jacob himself. Many years later, when Jacob's son Joseph told his father the dream in which an allusion is made to Jacob as if he were the Sun (XXXVII. 9, 10), Jacob thought to himself, 'Who has informed my son that my name is Sun ? '1

I must point out one other peculiarity in this part of the subject. Sometimes the Agadists utilise mythological elements, by supplementing the old mythic tradition with something added by themselves, based on some one of their hermeneutic principles, but which could not possibly be also a portion of the old myth. An example will elucidate this. We will not lay down dogmatically, nor on the other hand dispute the possibility, that the name Bile'âm Balaam is mythical. It signifies the Devourer,' and has consequently been identified for centuries with the Arabic Lokmân, which has the same meaning. Accordingly Balaam would originally have been a name of the monster which devours the sun. It is not uncommon in mythology to find wisdom, cunning and prudence attributed to the powers hostile to the sun. Hence the serpent appears in the myth endowed with wisdom. This justifies Balaam's character as sage and prophet; the serpent delivers oracles, or is oiwvós.3 Balaam is son of

1 Berêshîth rabbâ, sect. 68.

2

2 See on the other side Ewald, History of Israel (2nd or 3rd ed.), II. 214. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, Gottingen 1857, I. 66.

Ꭰ

Befôr, or the Shining'-a mythical expression which often occurs when the darkness is described as springing from the daylight; and the Agâdâ may be using mythic elements in identifying this Be'ôr with Lâbhân 'the White." So this myth, like many others, would then have been nationalised by the influence of factors, which will be fully described in the Seventh Chapter. The Devourer of the Sun became a Devourer of the Hebrew people, just as the Sun-hero became the Hebrew national hero. Personations of the storms are often exhibited in mythology as lame and limping." This feature, which is not ascribed to Balaam in the Bible, is found in the Agâdâ, which says, Bile âm chigger beraglô achath hayâ, ‘Balaam was lame of one foot.' So far all is regular. But then follows, Shimshôn chiggêr bishtê raglâw hâyâ, 'Samson was lame of both feet'a feature which does not suit the Sun-hero. We must consider that this latter is an inference drawn by the Agâdâ in virtue of one of its hermeneutic principles, thus: Balaam's lameness is attached to the word shephî, ‘hill, high place,' Num. XXIII. 3 ; the word shephîphôn, serpent,' Gen. XLIX. 17 (in the declaration concerning Dan, which the Agadists take as referring to Samson the Danite), must according to the Agadists' hermeneutics express by its form a doubling of the notion conveyed by shephî."

6

Thus only what is said about Balaam could possibly belong to the old myth; what is said about Samson is late Agadic induction, which has no importance whatever for mythology.

I find this identification, it is true, only in later books, Tânâ de-bhê Elîyâ, c. 27; Sêder ôlâm, c. 21; see Halâkhôth gedôlôth (hilkhôth haspêd). In the Sêder had-dôrôth, under the year 2189, Beor is called son of Laban. On Laban see Chap. V. § 11. Besides the name Lokmân, which in signification corresponds with Bile âm (Balaam), we find in the Preislamite genealogy of the Arabs, which in my opinion is largely mixed up with mythical names, the chief Bal â'u, who is said to have been a leper (Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtikák, p. 106. 8). It should be observed that this is a man's name with the grammatical form of a feminine adjective.

2 See Chap V. § 10 end.

Sôtâ, fol. 10. a.

4 See Excursus B.

CHAPTER III.

THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATING

HEBREW MYTHS.

§ I. THE method of investigation is intended to discover -how the original myth is to be reached through the sources described in the preceding chapter, how the primitive germ of the myth is to be freed from the husk which in the course of its growth has been formed around it, and further how the progress and lapse of this growth itself are to be recognised. Then we shall be enabled to determine how stratum upon stratum has fastened itself round the original myth until it reached that configuration which is the concrete material of our investigation. The development of the myth in any nation is mainly determined by two factors, which give to this development the direction actually taken. One group of these factors is psychological, the other belongs to the history of civilisation. The psychological factors in the development of all myths are the same, not changing with the special character of the people whose myths form the subject of our consideration. For the same general laws everywhere determine the life of the soul; no difference in them is introduced by the ethnological life and the peculiarity of race of the people in question. There is a psychology of mankind, or as it was called when Lazarus introduced the science, a Psychology of Nations (Völkerpsychologie).

1 Die andere culturhistorisch. I am obliged to render this convenient adjective by a circumlocution, as 'civilisation-historical would be too cumbrous and hardly intelligible.-TR.

This is not a contemplation of the modes in which the intellectual life of various nations exhibits itself as acting in opposite directions, but of the modes in which the same laws find their expression and validity in the intellectual life of the most various nations. But there is no special psychology of races. On the other hand, the factors belonging to the history of civilisation are not everywhere alike, but are as various as the historical fates of the nations among themselves are various. We shall subsequently come back to the subject to show more fully that myths share in the historical vicissitudes of their nation, that they are always transformed in accordance with the stages of civilisation which the nation itself passes through in its historical development, and that accordingly the configuration of the myth is a faithful mirror of the stage of civilisation at which it has taken this particular configuration. Obviously therefore, we can duly estimate the myth through all its stages of development only in connexion with a comprehensive view over the historical development of the civilisation of the nation itself. And to gain this view we must especially attend to those phenomena which might produce an altered direction of the mind, and thus impress a new form on the myth also. But as in the methodical observation of the intellectual development of a nation in the course of its history psychological points of view must again occupy the foreground, we may assert that psychological observation must take up a prominent position in the method of mythological investigation; for the question will always be, What transformation does this or that historical vicissitude produce in that which makes up the sum of the human mind? The answer will however evidently turn out different according to the nature of these historical vicissitudes. But there is one special step of transformation which stands earlier than and in no connexion with the separate history of the nation, and is produced by a purely psychological operation. This transformation

PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO MYTHOLOGY.

37

is therefore common to all myths-so much so that most inquirers, and especially Max Müller, make the life of the myth to begin only at this stage.

It is the stage of mental development which is signalised by a remarkable fact in the history of language: viz., that an endless multitude of names, bestowed upon the phenomena and processes of nature, in virtue of various features of which there is a preponderating consciousness at the moment of perception, gradually lose their meaning; while some few features of the total phenomenon are retained, to represent all those particular factors and supply comprehensive general terms for their sum total. For example, the Sun has at first a countless number of designations. It is not merely that, in its various aspects, the Sun is treated as the subject of detached observation unrelated in thought to that of other aspects of the same Sun; but the very same aspect, on repeated notice, is regarded as something different every time, and is accordingly denoted by other names. In other words, borrowed from the terminology of modern psychology, no fusion (Verflechtung) has yet been effected. Long-continued observation of the same aspects gives consciousness of their identity under repetition, and makes possible the fusion of their ideas. Next, by a further advance in development, the psychological change emerges, through which the various features of the same phenomenon cease to be essential difference-marks in the idea, and, dropping into the background, give place to a general conception gained by their fusion, an aggregate of fusion (Verflechtungsmasse), the product of often-repeated fusion. The effect on language of this psychological change is that, through its gradual operation, the meaning is lost from the great majority of those expressions which arose merely because the particular observations of the same aspect of a phe

I must refer those readers who are not sufficiently familiar with the terminology to Steinthal's Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin 1871, vol. I., where all this is fully discussed in the section Elementare psychische Processe.