1. Especially Max Müller’s essay on Comparative Mythology (Chips etc., II. 1), and the ninth in the second series of his Lectures on the Science of Language; and Cox’s introductions to his Manual of Mythology, Tales of the Gods and Heroes, and Tales of Thebes and Argos.
2. Both in England and in France the attempt has been made with much taste to introduce the results of comparative mythology in the instruction of youth; in England by Rev. G.W. Cox in his Tales of the Gods and Heroes, Tales of Thebes and Argos, Tales from Greek Mythology, Manual of Mythology in the form of question and answer, 1867, and Tales of Ancient Greece, 1870, the last two of which have just been translated into Hungarian, and published by the Franklin Society; in France by Baudry and Delerot (Paris 1872). Still more recently the results of comparative mythology have also been summarised in two excellent books for children by Edward Clodd, The Childhood of the World: a simple account of Man in Early Times, 1873, and The Childhood of Religion; embracing a simple account of the birth and growth of Myths and Legends, 1875.
3. This psychological uniformity of all races of men is independent of the question of the monogenetic or polygenetic origin of races. The psychological uniformity of different races is especially conspicuous when we observe and compare individuals of the separate races in infancy, when the distinctions produced by history, education, instruction, etc., are not yet present (see Frohschammer, Das Christenthum und die moderne Naturwissenschaft, Vienna 1868, p. 208.) When we are considering the growth of mankind in general, the stage when myths are created corresponds to the infancy of the individual.
4. Das Beständige in den Menschenrassen und die Spielweise ihrer Veränderlichkeit, Berlin 1868, p. 78.
5. François Lenormant, Essai sur la Propagation de l’Alphabet phénicien dans l’ancien monde, Vol. I. (2nd ed., Paris 1875), p. 17.
6. Tylor, Primitive Culture, I. 6.
7. On these two see Pfleiderer, Die Religion, ihr Wesen und ihre Geschichte, II. 8.
8. The title is 'Conférence de la Fable avec l’Histoire sainte, où l’on voit que les grandes fables, le culte et les mystères du paganisme ne sont que des copies altérées des histoires, des usages et des traditions des Hébreux.'
9. Edward Wilton in the Journal of Sacred Literature, 1849, II. 374 et seq.
10. Dr. Vollmer’s Wörterbuch der Mythologie aller Völker, newly revised by Dr. W. Binder, with an Introduction to Mythological Science by Dr. Johannes Minckwitz, 3rd ed., Stuttgart 1874.
11. See the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung, 1875, no. 169, p. 2657.
12. Primitive Culture, I. 22.
13. See Virchow in the Monatsbericht der königl. preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften, January 1875, p. 11.
14. Origin of Civilisation, 3rd ed., p. 330, quoting Sibree’s Madagascar and its People, p. 396.
15. Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie, pp. 62, 63. This is the idea to which Max Müller refers in noticing the lectures of the philosopher of Berlin, in his Introduction to the Science of Religion, p. 145.
16. See his Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Alterthum, vorzugsweise zur Ethik und Religion der Griechen, second edition, Leipzig 1875, especially p. 272 et seq.
17. Flach, Das System der Hesiod. Kosmogonie, Leipzig 1874; see Literar. Centralblatt, 1875, no. 7.
18. Rude Stone Monuments in all Countries, p. 32, note 2.
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.
59. In The Myths of the New World, New York 1868. See Steinthal’s criticism of this collection in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie and Sprachwissenschaft, 1871, Bd. VII.
60. Myths and Myth-Makers, Boston 1873, p. 151 et seq.
61. In the sixth vol. of Waitz’s Anthropologie der Naturvölker, where I obtained information about Schirren’s works.
62. Les premières civilisations, Paris 1874, II. 113 et seq.
63. Gott in der Geschichte, I. 353; a passage which, with a large part of the volume, is omitted in the greatly abridged English translation.
64. Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte, V. ii. 18–19 (English tr. IV. 28–29).
