Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1: Essays on the Science of ReligionMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1: Essays on the Science of Religion
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
Even in Greece there are certain words which have remained so pellucid
as to prove unfit for mythological refraction. Selene in Greek is so
clearly the moon that her name would pierce through the darkest clouds
of mythe and fable. Call her Hecate, and she will bear any disguise,
however fanciful. It is the same with the Latin Luna. She is too
clearly the moon to be mistaken for anything else, but call her
Lucina, and she will readily enter into various mythological phases.
If, then, the names of sun and moon, of thunder and lightning, of
light and day, of night and dawn could not yield to the Semitic races
fit appellatives for the Deity, where were they to be found? If the
names of Heaven or Earth jarred on their ears as names unfit for the
Creator, where could they find more appropriate terms? They would not
have objected to real names such as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or
Ζεὐς κὑδιστος μἑγιστος, if such words could have been framed
in their dialects, and the names of Jupiter and Zeus could have been
so ground down as to become synonymous with the general term for
'God.' Not even the Jews could have given a more exalted definition of
the Deity than that of Optimus Maximus--the Best and the Greatest;
and their very name of God, Jehovah, is generally supposed to mean no
more than what the Peleiades of Dodona said of Zeus, Ζεὐς ἦν, Ζεὐς ἐστἱν,
Ζεὐς ἓσσεται ὦ μεγἁλε Ζεῦ, 'He was, He is, He will be, Oh
great Zeus!' Not being able to form such substantives as Dyaus, or
Varu_n_a, or Indra, the descendants of Shem fixed on the predicates
which in the Aryan prayers follow the name of the Deity, and called
Him the Best and the Greatest, the Lord and King. If we examine the
numerous names of the Deity in the Semitic dialects we find that they
are all adjectives, expressive of moral qualities. There is El,
strong; Bel or Baal, Lord; Beel-samin, Lord of Heaven; Adonis (in
Phenicia), Lord; Marnas (at Gaza), our Lord; Shet, Master, afterwards
a demon; Moloch, Milcom, Malika, King; Eliun, the Highest (the God of
Melchisedek); Ram and Rimmon, the Exalted; and many more names, all
originally adjectives and expressive of certain general qualities of
the Deity, but all raised by one or the other of the Semitic tribes to
be the names of God or of that idea which the first breath of life,
the first sight of this world, the first consciousness of existence,
had for ever impressed and implanted in the human mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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