Mythology

year; they also originated the arrangement of the Pentateuch and the rest of the Old Testament in sections for use in public worship. They were specially concerned to preserve and revise the order of the traditional seasonal festivals. Now the researches of scholars in recent years have made it clear that from a very early period the Hebrews had been accustomed to celebrate a New Year Festival whose main outlines bore some resemblance to the great New Year Festival which had been celebrated in the cities of Mesopotamia from ancient times. One of the features of this festival was the enthronement of the king as the representative of the god, Ashur or Marduk, accompanied by the re-enactment of the god’s victory over Tiamat, and the chanting of a hymn of praise to Marduk under his fifty divine names. In Babylon, the Epic of Creation had a special place in these ceremonies, and it was chanted as a magic incantation of life-giving power at the point in the ritual where the god returned to life. Recent studies have suggested that the Hebrew New Year Festival had features in common with the Babylonian festival, and that the enthronement of Yahweh and the celebration of his mighty acts formed the central feature of the ritual. We. have already seen that Hebrew poetry has preserved the myth of Yahweh’s slaying the chaos-dragon, and that the references to Creation in Ps. 104 show a dependence on the P account of the Creation. It is also to be observed that this account has the form not of a narrative like the J account, but of a strophical arrangement with a repeated refrain. Its form and arrangement suggest a liturgical purpose. Moreover, we know that the Hebrew New Year Festival was celebrated for seven days, a fact which provides an intelligible explanation for the arrangement of the acts of Creation in a series of seven periods: Hence it is suggested that the sections of the J account of Creation were read by the priests at the New Year Festival, and that Gen. I-2:4a constituted a liturgy of creation which was chanted by the priests on that occasion, and that its natural place in the roll which would be used in the New Year liturgy would be at the beginning of the whole section dealing with Yahweh’s creative activities. The Myth Of Cain And Abel We have already pointed out that the purpose for which the Yahwist has collected a group of myths belonging to the tradition of his people and arranged them in the form of a continuous narrative was to present the history of mankind and of his own people Israel as ’salvation- history’. The order which Yahweh had established in the act of Creation had been thrown back into chaos by man’s disobedience, and the Hebrew writer has set himself the task of recording, on the one hand the disastrous consequences of man’s breach of the relationship established at Creation between himself and the Creator, and on the other the persistent activity of Yahweh directed towards the restoration of that which had been destroyed. With this end in view the Yahwist has selected a myth which depicts the first consequence of the original disaster, namely, the breakdown of the family relationship, brother slaying brother. It is clear, when the story is analysed, that the episode of Cain and Abel belongs to a different source and comes from a different cycle of ancient tradition from that whence the myths of Creation and the garden of Eden were drawn. It is easy to see that the myth of Cain and Abel is artificially linked up with the myth of Paradise, and that the Yahwist has brought together unrelated strands of tradition in the myth itself. In the Yahwist’s story, Cain and Abel are the children of Adam and Eve, born after the expulsion from Eden. Cain is represented as an agriculturalist and his brother as a pastoralist. The brothers bring offerings to Yahweh. Cain brings the fruits of his labour on the soil, and Abel brings firstlings from his flock. Cain’s offering is rejected, while his brother’s is

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be controlled. But, as we have seen, the various rituals had their spoken part, the myth, which possessed the same magic potency as the action which it accompanied and described. This was the source of the myths of Paradise, Creation, the Flood, and other similar material, which had passed into the traditions of peoples who had come under the influence of Mesopotamian culture. This material which the Yahwist found existing among the traditions of his own people he took and wove into a story embodying his own beliefs about the relation between God and man, beliefs which underlie the ancient dress which the Yahwist has so skillfully preserved. Before we examine the Priestly version of the myth of Creation it is desirable that we should consider what the Hebrew writer whom we call the Yahwist has done with the myths which we have described. Already, as the result of the settlement of Semitic peoples in Mesopotamia, the ancient and crude Sumerian myths had undergone a process of editorial revision. If we compare the Babylonian Epic of Creation with the Sumerian myths it is apparent that many of the cruder elements have been