SOURCES OF HEBREW MYTHOLOGY 17 CHAPTER III. THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATING HEBREW MYTHS 35 CHAPTER IV. NOMADISM AND AGRICULTURE 49 CHAPTER V. THE MOST PROMINENT FIGURES IN HEBREW MYTHOLOGY 90 CHAPTER VI. THE MYTH OF CIVILISATION AND THE FIRST SHAPING OF HEBREW 198 RELIGION CHAPTER VII. INFLUENCE OF THE AWAKING NATIONAL IDEA ON THE TRANSFORMATION 231 OF THE HEBREW MYTH CHAPTER VIII. COMMENCEMENT OF MONOTHEISM AND THE DIFFERENTIATION OF THE 259 MYTHS CHAPTER IX. PROPHETISM AND THE JAHVEH RELIGION 290 CHAPTER X. THE HEBREW MYTH IN THE BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY 316 EXCURSUS 337 APPENDIX. _Two Essays by H. Steinthal._ 1. THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE LEGEND OF PROMETHEUS 363 2. THE LEGEND OF SAMSON 392 INDEX 447 INTRODUCTION. ------------------ The following sheets make no claim to present a _system_ of Hebrew Mythology. I have left out much that would necessarily be included in a system, and confined myself to a limited portion of what can be proved to be the matter of the Hebrew myths. Even within the actual domain of my labours, I was not anxious to subject the extant narratives in all their minutest features to mythological analysis. The application of the certain results of the science of Mythology in general to a domain hitherto almost ignored with reference to this subject, could only be accomplished by some self-limitation on the part of the author; and my immediate task was only to show that Semitism in general, and Hebrew in particular, could not be exceptions to the laws of mythological enquiry established on the basis of psychology and the science of language, and that it is possible from Semitism itself, on psychological and philological principles, to construct a scientific Semitic Mythology.