Be‘ôr, or the Shining a mythical expression which often occurs when the darkness is described as springing from the daylight; and the Agâdâ may be using mythic elements in identifying this Be‘ôr with Lâbhân the White.[1] So this myth, like many others, would then have been nationalised by the influence of factors, which will be fully described in the Seventh Chapter. The Devourer of the Sun became a Devourer of the Hebrew people, just as the Sun-hero became the Hebrew national hero. Personations of the storms are often exhibited in mythology as lame and limping.[2] This feature, which is not ascribed to Balaam in the Bible, is found in the Agâdâ, which says, 'Bile‘âm chiggêr beraglô achath hâyâ, 'Balaam was lame of one foot.' So far all is regular. But then follows, 'Shimshôn chiggêr bishtê raglâw hâyâ, 'Samson was lame of both feet'[3]—a feature which does not suit the Sun-hero. We must consider that this latter is an inference drawn by the Agâdâ in virtue of one of its hermeneutic principles, thus: Balaam's lameness is attached to the word shephî, 'hill, high place,' Num. XXIII. 3; the word shephîphôn, 'serpent,' Gen. XLIX. 17 (in the declaration concerning Dan, which the Agadists take as referring to Samson the Danite), must according to the Agadists' hermeneutics express by its form a doubling of the notion conveyed by shephî.[4]
Thus only what is said about Balaam could possibly belong to the old myth; what is said about Samson is late Agadic induction, which has no importance whatever for mythology.
- ↑ I find this identification, it is true, only in later books, Tânâ de-bhê Eliyâ, c. 27; Sêder ‘ôlâm, c. 21; see Halâkhôth gedôlôth (hilkhôth haspêd). In the Sêder had-dôrôth, under the year 2189, Beor is called son of Laban. On Laban see Chap. V. §11. Besides the name Loḳmân, which in signification corresponds with Bile‘âm (Balaam), we find in the Preislamite genealogy of the Arabs, which in my opinion is largely mixed up with mythical names, the chief Bal‘â’u, who is said to have been a leper (Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ, p. 106. 8). It should be observed that this is a man's name with the grammatical form of a feminine adjective.
- ↑ See Chap V. §10 end.
- ↑ Sôṭâ, fol. 10. a.
- ↑ See Excursus B.
