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.
Now we have seen that the Myth of Civilisation expresses the same idea
in nations of the most different races. Even in the Japanese myths of
civilisation, published by the learned Japanese Dira Kittao,[562] a
thoroughly solar character is evident. Manufactures and arts, social
order and law are always attributed to the Sun as author, not only by
Aryans, but even by the still unclassified American tribes. If the
knowledge of the American languages were more advanced than it is in our
time, and if the mutual relations of those languages were not
‘exceedingly perplexing, for the same reason as those presented by the
Polynesian and African dialects, and in a yet higher degree,’[563] we
might gain some understanding of the origin of the many proper names
which we encounter in the above myth and in the other members of the
copious American mythology; and this would lead us to a far more
accurate idea of their origin and life than is possible with petrified
myths of civilisation. Nevertheless, before we part from them, we will
still just notice that the introduction of social laws, political
constitutions and religious institutions such as are ascribed in the
Muyscas’ myth to the Sun himself as an old man, is frequently attributed
to the _sons of the Sun_. There is no need to prove that in such stories
the sons of the Sun are identical with their father the Sun. So e.g.
Orpheus, son of the Sun, calls into cities men living a savage life in
the forests, and urges them to a more civilised life. Again, the Indian
legislator Vaivasuta is son of the Sun. And, not to neglect again here
American mythology, the two sons of the Sun, Manco Copac and Mama Oello,
are brought forward in the Peruvian myth of civilisation as teachers of
civilisation. There is no reason whatever to identify Mama Oello with
the Moon, as J.G. Müller does;[564] and it would even run counter to the
very nature of the Myth of Civilisation. For, as we saw in the
previously cited American myth, the Moon is the very power that
paralyses the work of the Sun in introducing civilisation and law. To
this place belongs also the idea, which is found in many nations, that
the founders of their legislation and religion were born from virgins,
made to conceive by the Sun’s rays.[565] This element of the solar myth
still operates in a story told by the Persian poet Ferîd al-Dîn ʿAṭṭâr,
who introduces a maiden’s dream as follows: ‘Then the Christian maiden
saw in a dream that a Sun _fell into her lap_, opened his mouth and
said, etc.[566]’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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