Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development

330. The Sun is in all the Semitic as well as in many Aryan languages grammatically feminine, and the myths frequently assign to the Sun a female form. It is therefore necessary sometimes to use the feminine pronoun.—Tr.

331. In Ahlwardt, Chalaf al-aḥmar, p. 49. I. See Vita Timuri, II. 48: ‘ḳad janaḥat al shams lil-ġurûb.’

332. Compare Ps. XVII. 8, LXI. 5 [4]; and accordingly in tastîrêm besêther pânekhâ, Ps. XXXI. 21 [20], ‘thou hidest them in the hiding-place of thy face,’ we must emend pânekhâ ‘face,’ into kenâphekhâ ‘wings.’

333. Romance of ʿAntar, V. 136 ult., 236 penult. In the Babylonian epos of Istar’s Descent to Hell, v. 10 (Lenormant, Premières Civilisations, II. 85), Night is compared to a bird.

334. This interpretation, here erroneously employed, is occasioned by the fact that in the Semitic languages the notion of ‘part’ is conveyed by words which properly denote ‘side:’ the two sides of a thing are two parts of it. Thus, even in literary Arabic the word ṭaraf, and in vulgar Arabic the word jânib (which is etymologically connected with the Hebrew kânâph ‘wing’) are used quite in the sense of baʿḍ ‘a part.’ An interesting modern example of this lies before me in the Arabic text of the terms of the latest 5,000,000l. loan by the Egyptian Minister of Finance, in which the third article says: 'The shares fall under the ordinary laws regulating buying and selling and bequest—sawâʾan kâna fî jânib minhu au fîhi bil-kâmil—equally whether it concerns a portion of them or the whole' (al-Jawâʾïb, a weekly paper, XIV. No. 695, p. 2, c. 2, of the year 1291).

335. E.g. Romance of ʿAntar, V. 80 ult., 168 v. 6: Saarḥalu ʿankum lâ urîdu sawâʾakum * waʾaḳṣidukum fî junḥi kulli ẓalâmin ‘I go away from you, I want not the like of you; but I shall seek you under the wings of all darkness.’

336. al-Aġânî, II. 12. 3, is also noticeable: ‘ḳamrun tawassaṭu junḥa leylin mubridi.’

337. Deutsche Mythologie, p. 141.

338. Ebers, Aegypten und die Bücher Mosis, p. 70.

339. Fiske, Myths and Myth-Makers, pp. 71, 154.

340. The sun is called celer deus by Ovid, Fasti, I. 386; and Herodotus, I. 215, says: τῶν θεῶν ὁ τάχιστος. See Hehn, Culturpflanzen, etc., p. 38.

341. Berêshîth rabbâ, sect. 22.

342. Even Philo lays the chief momentum of the story of Hagar on her flight: μέμνηται γὰρ (sc. ὁ ἱερὸς λόγος) πολλαχοῦ τῶν ἀποδιδρασκόντων, καθάπερ καὶ νῦν φάσκων ἐπὶ τῆς Ἄγαρ ὅτι κακωθεῖσα ἀπέδρα ἀπὸ προσώπου τῆς κυρίας (De profugis, p. 546, ed. Mangey).

343. I leave it for the present undecided whether the name Terach, given to Abraham’s father, belongs to this class. Ewald (History of Israel, I. 274) puts it in connexion with ârach ‘to wander,’ though in an ethnological sense.

344. See above, p. 41.

345. The first to discover this origin of the relative asher was the Hungarian Csepregi, pupil of the great Schultens, Dissert., Lugd., p. 171 (quoted by Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 165): he did not, however, follow out the idea very clearly. Compare also Stade’s view, essentially the same, in the Morgenländische Forschungen, Leipzig 1875, p. 188; I could not get a sight of this till after the above was ready for the press. On the other side Schrader, Jen. Literaturzeit 1875, p. 299.

346. In Assyrian the Moon is called arḥu, with a mere hamzâ (Schrader, Assyr.-babyl. Keilinschr., p. 282). In Arabic the reverse has happened; from warch (yârêach) has been formed the verb arracha ‘to fix the time (by the lunar calendar), to date,’ the w (Heb. y) being weakened into hamzâ (aleph). Whether the Coptic Ioh and Arabic yûḥ are connected with yârêach (the abrasion of r is not uncommon), is another question.

347. So Böttcher, Ausführl. Lehrbuch der hebr. Sprache, I. 516–17.

348. The poet Dîk al-Jinn had a mistress named Dînâ (Ibn Challiḳân. ed. Wüstenfeld, IV. 96. 7). See also Abû ʿUyeynâ al-Muhallabî (Agânî, III. 128. 2, 6).

349. Edwin Norris, Assyrian Dictionary, I. 248.

350. We find also al-ʿulya opposed to al-dunya in Ibn Châḳân ḳalâʾïd al-ʿiḳyân, ed. Bûlâḳ 1284, p. 60 ult.: ‘wa-dâmat laka-d-dunya * wa-dâmat laka-l-ʿulya.’

351. Cod. Leyden, Warner’s Fund, No. 597, p. 325.