Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development

19. The Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 302.

20. Sayce in the Academy, 1875, p. 586.

21. The Academy, 1875, no. 184, p. 496. The promoters of the Theological Translation Fund, by whom Kuenen’s Religion of Israel was published, Dr. J. Muir of Edinburgh, who wrote some letters to the Scotsman on the Dutch Theology, and to a certain extent Bishop Colenso, besides many others who have not avowed their views so publicly, indicate the progress of opinion in England.—Tr.

22. See Literar. Centralblatt, 1875, no. 49, p. 157.

23. Biblische Mythologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments, 2 vols., Stuttgart 1842; Etymologisch-symbolisch-mythologisches Realwörterbuch für Bibelforscher, Archäologen und bildende Künstler, 4 vols., Stuttgart 1843–5.

24. I have not succeeded in obtaining a sight of Schwenk’s Mythologie der Semiten, published in 1849; but Bunsen’s condemnation of it in Egypt’s Place in Universal History, IV. p. 363, made me less anxious to get it.

25. Naturgeschichte der Sage. Rückführung aller religiösen Ideen, Sagen, Systeme auf ihren gemeinsamen Stammbaum und ihre letzte Wurzel, 2 vols., Munich 1864–5.

26. In Vol. II. of his Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, translated and appended to this volume.

27. Der Semitismus, in Zeitsch. für Völkerpsychologie etc., 1875, VIII. 339–340.

28. It would be unfair not to mention the Dutch Professor Tiele as a worker on this field. In his Vergelijkende Geschiedenis der oude godsdiensten, Vol. I.: De egyptische en mesopotamische godsdiensten (Amsterdam 1872) he has occasionally inserted explanations of Hebrew myths, to which I have referred at the proper places.

29. II. 421 et seq.; see his Rivista Europea, year VI. II. 587. Cf. his review of the German edition of this work in the Bollettino italiano degli studj orientali, 1876, I. 169–172.

30. In reference to this I may refer to the eloquent expressions of Steinthal in his lecture Mythos und Religion, p. 28 (in Virchow and Holtzendorff’s Sammlung gemeinverständlicher Vorträge, Bd. V. Heft 97).

31. Mythologie der Ebräer in ihrem Zusammenhange mit den Mythologien der Indogermanen und der Ægypter. Nordhausen 1876.

32. Ausland, 1874, p. 961 et seq., 1001 et seq.

33. The above-named work was published immediately after the conclusion of this Introduction.

34. Die Erzväter der Menschheit: ein Beitrag zur Grundlegung einer hebräischen Alterthumswissenschaft. Leipzig, Fues 1875.

35. Ibn Yaʿîsh’s Commentary on the Mufaṣṣal, p. 74 (of the edition now being published by Dr. Jahn of Berlin). See Fables de Loqman le Sage (éd. Dérenbourg), Introduction, p. 7.

36. I may refer on this point to Von Grutschmid’s excellent critique on Bunsen’s attempt to explain Athene as Semitic, in the former’s Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Orients, Leipzig 1858, p. 46.

37. Stade (Morgenländische Forschungen, p. 232) justly insists on the good Hebrew character of the names occurring in the Hebrew stories, even against the false supposition of the original Aramaic character of the Hebrew people.

38. Zeitsch. d. D.M.G., 1871, XXV. 139; see Lepsius, Einleitung zur Chronologie der alten Ægypten, I. 326.

39. See Ibn Yaʿîsh’s Commentary on the Mufaṣṣal of Zamachsharî, p. 47, in which the name of the constellation al-ʿAyyûḳ (Auriga, ‘The Hinderer’) is imported into this story, as hindering al-Dabarân from coming up with his beloved.

40. al-Meydânî, Majmaʿ al-amthâl (ed. of Bûlâḳ), II. 209.

41. See Nöldeke in Schenkel’s Bibellexikon, 2nd ed. IV. 370.

42. Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 1869, VI.

43. Theodor Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, II. 85.

44. W.H.I. Bleek, Reynard the Fox in South Africa, 1864, pp. xx-xxvi. See Max Müller’s Introduction to the Science of Religion, London 1873, p. 54.

45. Histoire générale et Système comparé des Langues sémitiques, p. 7.

46. Two instances will suffice to show how Renan’s hypothesis became the common property of educated people. It is treated as fully made out, both by Roscher, the German political economist, and by Draper, the American naturalist and historian of civilisation. The former says: ‘Life in the desert seems to be an especially favourable soil for Monotheism. It wants that luxuriant variety of the productive powers of nature by which Polytheism was encouraged in remarkably fruitful countries, such as India’ (System der Volkswirthschaft, 7th ed., Stuttgart 1873, II. 38). The latter: ‘Polytheistic ideas have always been held in repute by the southern European races; the Semitic have maintained the unity of God. Perhaps this is due to the fact, as a recent author has suggested, that a diversified landscape of mountains and valleys, islands, rivers, and gulfs, predisposes man to a belief in a multitude of divinities. A vast sandy desert, the illimitable ocean, impresses him with an idea of the oneness of God’ (History of Conflict between Religion and Science, London 1875, p. 70). This view has also passed into Peschel’s Völkerkunde, and Bluntschli also, in his lecture on the ancient oriental ideas of God and world in 1861, echoed Renan’s hypothesis of 1855.

47. Anthropologie der Naturvölker, I. 297.

48. On the other side, Renan says (Hist. gén. 4th ed., p. 497) ‘Cette grande conquête (the recognition of Monotheism) ne fut pas pour elle (i. e. for the Semitic race) l’effet du progrès; ce fut une de ces premières aperceptions.’

49. Much of this literature has been unnoticed, as e.g. a late pamphlet by Léon Hugonnet: La civilisation arabe, défense des peuples sémitiques en réponse à M. Renan, Geneva 1873.

50. Histoire générale, p.

51. Geschichte des Materialismus, 1st ed., 1866, p. 77. See 2nd ed., 1873, I. 149.

52. Ib. p. 83. See 2nd ed., p. 152.

53. Cours de Philosophie Positive, éd. Littré, Paris 1869, V. 90, 197, 324.

54. Histoire générale, p. 486: ‘L’unité de constitution psychologique de l’espèce humaine, au moins des grandes races civilisées, en vertu de laquelle les mêmes mythes ont dû apparaître parallèlement sur plusieurs points à la fois, suffirait, d’ailleurs, pour expliquer les analogies qui reposent sur quelque trait général de la condition de l’humanité, ou sur quelques-uns de ses instincts les plus profonds.’

55. Ib. p. 27.

56. Max Müller, Chips from a German Workshop, I. 370.

57. Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 390 et seq.

58. In Chips, &c., I. p. 341.