65. Even old Plutarch observed in reference to the then favourite explanation of the myths ex ratione physica: Δεῖ δὲ μὴ νομίζειν ἁπλῶς εἰκόνας ἐκείνων (i.e. of the sun and moon) τούτους (Zeus and Hera), ἀλλ’ αὐτὸν ἐν ὕλη Δία τὸν ἥλιον καὶ αὐτὴν τὴν Ἥραν ἐν ὕλῃ τὴν σελήνην (Quaestiones Romanae, 77). See Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, III. 24: Longe aliter rem se habere, atque hominum opinio sit: eos enim, qui dii appellantur, rerum naturas esse, non figuras deorum.
66. Spiegel still does this up to a recent date in his Eranische Alterthumskunde, II. 19.
67. See Tylor, Primitive Culture, II. 287 et seq.
68. The story of Osiris and Typhon e.g. originally personified the vegetative life of nature and the struggles incident to it, but was afterwards transferred to the destinies of the human soul. See Ebers, Durch Gosen zum Sinai, Leipzig 1872, p. 477.
69. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, III. 183.
70. See Roth in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1848, II. 217; Albrecht Weber, Akademische Vorlesungen über indische Literaturgeschichte, Berlin 1852, p. 35.
71. See Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, London 1874, I. 226.
72. We shall treat of this in the Third Section of Chapter VIII.
73. Translated and given as an Appendix to this volume.—Tr.
74. How readily Alexander’s history was combined with the Solar myth is best proved by the fact that Arabian tradition gives Alexander a Sun-name, the variously interpreted Ḏû-l-karnein = the Horned, i.e. the Beaming.
75. Translated and given as an Appendix to this volume.—Tr.
76. Wayyiḳrâ rabbâ, sect. XIX.: hishchîr we-heʿerîbh.
77. See Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 1406. b.
78. See Hermann Cohen’s dissertation, Die dichterische Phantasie und der Mechanismus des Bewusstseins, in the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, &c. 1869, VI. 239 et seq.
79. On the German legends in which this idea occurs see Henne-Am-Rhyn, Die deutsche Volkssage, Leipzig 1874, p. 268 et seq.
80. See Ps. LXXIV. 13–14; LXXXIV. 11. There is nothing to justify those interpreters who, caring nothing for the remains of ancient myths, always wish to understand by Rahabh and Tannîn the kingdom of Egypt.
81. Angelo de Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, II. 217. On the meaning of milk and honey in the Hebrew myth, Steinthal has written exhaustively in his Treatise on the Story of Samson, given in the Appendix.
82. See Weber in the Zeitschrift der D. M. G., 1855, IX. 238.
83. Al-Meydânî, Majmaʿ al-amthâl, II. 203.
84. Korân, Sûr. V. v. 69.
85. Sonne, Mond und Sterne [i.e. Bd. I. of Die poetischen Naturanschauungen, &c.], p. 4.
86. Die Naturgeschichte der Sage, I. 127.
87. See Excursus A.
88. Such names have often planted themselves firmly in popular tradition, and are accordingly mentioned in various quarters with perfect uniformity. So e.g. Ιαννῆς and Ιαμβρῆς, who appear both in Rabbinical writings and in 2 Tim. III. 8 (see Jablonski, Opuscula, ed. Te Water, II. 23).
89. See Wilhelm Bacher’s treatise, Kritische Untersuchungen zum Prophetentargûm (Zeitschrift der D. M. G. 1874, XXVIII. 7).
90. Leben Abraham’s nach Auffassung der jüdischen Sage, Leipzig 1859. Another good compilation is that of Hamburger, Geist der Hagada, Leipzig 1857, I. 39–50.
91. Bêth ham-midrâsh: Sammlung kleiner Midrashim und vermischter Abhandlungen aus der jüdischen Literatur, ed. Ad. Jellinck, Vienna 1873, V. 40.