suppressed, and a greater degree of literary skill is manifest. But as the Semitic settlers had adopted or already possessed the same general ideas about the nature of the universe as their Sumerian predecessors, there was no fundamental change in the myths. When, however, we consider the revision and reshaping which the myths have undergone at the hand of the Hebrew writer, we discover that an essential change has taken place. His treatment of the traditional material is governed by a conception wholly absent from the outlook of those who composed or transmitted the ancient myths. Looking back over the history of Israel he sees in it an intelligent design in which the activities of a God, who is a moral being, all-powerful and all-wise, are discernible. The design begins with Creation and the writer traces its course through the divine choice of his own people Israel as the instrument of that design, on to a future whose outcome is expressed in terms of myth, as the beginning was. The Yahwist is writing what has been felicitously called Heilsgeschichte, ’salvation-history’. Later Hebrew writers often insist on the fact that there was no human witness to the divine act of Creation. The author of the book of job represents Yahweh as ironically asking job, ‘Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?’ (Job 38:4). Hence the only way in which the beginning and the end of that ’salvation-history’ which the Hebrew writer is recording could be expressed is in terms of myth. The images and symbols of the myth, the slaying of the dragon, the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the serpent, all become the language in which to express that which could not be expressed in any other way. The other myths in Gen. I-II which we have yet to examine, episodical and isolated in their original setting, become woven into a continuous narrative whose theme is the development of a divine purpose. The P Version. When, after the return of a small body of exiles from Babylon as the result of the liberal policy of Cyrus, the Temple of Jerusalem was rebuilt and the cult restored, a class of priestly persons called scribes, of whom Ezra, the priest and scribe, is the prototype, began to concern themselves with the legal and historical traditions of their people. We know, both from the evidence of later Jewish literature and from internal evidence, that it was the labours of these pious and learned men which gave to the literature of Israel the form in which we have it now, the collection of books which we call the Old Testament. There can be little doubt that among the documents of which they made use in their task of compiling the records of Israel they possessed the account of the early history of mankind and of the ancestors of the Hebrews in the form which had been given to it by the Yahwist and the Elohist. The separate narratives of

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The sick-eyed says not ‘I am sick-eyed’, The sick-headed says not ‘I am sick-headed’, Its (Dilmun’s) old woman says not ‘I am an old woman’, Its old man says not ‘I am an old man’, Unbathed is the maid, no sparkling water is poured in the city, Who crosses the river (of death?) utters no . . . The wailing priests walk not about him, The singer utters no wail, By the side of the city he utters no lament. Later, in the Semitic editing of the Sumerian myths, Dilmun became the dwelling of the immortals, where Utnapishtim and his wife were allowed to live after the Flood. It was apparently located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. According to the Sumerian myth the only thing which Dilmun lacked was fresh water; the god Enki (or Ea) ordered Utu, the sun-god, to bring up fresh water from the earth to water the garden. Here we may have the source of the mysterious ‘ed of which the Yahwist speaks as coming up from the ground to water the garden. In the myth of Enki and Ninhursag it is related that the mother-goddess Ninhursag caused eight plants to grow in the garden of the gods. Enki desired to eat these plants and sent his messenger Isimud to fetch them. Enki ate them one by one, and Ninhursag in her rage pronounced the curse of death upon Enki. As the result of the curse eight of Enki’s bodily organs were attacked by disease and he was at the point of death. The great gods were in dismay and Enlil was powerless to help. Ninhursag was induced to return and deal with the situation. She created eight goddesses of healing who, proceeded to heal each of the diseased parts of Enki’s body. One of these parts was the god’s rib, and the goddess who was created to deal with the rib was named Ninti, which means ‘the lady of the rib’. But the Sumerian word ti has the double meaning of ‘life’ as well as ‘rib’, so that Ninti could also mean ‘the lady of life’. We have seen that in the Hebrew myth the woman who was fashioned from Adam’s rib was named by him Hawwah, meaning ‘Life’. Hence one of the most curious features of the Hebrew myth of Paradise clearly has its origin in this somewhat crude Sumerian myth. Other elements in the Yahwist’s form of the Paradise myth have striking parallels in various Akkadian myths. The