Imatges de pàgina
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culturist condemned by a curse. The countries inhabited by savages,' as Montesquieu makes his Persian Usbek write,'' are generally sparsely peopled, through the distaste which almost all of them have for labour and the tillage of the soil. This unfortunate aversion is so strong that when they make an imprecation against one of their enemies, they wish him nothing worse than that he may be reduced to field-labour, 2 deeming no exercise noble and worthy of them except hunting and fishing.' This contempt of a sedentary life and its usage is by the Bedâwî directed also especially against the practice of arts and manufactures. Hence it comes that such peoples as the Arabs, which even in a sedentary condition regard nomadic life as a nobler stage of manners than the agricultural life to which they have fallen, neglect manufactures and seldom attain to any perfection in them. This is especially true of the inhabitants of the holy cities of the Arabian peninsula, who give a practical proof of their preference for Beduinism by the fact that the Sherîf- families let their sons pass their childhood in the tents of the desert for the sake of a nobler education. I am inclined to think,' says the credible traveller Burckhardt in his description of the inhabitants of Medina, that the want of artisans here is to be attributed to the very low estimation in which they are held by the Arabians, whose pride often proves stronger than their cupidity, and prevents a father from educating his sons in any craft. This aversion they probably inherit from the ancient inhabitants, the Bedouins, who, as I have remarked, exclude to this day all handicraftsmen from their tribes, and consider those who settle in their encampment as of an inferior cast, with whom they neither associate nor intermarry."

1 Lettres persanes, Lettre CXXI.

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2 See Herberstein, Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii, Vienna 1549, p. 61, where a Tatar formula of execration is said to be 'ut eodem in loco perpetuo tamquam Christianus haereas.'

Travels in Arabia, ed. Ouseley, 1829, p. 381.

A notable illustration of this relation is presented by the Arabic proverb,

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ARTS AND MANUFACTURES ALSO despised.

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Burton compares the Arabs of the desert in this respect with the North American Indians of a former generation : 'Both recognising no other occupation but war and the chase, despise artificers and the effeminate people of cities, as the game-cock spurns the vulgar roosters of the poultry-yard." The same is true of the relation of the Bedâ wî towards the townsmen in the Somali country.2 Kant, who casually notices this remarkable trait of human ideas in a small tract, refers the peculiarity to the fact that not only the natural laziness, but also the vanity (a misunderstood freedom) of man cause those who have merely to live whether profusely or parsimoniously---to consider themselves Magnates in comparison with those who have to labour in order to live.3

Thus is explained the conception which forms the basis of the Story of the Fall, and at the same time everything else in the older strata of Hebrew mythology in which the sympathy of the myth-forming people is given to the shepherds, to the prejudice of personages introduced as agriculturists. And now we will consider the most prominent of the figures forming the elements of the ancient Hebrew mythology.

'If you hear that the smith (of the caravan) is packing up in the evening, be sure that he will not go till the following morning' (al-Meydûnî, Bûlâk edition, I. 34). Notice the occasion of the origin of this proverb, in the commentary on the passage.

1 Personal Narrative of Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, 2nd ed. 1857,

I. 117.

2 Burton's First Footsteps in Eastern Africa, p. 240.

3 Kant's Kleinere Schriften zur Logik und Metaphysik, herausgegeben von Kirchmann, II. 4 (Philosoph. Bibliothek, Hermann, Bd. XXXIII.).

CHAPTER V.

THE MOST PROMINENT FIGURES IN HEBREW

MYTHOLOGY.

BATTLE and bloodshed, pursuit and suppression on the one side, love and union, glowing desire and coy evasion on the other, are the points of view from which the Myth regards the relations of day and night, of the grey morning and the sunrise, of the red sunset and the darkness of night, and their recurring changes. And this point of view is made yet more definite by the mythical idea that when forces are either engaged in mutual conflict, or seeking and pursuing one another in mutual love, as one follows the other, so one must have sprung from the other, as the child from the father or the mother; or else, being conceived as existing side by side in the moment of battle or of heavenly love, must be brothers or sisters, children of the same father or of the same mother, i.e. of the phenomenon that precedes both of them alike—as the bright day precedes the twilight and the night-or must be the parents of the child that follows them.

