Bible Myths and their Parallels
in other Religions
APPENDIX C.
(Page) 559
We have another illustration
of allegorical mythology in the Grecian story of
Hephæstos
splitting open with his axe the head of
Zeus,
and Athene
springing from it, full armed;
for we perceive behind this savage imagery
Zeus,
as the bright
Sky,
his forehead the East,
Hesphæstos
as the young, not yet risen
Sun,
and Athene
as the Dawn, the daughter
of the
Sky,
stepping forth from the fountain-head of light,—
with eyes like an owl, pure as a virgin;
the golden; lighting up the tops of the mountains,
and her own
glorious Parthenon
in her own favorite town of Athens; whirling the shafts
of light; the genial warmth of the morning;
the foremost champion in the battle between night
and day; in full armor,
in her panoply of light, driving away the
darkness of night, and awakening men
to a bright life,
to bright thoughts,
to bright endeavors. a
a
Müller: The Science of
Religion, p. 65.
Another story
of the same sort is that
of Kronos.
Every one is familiar with
the story of Kronos,
who devoured his own children.
Now, Kronos is a mere
creation from the older and misunderstood
epithet Kronides or Kronion, the ancient
of days.
When these days
or time had come
to be regarded as a person
the myth would certainly follow
that he devoured his own children,
as Time
is the devourer of
the Dawns. b
Saturn, who devours his own children,
is the same power whom the
Greeks
called Kronos (Time),
which may truly be said
to destroy whatever
it has brought into existence.
b
Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 1.
(Page) 560
APPENDIX C.
The idea
of a Heaven,
the “ Elysian fields,”
is also
born of the sky.
The
“Elysian
plain ”
is far away in the
West, where
the sun
goes down beyond the bonds
of the earth, when
Eos gladdens
the close of day
as she sheds her violet tints
over the sky.
The “ Abodes of
the Blessed ”
are golden islands sailing in a sea of blue,—
the burnished clouds
floating in the
pure ether.
Grief and sorrow cannot approach them;
plague and sickness cannot touch them.
The blissful company gathered together
in that far
Western land
inherits a tearless eternity.
Of the other
details in the picture
the greater number would be suggested directly
by these images drawn from the phenomena
of sunset and twilight.
What spot or stain can be seen
on the deep blue ocean
in which the “ Islands
of the Blessed ”
repose forever?
What unseemly forms can mar the beauty
of that golden home,
lighted by the radiance of
a
Sun
which can never set ?
Who then but the pure in heart,
the truthful and the generous, can be suffered
to tread the violet fields?
And how shall they be tested save
by judges who can weigh
the thoughts and the interests of
the heart ?
Thus every soul, as it drew near
that joyous land, was brought
before the august tribunal
of Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos;
and they whose faith
was in truth
a quickening power, might
draw from the ordeals those golden lessons
which Plato has put into the mouth
of Socrates,
and some unknown persons
into the mouths of Buddha and Jesus.
The belief of earlier ages pictured
to itself the meetings in that blissful land,
the forgiveness of old wrongs,
and the reconciliation
of deadly feuds, c
Just as the belief of the
present day pictures
these things
to itself.
c
As the hand of
Hector is clasped in the hand
of the hero who slew him.
There, as the story ran, the lovely Helen
“ pardoned and purified,”
became the bride of the
short-lived, yet long suffering Achilleus,
even as Iole comforted the dying Hercules
on earth, and Hebe became his solace
in Olympus.
But what is the meeting of
Helen and Achilleus, of
Iole and Hebe and Hercules,
but the return of the violet tints
to greet the
Sun
in the West,
which had greeted him
in the East
in the morning?
The idea was purely physical,
yet it suggested the thoughts of trial,
atonement, and purification;
and it was necessary to say that the human mind,
having advanced thus far, must make its way
still farther.
Cox: Aryan Mythology,
vol. ii. p. 822.
The story
of a
War
in Heaven,
which was known to all nations of
antiquity, is allegorical, and refers to
the battle between
light and darkness,
sunshine and
storm cloud. d
d
The black storm-cloud,
with the flames of lightning
issuing from it, was the original of
the dragon
with
with tongues
of fire.
Even as late
as A.
D. 1000,
a German writer
would illustrate a thunder-storm
destroying a crop
of corn
by a picture
of a
dragon
devouring the produce of the
field with his
flaming tongue
and
iron teeth.