importance of the possession of knowledge, which is always magical knowledge, is a recurring theme. We have seen that the myth of Adapa and the Gilgamesh Epic are both concerned with the search for immortality and the problem of death and the existence of disease. These and other examples which we have cited will serve to illustrate the point that the Akkadian myths were concerned with the themes which appear in the Yahwist’s Paradise story. The inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates valley were confronted by various natural phenomena. There were the destructive floods, the necessity of unremitting labour in the fields in order to wring from the reluctant soil the means of subsistence, there was the, mystery of childbirth, the mystery of life and death, disease and pain, and the secret ways of the serpent. Hence nothing was so important as to have knowledge about these things, not in order to satisfy curiosity about origins, but in order to control or propitiate the mysterious powers behind these things. Knowledge of good and evil was not moral knowledge, but the knowledge of friendly and hostile forces, the knowledge of powerful incantations and rituals by which these forces might

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were regarded as the special gift of Yahweh (cf. Jer. 5:24; 14:22; Deut. II:9-12, et al.). Hence the background here is not Mesopotamian or Egyptian, but Palestinian, and represents the early Canaanite idea of how life and cultivation in Canaan first came into being. But before the sending of rain from Yahweh, which is implied in verse 5, a mysterious, event took place which is not attributed to the act of Yahweh. In verse 9 it is said that something came up from the earth and soaked the surface of the ground (’adamah, the soil). Both the Authorized Version and Revised Version render the Hebrew word ‘ed as ‘mist’; the only other occurrence of the word is in job 36 :27, and its meaning is very uncertain. The versions suggest the meaning ‘fountain’, or ’spring’, something breaking up from the depths of the earth, and some such meaning is more suitable to the context here. The suggestion is that the soil is soaked by some unexplained outbreak of water, and thus prepared for the first creative act. Yahweh proceeds to mould man out of the moist earth, like a potter. The Hebrew word used here for ‘made’ is not the word used in the P account (1:27), but is the regular word used for the potter’s operations. In the various Mesopotamian myths of creation the making of man is depicted as a magical operation by which some of the gods in consultation fashion man out of clay to be the servant of the gods. In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, after his conquest of the monster Tiamat, the god Marduk makes man out of clay mixed with the blood of the god Kingu. In the Yahwist’s source the blood of the god as the vital principle is replaced by the divine breath; Yahweh breathes into man’s nostrils ‘breath of life’. The idea of the creation of man as the act of a divine potter is also found in the Egyptian myth, where the god Khnum is depicted as forming the first man and woman on a potter’s wheel. But the source of the Palestinian myth which the Yahwist is using is probably Mesopotamian, as other details of the story suggest. Then, out of the same soil, Yahweh causes trees of various kinds to grow, and in the original form of verse 15 he assigns to the man whom he has fashioned out of the soil the task of tilling and caring for the soil. The Hebrew form of verse 15 shows that the Yahwist has introduced an element of the Paradise story into a context to which it does not belong, as we shall see farther on. Next, and again out of the soil, Yahweh moulds animals and birds, to see if they may provide a help for the man, but since the man recognizes none of these as suitable for this purpose, Yahweh causes a magic sleep (the Hebrew word tardemah indicates a supernatural sleep; compare Gen. 15:12) to overwhelm the man, and takes out a ‘rib’ (the Hebrew word also means ’side’) and ‘builds’ it into a woman. When the man awakes from his supernatural slumber he recognizes the woman as his counterpart, and in 3:20 gives her the name Hawwah, Eve, which means ‘life’. The other appellation given to her in 2:3, ‘Ishshah, is not a proper name but the usual Hebrew word for ‘wife’, the feminine of ‘ish, man, or husband (cf. Hos. 2:16). This is the outline of the ancient Palestinian myth of creation which the Yahwist has used in the construction of his narrative. Now we find that he has woven into this myth with its Palestinian colouring another myth with an entirely different background, the myth of Paradise. This element is first introduced in 2:8, where it is said that Yahweh ‘planted a garden in Eden, to the east’; in verse 9b the two mythical trees are brought into the story; in verse 15 the garden of Eden has been inserted in place of the original ’soil’, and in verses 16- I7 we have the prohibition against eating of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden. In the original form of the prohibition the nature of the tree was probably not disclosed.

