myth could take this form only in a time when the religious idea of Elôhîm had already gained such full life in the Hebrew people as to impel them to sacrifice what was dearest to them. When the myth had this form, accordingly, there was in Canaan already a monotheistic religion, the centre of which was Elôhîm the object of adoration, while the ancestors of the Hebrew people were his pious servants and favourites. This coating also must be stripped off, if we wish to trace the myth analytically to its primitive form. When we have stripped off the religious coating, we have still not yet penetrated to the central germ; for, independently of any religious tendency, Abraham remains as Patriarch, as a national figure; and this brings us into the historical epoch when the Hebrew people, attaining to a consciousness of national peculiarity and opposition to the surrounding Canaanitish peoples, constructed their own early history. Accordingly, the national coating has now to be thrown off; and then Abraham meets us as a (so to say) cosmopolitan figure—not yet transformed into the likeness of one nation, but still as a person, an individual. This stage of mythic development brings us to the psychological process which caused the mythological persons to come forth at the beginning; and behind this stage we find the original form of the myth: 'Abram kills his son Isaac.' At that primitive stage these expressions naturally signified no more than the words imply. 'אַבְרָם Abh Râm, the Lofty Father, kills his son יִצְחָק Yiṣchâḳ, the Laugher.' The Nightly Heaven and the Sun, or the Sunset, child of the Night,[1] fell into a strife in the evening, the result of which is that the Lofty Father kills his child; the day must give way to night.
In the above example we have endeavoured to give a short sketch, less of the progress of development of the Hebrew myth, than of the method by which, observing
- ↑ The Sunset is child of Night only if we keep before our eyes the mythical identity of the Morning and Evening Glow, according to §2 of this chapter.
