Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sourcesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Legends of Old Testament characters, from the Talmud and other sources
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Bible. Old Testament -- Legends; Jewish legends
The natives of the Caroline Islands relate that one of the inferior
gods, named Merogrog, was driven by the other gods out of heaven, and he
took with him a spark of fire which he gave to men.[16] This myth
resembles that of Prometheus, “the contriver, full of gall and
bitterness, who sinned against the gods by bestowing their honours on
creatures of a day, the thief of fire,” as Hermes calls him. He
reappears as Tohil among the Quiches, the giver of fire, hated, yet
adored.
The Northern Californians say that the supreme God once created
invisible spirits, of whom one portion revolted against him, headed by a
spirit named War or Touparan, and that the Great Spirit having overcome
him, drove him from the plains of heaven, and confined him along with
his comrades in a cavern, where he is guarded by whales.[17]
The Egyptian Typhon, already alluded to, did not belong to Egypt alone,
but also to Phœnicia and Asia Minor, and thence the story passed into
Greece, where it took root, and has been preserved to us as the attack
of the hundred-headed dragon against the heaven-god Zeus. Typhon desired
to obtain supremacy over gods and men, and, in order to win for himself
this sovereignty, he fought against the gods; but he was defeated,
bound, and precipitated into Tartarus, or, according to another version,
was buried under the flaming mountains.
According to a tradition of the Salivas, a people of New Granada, a
serpent slew the nations, descended from God, who inhabited the region
of the Orinoco, but a son of the God Puru fought him and overcame him,
and bade him depart with his curse, and never to enter his house again,
and, say these Salivas, from the flesh of the serpent sprang the
Caribees, their great foes, as maggots from putrid meat.[18]
But these stories might be infinitely extended. How far they refer to a
tradition common to the human race, and how far they relate to the
strife between summer and winter, sun and storm-cloud, I do not pretend
to decide. It is one of those vexed questions which it is impossible to
determine.
Footnote 1:
Rev. xii. 7-9.
Footnote 2:
Isaiah xiv. 13, 14.
Footnote 3:
Luke x. 18.
Footnote 4:
Fabricius (J. A.), Codex Pseudepigraphus Vet. Test. Hamb., 1722, p.
21.
Footnote 5:
Jalkut Rubeni, 3, sub. tit. Sammael.
Footnote 6:
Fol. 139, col. 1; see Eisenmenger, i. p. 831.
Footnote 7:
Jalkut Rubeni, in Eisenmenger, i. p. 307.
Footnote 8:
Eisenmenger, i. p. 104.
Footnote 9:
Ibid., i. p. 820.
Footnote 10:
Ibid., ii. 416, 420, 421.
Footnote 11:
Chronique de Tabari. Paris, 1867, i. c. xxvii.
Footnote 12:
Abulfeda, Hist. Ante-Islamica. Lipsiæ, 1831, p. 13.
Footnote 13:
1 Cor. x. 20.
Footnote 14:
Majer, Mythologische Lexicon, Th. i. p. 231.
Footnote 15:
Orig. adv. Cels. vi. 42.
Footnote 16:
Lettres Edifiantes, viii. p. 420.
Footnote 17:
Bibliothèque Univ. de Genève, 1827; D’Anselme, i. p. 228.
Footnote 18:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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