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Then follows, in Chapter 3, the story of ‘man’s first disobedience’, the guile of the serpent, the eating of the fruit of the tree and its consequences, and the expulsion of the guilty pair from the garden lest they should eat of the tree of life and become immortal like the gods. Many scholars hold that the semi-mythical geography of Paradise in 2:10-14 does not belong to the Yahwist’s narrative but is an editorial gloss containing very ancient ideas about the location of Paradise. Now, even apart from these verses in which the Mesopotamian colouring is very clear, we can see that the back-ground of the Paradise myth is not that of the Palestinian myth of Creation which the Yahwist has used to form part of his narrative. The place where Yahweh has planted the garden lies away in the east, in a region called Eden. There is, certainly, a locality called Eden which is mentioned several times in the Old Testament (2 Kings 19:12, Ezek. 27:23; Amos I:5), but the Eden of this ancient myth belongs rather to ‘the land east of the sun, west of the moon’, than to any geographical locality. The Akkadian word edinu means ‘plain’ or ’steppe’, and it has been plausibly suggested that the garden was conceived of as springing magically out of the sandy wastes of the waterless steppe. It is possible that the Yahwist may have had in mind a contrast between the well- watered soil of his own land (cf. Deut. 8:7) and the desert where the Bedouin wandered, a place where only a miracle of divine power could create a garden. The thought of Yahweh’s power as causing an Eden to arise in the wilderness is a favourite one with the prophets (cf. Isa. 41:19; 51:3). Another form of the Paradise myth is to be found in Ezek. 28:12-I9 containing features which do not appear in the Genesis form of the myth. The allusions are not all intelligible to us now, but the garden is in the mountain of the gods, a concept which occurs in the Ugaritic myths; the king-god of Tyre has his dwelling there, and is described as ‘the covering cherub’, and as ‘walking up and down in the midst of the stones of fire’; music is there, and in the end this inhabitant of the garden of the gods is cast out as profane. The idea of the dweller in the garden as the embodiment of wisdom is referred to in job is : 7-8, where the first man is described as the possessor of wisdom and as having heard the secret counsel of God. Hence it seems clear that the Yahwist is using for his own purpose a myth which formed part of ancient Hebrew tradition, and something must be said about the source of the myth and the way in which the Yahwist has used it. Recent Sumerian studies [5] have shown that the conception of a divine garden and of a state when sickness and death did not exist and wild animals did not prey on one another is to be found in Sumerian mythology. The description of this earthly Paradise is contained in the Sumerian poem which Dr Kramer has called the Epic of Emmerkar : The land Dilmun is a pure place, the land Dilmun is a clean place,’ The land Dilmun is a clean place, the land Dilmun is a bright place. In Dilmun the raven uttered no cry, The kite uttered not the cry of the kite, The lion killed not, The wolf snatched not the lamb, Unknown was the kid-killing dog, Unknown was the grain-devouring boar . . .

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become historicized as a symbolic reference to the deliverance of Israel from Egypt: ‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord, as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Are not you it that cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced the dragon? Are not you it that dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; that made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?’ We may now return to the two versions of the Creation which the editor of Genesis has placed side by side in the beginning of that book. It should be remarked that, although the Graf- Wellhausen Documentary hypothesis which analysed the Pentateuch into a number of literary sources denoted by the symbols J-E, D, H, and P, has been abandoned by one school of Old Testament scholars, and considerably modified by others, it still remains a useful means of distinguishing the different strata in the Pentateuch and the early historical books. In the case of the two narratives of Creation which we are now considering, the first is usually indicated by the symbol P and assigned to the priestly editors who collected and arranged the traditions of Israel after the Exile. The second is denoted by the symbols J-E, and is regarded as the joint work of the Yahwist and the Elohist, names which indicate two schools (or, possibly individual writers), who were active in the early period of the monarchy, editing the ancient traditions of Israel, preserved either in oral or written form. The symbols refer to the use of the names Yahweh and