TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

ix

to the full understanding of the book than a knowledge of what has been written on Comparative Mythology.

The translation has received so many additions and corrections made expressly for it by the author, that it is far superior to the original German edition; moreover, it has been thoroughly revised by the author in proof.

I have added a few notes, where they seemed to be wanted; they are always distinguished (by TR.') from the author's own. The Index is also compiled by me.

References to the Old Testament are made to the original Hebrew; in the few cases where the chapter or verse bears a different number in the English and other modern versions, the reference to the latter is added in brackets.

I have adopted a few peculiarities of orthography, which I ought to confess to, the more so as I hope others may be convinced of their reasonableness. Nazirite, Hivvite, are corrections of positive blunders in spelling of the English Bible. Hivite was probably written in obedience to an unwritten law of English spelling which forbids the doubling of v; whether there is now any sense in this precept (which must have originated when vv would be confounded with w) or not, at least it ought not to be extended to foreign names. The tendency of the age to dispense with the Latin diphthongs ∞, ∞ (which were a few generations ago used in æra, economy, Egypt, etc.), I have ventured to anticipate in similar words, such as esthetic, Phenicia, Phenix. The anomaly of the French spell

ing of the Greek word programme, alongside of anagram, diagram, parallelogram, seems to me sufficient condemnation of the form.

In the Hebrew and Arabic quotations the Latin alphabet has been used throughout. The transliteration of the following letters should be noted, as being the only ones about which there could be any doubt :— commencing a syllable in the middle of a word

л are written bh (to be pronounced v), kh, ph, th. In Hebrew ǎ ĕŏ denote either the ordinary short vowels or the châtêph vowels; and ĕ also the vocal sheva. In Arabic texts the i'râb is omitted in prose, but preserved in verse on account of the metre. These principles of transliteration are the same which the author adopts in the German edition, with a few modifications which seemed desirable for English readers, especially the use of the letters j, th and y with their usual English force.

LONDON: January 1877.

RUSSELL MARTINEAU.

INTRODUCTION.

THE FOLLOWING SHEETS make no claim to present a system of Hebrew Mythology. I have left out much that would necessarily be included in a system, and confined myself to a limited portion of what can be proved to be the matter of the Hebrew myths. Even within the actual domain of my labours, I was not anxious to subject the extant narratives in all their minutest features to mythological analysis. The application of the certain results of the science of Mythology in general to a domain hitherto almost ignored with reference to this subject, could only be accomplished by some self-limitation on the part of the author; and my immediate task was only to show that Semitism in general, and Hebrew in particular, could not be exceptions to the laws of mythological enquiry established on the basis of psychology and the science of language, and that it is possible from Semitism itself, on psychological and philological principles, to construct a scientific Semitic Mythology.

By blindly tracing out copious matters of detail, the investigator of myths is very easily and unconsciously seduced to the slippery ground of improbabilities; and therefore I preferred, in the first instance, to enlarge only on subjects on which I was confident of being able to present what was self-evident, and in these only, so to speak, to reveal the first cellular formations, from which later