(Baring-Gould:
Curious Myths, p. 342.
As examples of
the prevalence of the legend
relating to the struggle between the
co-ordinate powers of good and evil,
light and darkness, the
sun
and the clouds,
we have that of Phoibos
and Python, Indra
and Vritra,
Sigurd and Fafuir,
Achilleus and Paris,
Oidipous and the Sphinx,
Ormuzd and
Ahriman,
and from the character of the
struggle between
Indra and Vritra,
and again
between Ormuzd and
Ahriman,
we infer that a myth,
purely physical, in the land of
the Five Streams, assumed
a moral and spiritual
meaning in Persia, and the fight
between the co-ordinate powers
of good and evil,
gave birth to the dualism
which from that time
to the present
has exercised so mighty an influence
through the East
and West.
APPENDIX C.
(Page) 561
The Apocalypse
exhibits Satan with the
physical attributes
of
Ahriman;
he is called
the
“dragon,”
the
“old
serpent,”
who fights against God
and his angels.
The Vedic myth, transformed
and exaggerated in the Iranian books,
finds its way through this channel
into Christianity.
The idea thus introduced was that of
the struggle between Satan
and Michael, which ended
in the overthrow of
the former, and the casting forth
of all his hosts out of heaven,
but it coincides too nearly with a
myth spread in countries held by
all the Aryan nations
to avoid further modification.
Local tradition substituted
St. George
or St. Theodore for Jupiter,
Apollo, Hercules,
or Perseus.
It is under this disguise that the Vedic
myth has come down to our own times,
and has still its festivals
and its monuments.
Art has consecrated it in a thousand ways.
St. Michael, lance in hand,
treading on
the dragon,
is an image as familiar
now as,
thirty centuries ago, that
of Indra,
treading under foot the demon
Vitra
could possibly have been
to the Hindoo. e
e
M. Bréal, and, G. W. Cox.
The
very ancient doctrine of a
TRINITY,
three gods in one,
can be explained rationally,
by allegory only.
We have seen that
the
sun,
in early times, was believed
to be
the Creator,
and became the first
object of adoration.
After some time it would be observed
that this powerful and
beneficent agent, the
solar
fire,
was the most potent Destroyer, and
hence would arise the first idea
of a Creator and
Destroyer united in the same person.
But much time would not elapse
before it must have been observed,
that the destruction caused by this powerful being
was destruction only in appearance,
that destruction was only reproduction
in another form— regeneration;
that if he appeared
sometimes to destroy,
he constantly repaired the injury
which he seemed to occasion—
and that, without his light and heat,
everything would dwindle away
into a cold, inert,
unprolific mass.
Thus, at once, in the same being,
became concentrated, the creating,
the preserving, and
the destroying powers—
the latter
of the three
being at the
same time
both the Destroyer
and Regenerator.
Hence, by a
very natural and obvious train
of reasoning,
arose
the Creator,
the Preserver,
and the
Destroyer—
in India
Brahma,
Vishnu,
and Siva;
in Persia
Oromasdes,
Mithra,
and Arimanius,
in Egypt
Osiris,
Horus,
and Typhon:
in each case
THREE
PERSONS AND ONE
GOD.
And thus undoubtedly arose
the TRIMURTI,
or the celebrated Trinity.
(Page) 562
APPENDIX C.
Traces of a similar refinement
may be found in the Greek mythology, in the Orphic
Phanes,
Ericapeus and
Metis,
who were all identified with the
Sun,
and yet
embraced in the first person,
Phanes,
or Protogones,
the Creator
and Generator. f
The invocation to the
Sun,
in the Mysteries, according to
Macrobius,
was as follows:
“ O all-ruling
Sun!
Spirit of the world!
Power of
the world!
Light of
the world! ”
g
We have seen
in Chap. XXXV, that
the Peruvian Triad
was represented by three statues,
called, respectively,
“Apuinti,
Churiinti, and
Intihoaoque,”
which is,
“ Lord and
Father Sun;
Son
Sun;
and Air
or Spirit,
Brother Sun.”
h
f
Squire: Serpent Symbol, p. 50.
g
Ibid.
h
Ibid. p. 181.
Mr. Faber, in his
“ Origin of
Pagan Idolatry,” says:
“ The peculiar mode
in which
the Hindoos identify their
three great gods with the
solar orb,
is a curious specimen of the
physical refinements of ancient
mythology.