Elohim used by the two schools respectively. We shall now consider these two versions separately and compare their characteristics. As the second is the earlier of the two, it will be considered first. The J-E Version. We can see from the comparative table on p. 106 that in the tradition which the Yahwist was recording, the original state of the universe before the process of creation was very different from that depicted in the Priestly writer’s source. It may be pointed out here that neither of these accounts is concerned with the problem which the modern mind has to face, namely, the problem of an absolute beginning, creation ex nihilo. They both assume the existence of some kind of material world, and deal with the question of how the ordered universe in which it was possible to live came into existence. In both these accounts the act of creation consisted in bringing order out of chaos, not of bringing matter into existence out of nothing. In the Yahwist’s tradition, the original state of the scene of the Creator’s activity was an uninhabited waste, untilled by man, and without rain, or the vegetation which rain produced. This is a very different picture from that presented in the Priestly writers’ source. There the primeval state of the universe is a watery chaos, as it is in the Egyptian and Babylonian myths. The J-E account begins, ‘In the day when Yahweh God made earth and heaven (and) no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up: for Yahweh God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till a the ground . . .’ The whole of this sentence is a temporal clause introducing the first act of Yahweh. It is clear that the P description of a watery chaos represents the point of view of the Mesopotamian myth, but the tradition followed by the Yahwist represents the scene of Yahweh’s creative activities as a soil (’adamah), potentially fertile, but waste and barren until Yahweh has brought rain to fertilize it and made man to till it. Both the Nile valley and the Tigris-Euphrates delta were dependent upon irrigation from the rivers for their fertility, but cultivation in Palestine has always depended upon the regular autumn and spring rains which

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(a) In Ps. 74:12-17 we have an account of how Yahweh, in a contest with the waters, smote the many-headed Leviathan, and then proceeded to create day and night, the heavenly bodies, and the order of the seasons. We have already seen [1] that in the Akkadian Epic of Creation Marduk’s slaying of the chaos-dragon Tiamat is followed by his ordering of the universe, and by the building of Esagila. It is also accepted by the majority of scholars that in the Hebrew word tehom used to denote the abyss of waters in Gen. t : 2 there is a reference to the chaos- dragon Tiamat, a point to which we shall return later. But in the passage from Ps. 74 the name of the water-dragon, Leviathan, is the same as the Ugaritic Lotan, the dragon slain by Baal. [2] Hence it is possible that the Hebrew poet was acquainted with the Canaanite form of the myth. We have also seen that another variant of the struggle of Baal against the forces of destruction was the conflict with Mot, which finally ended in the victory of Baal. [3] A reference to this feature of the Ugaritic myth has been seen in Ps. 48:14 which reads in the Revised Version, ‘For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death’. But the verse has been rendered, ‘Our God who abides for ever is our leader against Death (Hebrew mot)’, and connected with the Ugaritic myth. [4] This makes it probable that the passage from Ps. 74 is connected with the same source, although, unless we regard the myth of the building of a house for Baal as symbolic of creative activity, no Ugaritic myth of Creation has hitherto been discovered. (b) In Ps. 104 which is a meditation on Yahweh’s activity in Creation, a number of features of the Creation myth occur. Leviathan is mentioned, although not, apparently, as an enemy. Yahweh lays the beams of his chambers in the waters, where we have a parallel to the watery abode of Ea. He rides upon the clouds, an epithet of Baal in the Ugaritic texts. There is a reference to the creation of the sun and the moon and the ordering of the seasons. (c) Traces of the Creation myth which are not dependent on the two main versions found in Gen. 1 and 2 occur in job 38, one of the finest pieces of Hebrew poetry, probably of late post- exilic date. Here we find Yahweh described as laying the foundations of the earth on sockets, ‘when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy’, a feature of the myth which has no parallel elsewhere in the Old Testament, but which finds an echo in the rejoicing of the gods over the victory of Marduk in the Akkadian Epic of Creation, and also in the feast prepared by Baal for the gods and goddesses to celebrate the building of his palace. We also have the taming of the sea, to