[13] Among the cultured Jews, just before our era, there was a recognition of the equality of men, as is seen in the Wisdom of Solomon vii. 1, "I myself am a mortal man, like to all, and the offspring of him that was first made of the earth." Solomon ascribes his superiority only to the divine gift of wisdom. This idea of human equality was in the preaching of John the Baptist (Matt. iii. 9)--probably a Parsi heretic, at any rate an apostle of purifying water and fire--and it underlay the title of Jesus, "Son of Man." That in Armaîti there was a conception of a humanity not represented by race but by character and culture will appear by a comparison with the Vedic Aramati, a bride of Agni (Fire) to whom she is mythologically related, on the one hand, and on the other to the spirit of the earth who came to the assistance of Buddha. This story, related in many forms, is that when the evil Mâra, having tempted Buddha in vain, brought his hosts to terrify him, all friends forsook him, and no angel came to help him, but the spirit of the earth, which he had watered, arose as a fair woman, who from her long hair wrung out the water Buddha had bestowed which became a flood and swept away the evil host. Watering the Earth is especially mentioned in the Avesta as that which makes her rejoice, and marks the holy man. [14] Even in the legend in Genesis ii. the "rib" is a misunderstanding. Eve (Chavah) was the female side of Adam, which was the name of both male and female (Gen. v. 2). The "rib" story arose no doubt from the supposition that Adam's allusion to "bone of my bone" had something to do with it. But Adam's phrase is an idiom meaning only "Thou art the same as I am." (Max Müller's Science of Religion, p. 47.) [15] These two, darkness and the brooding spirit, may seem to be related to the raven and the dove sent out of the ark by Noah, but this account only indicates the origin of the story of the Deluge; for the raven was in Persia an emblem of victory, and in the Biblical legend it was the only living creature that defied the Deluge and was able to do without the ark. In the corresponding legend in the Avesta, where King Yima makes an enclosure (Vara) for the shelter of the seeds of all living creatures, the heavenly bird Karshipta brings into that refuge the law of Ahura Mazda, and as the song of this bird was the voice of Ahura Mazda, it may have been an idealised dove ("For lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone.... The voice of the turtle is heard in the land.") But when Yima lent himself to the lies of the Evil One his (Yima's) "glory" left him in the form of a raven (Zambâd Yast, 36). But both the raven and the dove were tribal ensigns, and it is not safe to build too much on what is said of them in Eastern and Oriental books. [16] See my Sacred Anthology, p. 240.