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.
‘to come at the _morning_ or _evening_ glow’.[116] Except by the
operation of the above-named psychological fact, the express combination
of these two definitions of time in one word would seem to be
impossible.
But the very fact just mentioned, that it is characteristic of mythical
ideas to put one phenomenon into a family relation towards another, and
to speak of mother, brother, son, daughter, &c., furnishes the first
elements of and impulses towards the discrimination of _Succession in
time_, though the discrimination itself may at the mythic stage not yet
break forth into life. Phenomena occurring one after another or
simultaneously are conceived in the light of the most primitive
relations of the family; and when the myth-forming man speaks of father
and child, the very use of these terms rouses and encourages in his mind
a new category, that of _Succession in time_, or more definitely
_Causality_.
Another point follows naturally from this, enabling us to fix the
chronological position occupied by certain myths in relation to others.
If in a myth we find the fact of the temporal succession of a phenomenon
treated as important, or see that a following event is in its very name
described as such in relation to what preceded it, then we can justly
draw the conclusion that a myth of this form belongs to an advanced
stage of development, and that in determining the time of its origin we
must choose a later period than we should for myths in which no
conscious notion of time is visible. We shall have occasion to insist on
this inference when we come into the presence of such mythic expressions
as Yiphtâch _Jephthah_, i.e. the ‘Opener,’ and Yaʿaḳobh _Jacob_, i.e.
the ‘Follower.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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