which Yahweh says, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed’ (verse II). There are two references to Leviathan in job: a cryptic allusion to those ‘who are skilful to rouse up Leviathan’ (3:8), and a description of Leviathan in Chapter 41 which is generally understood to be a reference to the crocodile. Here the monster has become completely demythologized. The former reference seems to suggest the use of Leviathan in magical spells. Under the name Rahab, ‘the arrogant one’, in 26:12-3, we find another reference to the slaying of the chaos-dragon, the taming of the sea, and the ordering of creation, ‘He stills the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smites through Rahab. By his spirit the heavens are beauty (or, adorned); his hand has pierced the swift (or, fleeing) serpent’. It is clear that in the book of job the pattern of the ancient myth of Creation has disintegrated and become poeticized. (d) Finally, the myth of the chaos-dragon passes into eschatology in the writings of the post- exilic prophets. In Isa. 27:1, an oracle, introduced by the characteristic formula ‘in that day’, declares, ‘Yahweh with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the swift serpent, and Leviathan the crooked (or, winding) serpent, and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. Again, in Isa. 51:9-10, we find another transmutation of the same myth. It has

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The first of these under the leadership of Abraham, who is called ‘the Hebrew’ in the early sources, came from Ur of the Chaldeans about the middle of the eighteenth century B.C. and finally settled in the neighbourhood of Hebron. The second movement, somewhat later, consisted of nomad, or semi-nomad, Aramaeans, under the leadership of Jacob, also called Israel, the eponymous ancestor of the Israelites; this branch ultimately settled around Shechem. A third wave of Hebrew settlement, consisting partly of tribes who had fled from Egypt after a long period of settlement there, entered Canaan from the south and east towards the end of the thirteenth century B.C. All these groups which ultimately became the people of Israel were composed of pastoral people, and in entering Canaan they found themselves in a country already inhabited by a long-established population, Semites like themselves, but whose economy was almost entirely agricultural. The account already given of the mythology of the Canaanites shows the type of religion and ritual practised by agriculturists, and it was to such a type of religious practice that the newcomers had to adapt themselves. The late and somewhat tendentious account of Hebrew settlement given in the book of Joshua suggests that extermination was the declared policy of the invading Hebrews; but earlier accounts, and the testimony of the prophets of Israel, suggest that Canaanite agricultural rituals and seasonal feasts were taken over by the new-comers and persisted, in spite of prophetic protests, until the Exile. In the form in which we have it now, the Old Testament is the product of editorial activity extending over many centuries. In the course of this activity many things were suppressed or modified as the conceptions of the nature of Yahweh developed through the teaching of the prophets. The mythological material was specially affected by this process; hence three main problems confront us in studying the mythology of the Old Testament. First we have to inquire what was the source and original form of the myths which we find there; then what modifications did the Hebrew writers or editors make in the mythical material which they borrowed from Canaanite or other sources; and lastly whether Israel produced any myths of its own. The final editors of the Old Testament collected most of the mythological material into the first eleven chapters of Genesis; but other myths and legends are to be found in fragmentary form scattered through the sagas and poetry of Israel and will be dealt with in due course. Creation Myths In the first two chapters of Genesis there are two stories of Creation, representing two different stages of the development of the religion of Israel. The first is contained in Chapter i-2 : 4a, and the second in Chapter 2:4b-25. The first has been assigned by the general agreement of scholars to the editorial activity of writers after the Exile, while the second has been assigned to a much earlier period in the history of Israel, possibly about the beginning of the monarchy. It shows signs of editorial activity, but in its present form it seems to bear the impress of a single mind. The differences between the two accounts may be best seen by setting them out in tabular form [Insert tb105 + tb106] In addition to these two main accounts of Creation, there are various references in Hebrew poetry to the divine activity in Creation which suggest that other forms of the myth of Creation may have been current in Israel.