At night, in the west, the
Sun is
Vishnu;
he is Brahmä
in the east and in the morning;
and from noon to evening
he is Siva.”
i
Mr. Moor, in his
“ Hindu Pantheon,” says:
“ Most if not all,
of
the gods of
the Hindoo Pantheon
will,
on close investigation,
resolve themselves
into the three powers
(Brahmä, Vishnu, and
Siva), and
those powers
into one Deity,
Brahm,
typified by
the Sun.”
j
i
Book iv. Ch. i.
in Anacalypsis, by Godfrey Higgins,
vol. i. p. 137.
j
p. 6.
Mr. Squire, in his
“ Serpent Symbol,” observes:
“ It is
highly probable that
the triple divinity
of the Hindoos
was originally no more than a
personification of
the Sun,
whom they called
Three-bodied, in the
triple capacity of producing
forms
by his general heat,
preserving them
by his light,
or destroying them by the
counteracting force of
his igneous matter.
Brahmá, the
Creator, was indicated by the
heat of
the Sun;
Vishnu,
the Preserver, by the
Light of
the Sun,
and Siva,
the Reproducer, by the orb
of
the Sun.
In the morning
the Sun
was Brahmä,
at noon
Vishnu,
at evening
Siva.”
k
k
Squire: Serpent Symbol, p. 38.
“ He is
at once,” says Mr. Cox,
in speaking of
the Sun,
“ the
‘Comforter ’
and ‘ Healer,’ the
‘Saviour ’ and
‘ Destroyer,’ who can slay
and make alive at will, and from whose
piercing glance no secret can be
kept hid.” l
l
Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 33.
Sir William Jones
was also of the opinion
that
the whole Triad
of the Hindoos were
identical with
the Sun,
expressed under the mythical term O. M.
The idea
of a Tri-murti,
or triple personification,
was developed gradually, and as it grew,
received numerous accretions.
It was first dimly shadowed forth
and vaguely expressed
in the
Rig-Veda, where
a triad of principal gods,
is recognized. And
these
three gods
are One,
the SUN.
m
m
Williams’ Hinduism, p. 98.
APPENDIX C.
(Page) 563
We see then
that the religious myths of antiquity
and the fireside legends of ancient
and modern times, have a common root
in the mental habits of
primeval humanity, and that they are
the earliest recorded utterances
of men concerning
the visible phenomena
of the world
into which they were born.
At first, thoroughly understood,
the meaning in time became unknown.
How stories originally told
of the Sun, the Moon,
the Stars, &c., became believed in
as facts, is plainly illustrated in
the following story told by
Mrs. Jameson in her
“ History
of our Lord
in Art:”
“ I once
tried to explain,” says she,
“ to a good
old woman, the meaning of
the word parable,
and that the story of
the Prodigal Son was not
a fact; she was scandalized—
she was quite sure that
Jesus would never have
told anything
to his disciples that was
not True.
Thus she settled the matter in her own mind,
and I thought it best
to leave it there undisturbed.”
Prof. Max Müller,
in speaking of
“ the comparison of
the different forms of Aryan
religion and mythology in India,
Persia, Greece, Italy, and Germany,”
clearly illustrates how such legends
are transformed from intelligible
into unintelligible
myths. He says:
“ In
each of
these nations there was
a tendency
to change the original
conception of divine powers,
to misunderstand the many names
given to these powers, and to misinterpret
the praises addressed to them.
In this manner some of the
divine names were changed
into
half-divine,
half-human heroes,
and at last the myths which were
true and intelligible as told originally
of the Sun,
or the Dawn,
or the Storms,
were turned into legends or fables
too marvelous to be believed
of common mortals.
This process can be watched
in India, in Greece,
and in Germany.
The same story, or
nearly the same, is told
of gods,
of heroes,
and of men.
The divine myth became an heroic legend,
and the heroic legend fades away
into a nursery tale.
Our nursery tales
have well been called
the modern patois of
the ancient mythology
of the
Aryan race.” n
n
Müller’s Chips vol. ii. p. 200.
In the words
of this learned author,
“ We never lose,
we always
gain, when we
discover the most ancient intention
of sacred traditions,
instead of being satisfied with
their later aspect, and their
modern misinterpretations.”
Doane, Bible Myths
and their Parallels
in other Religions,
7th ed., pp. 564 et seq.
Doane, Bible Myths
pp. 550 et seq.
INDEX
of Subjects.
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Metaphysics:
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