Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development

613. Hellwald, ibid., p. 482.

614. Movers, Die Phönizier, II. 2. 439 et seq.

615. Histoire générale des langues sémitiques, p. 200.

616. See my Studien über Tanchûm Jeruschalmi, Leipzig 1870, p. 12.

617. Die Semiten in ihrem Verhâltniss zu Chamiten und Japheiten, Basel 1872, p. 134.

618. This question will be found very satisfactorily discussed in Stade’s article ‘Erneute Prüfung des zwischen dem Phönicischen und Hebräischen bestehenden Verwandtschaftsverhältnisses,’ in the Morgenländische Forschungen, Leipzig 1875, pp. 169–232.

619. See Merx, Archiv. f. wissensch. Erforsch. d. A. T. pt. 1. 1867, p. 108.

620. In late Aramaised Hebrew we find the feminine kehantâ (= kôheneth) for a Priest’s Wife, equivalent to êsheth kôhên; see Levy, Chald. Wörterb. I. 356 a. It comes thence to be used in a general signification, of an honest, irreproachable woman, in opposition to pundâḳîth, properly an innkeeper, in Mishnâ Yebhâmôth, XVI. 7.

621. See Ernst Meier’s essay on the former in Zeitsch. d. D. M. G., 1865, XIX., and Nathan Davis, Carthage and her remains, London 1861.

622. Die geschichtlichen Bücher des A. T., Leipzig 1866.

623. Bibelkritisches, in the Zeitsch. d. D. M. G., 1873, XXVII. 682–89, especially the theses 22–26. Zunz appears to have laboured independently of Graf, but arrives at almost the same results.

624. Bargés, who has earned great credit for his elucidation of the Marseilles table in several writings, disputes the authenticity of the inscription discovered by Davis (Examen d’une nouvelle inscription phénicienne découverte récemment dans les ruines de Carthage et analogue à celle de Marseille. Paris 1868).

625. History of Israel, II. 360.

626. Geschichte der Juden, Leipzig 1874, I. 407 et seq.

627. See Stade’s exhaustive exposition in the Morgenländische Forschungen, p. 197. But I cannot share the opinion of my respected friend, that the Hebrews could borrow nothing from the Phenicians because the two nations passed through a completely distinct religious and political development.

628. Shefaṭ-ʿAdad in Nabatean, quoted by Ernst Meier in Zeitsch. d. D. M. G. 1873, XVII. 609, is also problematical.

629. Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, I. 371.

630. The data belonging to this subject are lucidly brought together in Kuenen’s Religion of Israel, I. 182.

631. Semiten, Chamiten und Japhetiten, p. 160 et seq.

632. Equally exaggerated on the other side, however, is Tiele’s view (Vergelijk. Geschied., p. 182), treating the story of Samson as borrowed from the Canaanites. See also Duncker, l.c. II. 65.

633. This fact, moreover, refutes Buckle’s thesis (assuming the very opposite course of development), which makes history to be the earlier, and to be subsequently degraded to ‘a mythology full of marvels.’ This thesis has been estimated at its true value by Hermann Cohen in an article entitled Die dichterische Phantasie und der Mechanismus des Bewusstseins, in the Zeitsch. für Völkerpsychologie etc., 1869, VI. 186–193.

634. Mommsen, l.c. book III. chap 1.

635. Holtzmann, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 28.

636. Paul Gyulai, Vörösmarty élete [Life of Vörösmarty], Pest 1866, p. 49 et seq.

637. See Excursus N.

638. Godgeleerde Bijdragen, 1866, p. 983 et seq. With him Kuenen agrees, The Religion of Israel, I. 311 et seq.

639. Like the Hungarian national hero Nicolas Toldi, who overcomes the Czech (Bohemian) hero in single combat.

640. Compare Genesis rabbâ, § 48.

641. See Shâhnâmeh (ed. Mohl), p. 124. vv. 121–29 and pp. 139–40, etc.

642. Hartung, in the first part of his Religion und Mythologie der Griechen, contradicts himself again and again on this subject. At first he makes monotheism precede all development of religion (p. 3), then he sees nothing religious at all in monotheism (p. 28), and next the growth of religion proceeds from polytheism to monotheism, not the reverse way (p. 32).

643. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I. 363 note.

644. La Magie chez les Chaldéens, p. 72.

645. Annales de la Philosophie chrétienne, an 1858, p. 260.

646. Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Green and Grose, vol. II. p. 311; compare Buckle’s History of Civilisation in England, in 3 vols. vol. I. p. 251; Pfleiderer, Die Religion und ihre Geschichte, II. 17. Before Hume the view that Polytheism was a degradation of a previous Monotheism was generally admitted. But Hume’s exposition did not put an end to this radically false idea. Creuzer’s great work, Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker, besonders der Griechen, is based on this false assumption, and Schelling’s Philosophy of Religion starts from the same premiss. And many able English scholars still speak again and again of the degradation of the primeval Monotheism into Polytheism. Not only one-sided theologians start from this axiom; Gladstone’s mythological system, in his Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, and Juventus Mundi is founded upon it, all progress in history, philology and mythology notwithstanding.

647. In Virchow and Holtzendorff’s Sammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher Vorträge, 1870, Heft 97, p. 20.

648. Polit. I. 1. 7: καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς δὲ διὰ τοῦτο πάντες φασὶ βασιλεύεσθαι, ὅτι καὶ αὐτοι, οἱ μὲν ἔτι καὶ νῦν, οἱ δὲ τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἐβασιλεύοντο· ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ εἴδη ἑαυτοῖς ἀφομοιοῦσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, οὕτω καὶ τοὺς βίους τῶν θεῶν. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I. 466, says: ‘Considering the multitude of superhuman beings, it is certainly very natural to follow the analogy of human relations, which is often carried out with great consistency, and to assume gradations of power among them, one being regarded as the first and highest of all. But this idea may easily be rendered unfruitful through the very analogy which suggested it, because in human society the power and repute of individuals are frequently changing.’ But even this fact is not unfruitful with regard to religion; for on this analogy a world of gods with a head liable to change may be imagined.

649. Schelling’s Sämmtliche Werke (Cotta’s edition, 1856), II. Abth. I, 52 (Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie).

650. Theogon. vv. 882–85.

651. Palgrave, Central and Eastern Arabia, I. 33.

652. Von Holtzendorff in the Zeitsch. für Völkerpsychologie etc., 1868, V. 378.