92. Max Müller, Essays [German translation of Chips], II. 147; not in the English.
93. Rigveda, L. 8; CCCXCIX. 9.
94. Sonne, Mond und Sterne, p. 4.
95. Bab. Bâbhâ bathrâ, fol. 16. b.
96. See Kuhn, Ueber Entwickelungsstufen der Mythenbildeng (Abhandl. der kön. Akad. d. W. 1873, Berlin 1874), p. 144.
97. Berêshîth rabbâ, sect. 68.
98. See on the other side Ewald, History of Israel (2nd or 3rd ed.), II. 214.
99. Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre, Gottingen 1857, I. 66.
100. I find this identification, it is true, only in later books, Tânâ de-bhê Elîyâ, c. 27; Sêder ʿôlâm, c. 21; see Halâkhôth gedôlôth (hilkhôth haspêd). In the Sêder had-dôrôth, under the year 2189, Beor is called son of Laban. On Laban see Chap. V. § 11. Besides the name Loḳmân, which in signification corresponds with Bileʿâm (Balaam), we find in the Preislamite genealogy of the Arabs, which in my opinion is largely mixed up with mythical names, the chief Balʿâʾu, who is said to have been a leper (Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ, p. 106. 8). It should be observed that this is a man’s name with the grammatical form of a feminine adjective.
102. Sôṭâ, fol. 10. a.
103. See Excursus B.
104. ‘Die andere culturhistorisch.’ I am obliged to render this convenient adjective by a circumlocution, as ‘civilisation-historical’ would be too cumbrous and hardly intelligible.—Tr.
105. I must refer those readers who are not sufficiently familiar with the terminology to Steinthal’s Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin 1871, vol. I., where all this is fully discussed in the section Elementare psychische Processe.
106. But it is to be observed that some of the expressions produced by Polyonymy [multitude of names] survive the process of fusion and remain with the original signification; thus e.g. several names for Moon in Hebrew. On such names Synonymy, a secondary function of conscious speech, then performs its work.
107. Chips, First Series, pp. 356, 361.
108. On the Pronoun Wilhelm von Humboldt’s essay, Ueber die Verwandtschaft der Ortsadverbien mit dem Pronomen, Berlin 1830, still deserves study. See also what is said below (Chap. V. § 6) on Âshêr.
109. Budenz, in the Hungarian review Magyar Nyelvőr (‘Guardian of the Hungarian Language’), 1875, IV. 57.
110. Max Müller, Chips, II. pp. 93–106.
112. Kitâb al-aġânî, I. 133. 19. Compare al-Meydânî, ed. Bûlâḳ, II. 262. 4.
113. Both wind and rain are placed in connexion with the night in the Dîvân of the Huḏailites, ed. Kosegarten, p. 125, v.5: taʿtâduhu rîḥu-sh-shimâli biḳurrihâ * fî kulli leylatin dâjinin wa-hutûni, ‘the Northwind blows over it with his coldness every cloudy rainy night.’
114. Yâḳût’s Geogr. Dictionary, I. 24. 2.
115. Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie, &c. 1874, VIII. 179.
116. See Böttcher’s article on this group of roots in Höfer’s Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft der Sprache (Greifswald 1851), III. 16.
117. See especially the lucid exposition of Dr. Abr. Geiger, in his Das Judenthum und seine Geschichte (2nd edit.), I. 51.
118. In other countries also human sacrifices have been abolished by a reform of religion, and sacrifices limited to beasts and vegetables; e.g. in Mexico, where the reform is attributed to Quetzalcoatl. See Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, IV. 141.
119. The Sunset is child of Night only if we keep before our eyes the mythical identity of the Morning and Evening Glow, according to § 2 of this chapter.
120. See Sir Ch. Lyell, The Geological Evidence of the Antiquity of Man (4th ed. 1873), pp. 122 et seq. and 228. See also F. Lenormant’s essay, ‘L’Homme Fossile,’ in his Les premiéres Civilisations, I. 42.