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This myth deals with. the same theme as the myth of Tammuz in the underworld, and the disappearance of Baal in the Ugaritic myth. The disappearance of the god produces a failure of every kind of fertility, both of vegetation and of cattle. The myth appears to have been current in several forms, and more than one god, including the sun-god, disappears, but the main text, upon which the account here given is based, has the god Telepinus as its hero. This myth also may be classed among the ritual myths, since it includes the ritual for securing the return of the vanished god. The beginning of the text is broken so we do not know the causes of the gods anger. The thread of the story is taken up at the point where the rage of Telepinus is described. He is depicted as putting his left shoe on his right foot and his right shoe on his left foot, implying that he was so angry that he did not know what he was doing. Telepinus goes away into the steppe and is lost. He is overcome with fatigue and falls asleep. Then we have a description of the effects of his absence: a mist covers the country; in the fire-place the logs are stifled; at the altars the gods are stifled; the sheep neglects its lamb, and the cow neglects its calf; there is drought and famine so that men and gods perish from hunger. The storm-god becomes anxious about his son Telepinus, and the search begins. The sun-god sends out the swift eagle with orders to search every mountain and valley, but the eagle returns unsuccessful. Then the goddess Hannahannas urges the storm-god to do something about it. He goes to the house of Telepinus and batters at the gate. He only succeeds in breaking his hammer, but does not find the missing god, and retires from the quest. Then Hannahannas suggests sending out the Bee in search, but the storm-god mocks at the idea and says that the Bee is too small to succeed in an enterprise in which the great gods have failed. Hannahannas, however, sends out the Bee with orders to sting Telepinus on his hands and feet, to smear wax on his eyes and feet, and purify him and bring him back to the gods. The Bee finds him after a long search and carries out the orders of the goddess. Telepinus is aroused from his sleep, but is more enraged than ever, and the gods are at a loss. Then the sun-god says, ‘Fetch man! let him take the spring Hattara on Mount Ammuna. Let him make him move! With the eagle’s wing let him make him move!’ [6] Some kind of ritual seems to be implied here, but the meaning is obscure. After a break in the text, in which the goddess Kamrusepas, the goddess of healing, seems to have been summoned, her ritual of purification is described. Telepinus returns, borne on the eagle’s wing and accompanied by thunder and lightning. Kamruspas calms him and soothes his rage. She orders a sacrifice of twelve rams. Torches are kindled and extinguished, symbolizing the extinction of the god’s fury. A spell is then pronounced, apparently by the man mentioned previously, intended to banish all the evils of the rage of Telepinus into the underworld. The concluding words of the spell run, ‘The doorkeeper has opened the seven doors, has unlocked the seven bolts. Down in the dark earth there stand bronze cauldrons, their lids are of abaru metal, their handles of iron. Whatever goes in there comes not out again; it perishes therein. Let them also receive Telepinus’s rage,

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anger, malice, and fury! Let them not come back! [7] The text ends with the return of Telepinus to his house and the restoration of prosperity. Telepinus cares for the king and the queen and provides them with enduring life and vigour. An interesting feature of the conclusion of the ritual is the erection of a pole before the god, from which the fleece of a sheep is suspended. The closing lines of the text explain that the pole with its suspended fleece signifies fat of the sheep, grains of corn, wine, cattle, sheep, long life, and many children. A parallel to the pole erected before Telepinus may be seen in the pole decorated with foliage often depicted in Assyrian and Babylonian seals with attendant figures on, each side of it engaged in some kind of ritual act. The raising of the ded tree in the Osiris ritual may also be mentioned in this connexion. These are the principal Hittite myths. Other fragmentary myths have been found of which Dr Gurney has given an account in his excellent Pelican book The Hittites, but those here related will give sufficient illustration of the character of Hittite mythology. They show clear dependence upon Babylonian mythology, and also show how much of Greek and Western mythology and folklore has its roots in this curious Hittite material. —- 1. 2 Kings 6 :6. 2. Ezek. 16:3,45. 3. Pritchard, J. B., The Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Relating to the Old Testament, pp. 124-5. 4. Dan. 2:34. 5. See p. 44. 6. Pritchard, J. B., op. cit., p. 127. 7. Ibid., p. 128. ———————————– Hebrew Mythology Chapter 5 In dealing with the literature of Israel we are on much firmer footing than we have been in the case of much of the ancient material with which we have hitherto been concerned. The Sumerian language still presents many difficult problems for the translator, and the unpointed text of the Ugaritic tablets, as well as their mutilated condition, present formidable barriers to the full understanding of the myths and legends which they contain. But the literature of Israel, covering a period of nearly a thousand years, has come down to us in a state of remarkable preservation; so that the meaning of the text itself is, in the main, free from serious difficulties of translation. That the Old Testament contains an abundance of mythological material is undeniable, and it presents problems which do not arise in connexion with the mythologies of the nations by whom Israel was surrounded. Underlying the sagas of the book of Genesis it is possible to trace the tradition of the two earliest movements of peoples into Canaan which form the beginning of the history of Israel.

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