Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical DevelopmentGoldziher, Ignác
Religion
Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development
Goldziher, Ignác
Jewish mythology; Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
After this survey of the solar figures found among Jacob’s sons, we will
conclude this section with the consideration of another mythical name
belonging to the class of designations of Jacob’s sons which is
connected with the dark sky of clouds and night. This is _Levi_. If we
contemplate this name unbiassed by the etymological explanation of it
given in the Bible (from lâvâ ‘to cleave to’), I think we shall not be
inclined to doubt that Lêvî bears the same relation to the serpent’s
name livyâthân, as another serpent’s name nâchâsh bears to the enlarged
form nechushtân, which is given as the name of the brazen serpent broken
in pieces by King Hezekiah (2 Kings XVIII. 4). The name certainly does
not denote ‘brazen;’ for an image is more naturally named from the
object it represents than from the matter of which it is made. And the
form livyâthân necessarily presupposes a simpler form, from which it
could be derived by the addition of the termination âthân (or only ân,
if we suppose the original word to have passed through the feminine form
livyat), as nechushtân necessitates the preexistence of the simpler
nâchâsh. If we have in English a word _earthly_, then, even if no word
_earth_ actually existed at the time in the language, we could with
perfect justice assert _a priori_ that the word _earth_ must have once
existed, in order to make the formation of _earthly_ possible. Similarly
the existence of the form livyâthân justifies the assumption of a simple
noun-form, as the basis of that derivative enlarged by suffixes.
Now fortunately this simple form is preserved to us in the name Lêvî,
and we may therefore unhesitatingly affirm that Levi means ‘Serpent.’
Mythology speaks of a serpent that devours the sun, of a Storm-Serpent,
which the Sun assails with his rays; they are the serpents, dragons and
monsters with whom the Solar heroes of the Aryan mythology wage their
contests, which Herakles even in his cradle crushes and afterwards
overpowers at Lerna and Nemea; the same, which sometimes, on the other
hand, keep their ground and come forth victorious from the battle with
the Sun, when the Sun, repulsed by a boisterous Storm, is forced to
abandon the celestial battle-field.
A serpent on the way,
An adder on the path,
That bites the horse’s heels,
So that the rider falls backwards,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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