Therefore, still more definitely, murders of parents or children or brothers, battles between brothers, sexual love and union between children and parents, between brother and sister, form the chief plots of all myths, and by their manifold shades have produced that variety in our race's earliest observations of nature, which we encounter in the thousand colours of the Myth.

The talented founders of Aryan Comparative Mythology, especially Max Müller in the first rank, have set these themes of the myth on so firm and unquestioned a foun

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dation both in relation to psychology and to philology, and have so completely introduced them to the mind of the educated class, that I may safely omit a new exposition of this axiom of all Mythology. I content myself with pointing once more to what was shown in the preceding chapters, that these fundamental mythical themes are not something specially Aryan, but lie at the bottom of the Myth of all mankind without distinction of race, and consequently must form a starting-point when we are about to investigate Semitic or Hebrew myths.

The task of the following chapter will therefore be to find a place in the category of what is common to the whole of human kind for the myth of the Hebrews; in other words, to prove the existence of the myth-plots on Hebrew ground. As it is not my object to exhaust all the materials, to present a system already perfectly worked out on every side, or to erect a building with all its rooms. and stories stuffed full, I shall confine myself to that which, after competent and sober philological criticism, can be acknowledged as certain and indubitable. I hope that other investigators, who will gain from the method pursued here a rich treasury of material, will then follow up these safe results by gleanings of their own.

$ 1. In the designation of the Heaven the Semite starts from the sensuous impression of height, and therefore forms the names denoting it from the roots samá (shama) and rám, both of which express the idea of being high.' To the latter group belongs e.g. the Ethiopic rayam,' which denotes heaven. Both roots are combined in the Phenician Shâmîn-rûm. One of the most prominent figures of Hebrew mythology belongs to this category: Abh-râm the High Father, with his innumerable host of descendants.2 We have seen above that in

1 Osiander (Zeitschrift der D. M. G., 1853. VII. 437) is inclined to combine with this the old Arabic Rayam or Riyâm.

2 The added Abh in Abhrâm, compared with the other expressions in which

his view of nature the nomad begins with the sky at night. The sky by itself is the dark, nightly, or clouded heaven; the sunshine on the sky is an accessory. Hence it comes that in Arabic the word Sky (samâ) is very often used even for Rain;' and the notions of rain and sky are so closely interwoven that even the traces of rain on the earth are called sky. In the language of the Bongo people there is only one word for sky and rain, hetōrro.2 On Semitic ground the Assyrian divine name Rammanu or Raman must be mentioned here. If this name has any etymological connexion with the root rám 'to be high,' as Hesychius and some modern scholars say, though others derive it from ra'am thunder,' Ra'amân the Thunderer,' then we find here again the primitive mythological idea that the intrinsically High is the dark stormy sky, or, personified, the God of Storms. So also in the old Hebrew myth the 'High' is the nightly or rainy sky. The best known myth that the Hebrews told of their Abh-râm is the story of the intended sacrifice of his only son Yischâk, commonly called Isaac. But what is Yischâk? Literally translated, the word denotes 'he laughs,' or 'the Laughing.' In the Semitic languages, especially in proper names and epithets, the use of the aorist (even in the second person, e.g. in the Arabic name Tazîd) is very frequent where we should employ a participle. So here. So here. Now who is the 'He laughs,' the 'Smiling one'? No other but 'He who sits in heaven

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the quality of father is not emphasized, finds an exact parallel in An(= In)μητήρ and Γαΐα.

1 Opuscula Arabica (ed. W. Wright, Leyden 1859), p. 30. 2; 34. 5. This usage is made possible by the siguification Cloud, which is peculiar to the word samâ in Arabic (Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed, I. 544). 2 Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa, I. 311.

3 See the Count von Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, Leipzig 1876, I. p. 306 et seqq.

Or Future, or Imperfect, as it is more generally termed.—TR.

It is worthy of note that in Arabic pluralia fracta can be formed from this class of proper names. An interesting example of this is Tan'um" b. Kami'ata, the name of the ancestor of the tribe Tanâ'um. See Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtikak, p. 85 and gloss h.

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