Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development

352. It also deserves consideration whether Dînâ as the feminine of Dân denotes the Moon: compare Lâbhân, Lebhânâ; Âshêr, Ashêrâ. In that case the above myth would speak of the abduction of the Moon by the Morning-dawn, i.e. the disappearance of the moon at sunrise. It would then be the same myth as the Hellenic one of the abduction of Helenê (Selênê) by Paris.

353. Angelo de Gubernatis, ibid. p. 278 et seq.

354. See Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., 1855, IX. 758.

355. Edwin Norris, Assyrian Dictionary, I. 347. The signification ‘having locks’ might also be mentioned as a possibility for zalîchâ. In that case we should have to notice the Syrian zelîchê of the Peshiṭtô in Song of Songs, I. 11, where the parallelism to gedûlê demands something like ‘locks of hair;’ and this meaning agrees with that of zelach in Syriac: fudit.

356. It is well-known that the gutturals ح ḥ and خ ch often change into ف f. The Arabic ḳadaḥ ‘cup’ becomes in Turkish ḳadef; the name Yehûd is pronounced in jest Jufut. Compare the Arabic naḳacha with naḳafa, and the Mehri ehû, denoting ‘mouth,’ with Arabic fû, Hebrew peh, etc.

357. See Zeitschr. d. D. M. G., 1855, IX. 758.

358. See Pfleiderer, Religion und ihre Geschichte, II. 271.

359. Brinton, Myths of the New World, pp. 159 et seq.

360. 2 Kings, I. 8, II. 11. Compare the fiery, flame-red chariot of Ushas (Rigveda, VI. 64. 7).

361. Das alte Griechenland im neuen, p. 23.

362. Supplement to the Augsburg Allgem. Zeitung, 1874, No. 344. p. 5377.

363. Compare Renan, Hist. génér. des Langues sémitiques, p. 28.

364. Called in the English Bible Lamech, which is derived from the pausal form Lâmĕkh through the LXX. Λάμεχ, as is the case with many names, e.g. Abel, Japheth, Jared, though not all; cf. on the other side Jether, Zerah, Peleg. The ordinary form, such as Lĕmĕch, ought to be preferred.—Tr.

365. Schwartz, Ursprung der Mythologie, pp. 138–150.

366. See the whole of Chapter VI.

367. See note 364, p. 129:.

368. Ps. XIX. 5 [4]. We have already remarked (p. 111) that the tents which originally belonged to the sky at night are frequently transferred to the sky of daytime; see also Is. XL. 22. And Noah uncovers himself, bethôkh oholô ‘in the middle of his tent’ (Gen. IX. 21).

369. In al-Jauharî, s.r. kfr.

370. In Ibn al-Sikkît, p. 193; ḥatta ara aʿnâḳa ṣubḥin ablajâ * tasûru fî aʿjâzi leylin adʿajâ. The expression aʿjâz al-leyl also occurs in a verse of Farazdaḳ, Kitâb al-Aġânî, XIV. 173. 19, and of Ashgaʿ, ibid. XVII. 35. 13.

371. See also Shâhnâmêh, VII. 395, with Rückert’s conjecture suggested in Zeitsch. der D. M. G., 1856, X. 136.

372. Lazarus Geiger, Ursprung und Entwickelung der menschl. Sprache und Vernunft, I. 447.

373. Schwartz, Sonne, Mond und Sterne, p. 228.

374. In G. Rawlinson’s History of Herodotus, I. 490 et seq. One might also think of the Arabic nafara ‘to fly.’ The Sun is a fugitive, as has been already shown.

375. Lenormant, Premières Civilisations, II. 21.

376. On the primary signification of the root mrd in Semitic, see Fried. Delitzsch, Studien über indogerm.-semit. Wurzelverwandtschaft, Leipzig 1873, p. 74.

377. Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, p. 17, and Die assyr.-babyl. Keilinschriften, p. 212. Compare Merx, Grammatica Syriaca, p. 201.

378. Levy, Phönizische Studien, pt. II. p. 24.

379. Adolf Jellinek, Bêth ham-midrâsh, V. 40; see supra, p. 32.

380. I am fully aware that in Hebrew poetry arrows are frequently, indeed most frequently, to be understood of lightning. ‘He sends out his arrows and scatters them; lightnings in great number and discomfits them’ (Ps. XVIII. 15 [14]). But the arrows of Joseph’s adversaries must from the very nature of the myth be rays of the sun. If the hunter is the Sun, then the rays can only be something which the hunter in that ancient time used for shooting. Mythology is not the product of a well-thought-out consistent system, and so nothing is more likely than that two different things should be treated in the same way by virtue of some feature common to both. Thus the solar ray and the lightning are the same in mythology—an Arrow.

381. See a fuller description in Schwartz, Sonne, Mond und Sterne, pp. 218–220.

382. J.G. Müller, Geschichte der amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 429.

383. See this question treated and its literature cited in Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie, 3rd ed., I. 57.

384. For the description of the Sun as an Opener, I am enabled to insert a supplementary datum, borrowed from a book which was published when p. 97 of the present work (to which I refer back) was already printed. In a cuneiform Hymn to Samas, the Sun-god, he is addressed thus:

O Samas! from the back of the heavens thou hast come forth:

Yea the gate of the heavens thou hast opened.

(German translation of George Smith’s Chaldean Account of Genesis, with additions by Dr. Fr. Delitzsch, Leipzig, 1876.) The passage quoted is one of Delitzsch’s additions, p. 284. I think this Hymn is a remarkable illustration of our hypothesis that Yiphtâch, ‘the Opener,’ is a linguistic description of the Sun.

385. I owe to the kindness of my honoured friend Dr. Hampel, Custos of the archeological section of the Hungarian National Museum, the verification of a reference in the Bulletino dell’ Instituto di Correspondenza Archeologica, 1853, p. 150, to a stone which exhibits the same representation of the head of Janus as the coin in question, viz.: ‘una testa doppia, di cui una facie è barbata, l’altra giovanile.’

386. See Naphtali, discussed in § 14 of this Chapter; p. 178.

387. Compare Sol languidus (Lucretius, De rerum nat., V. 726).