and Jacob embodies a mythological motive (p. 359), which is repeated in the case of Zeraḥ and Pereẓ (ch. 38). The whole story of Jacob and Esau presents several points of contact with that of the brothers Hypsouranios (Šamem-rum) and Usōos in the Phœnician mythology (Usōos = Esau: see pp. 360, 124). There appears also to be a Homeric variant of the incest of Reuben (p. 427). These phenomena are among the most perplexing which we encounter in the study of Hebrew tradition.[1] We can as yet scarcely conjecture the hidden source from which such widely ramified traditions have sprung, though we may not on that account ignore the existence of the problem. It would be at all events a groundless anticipation that the facts will lead us to resolve the patriarchs into mythological abstractions. They are rather to be explained by the tendency already referred to (p. ix), to mingle myth with legend by transferring mythical incidents to historic personages.
3. It remains, before we go on to consider the historical
elements of the tradition, to classify the leading types of
mythical, or semi-mythical (p. ix), motive which appear in
the narratives of Genesis. It will be seen that while they
undoubtedly detract from the literal historicity of the records,
they represent points of view which are of the greatest
historical interest, and are absolutely essential to the right
interpretation of the legends.[2]
(a) The most comprehensive category is that of ætiological or explanatory
myths; i.e., those which explain some familiar fact of experience
by a story of the olden time. Both the questions asked and the
answers returned are frequently of the most naïve and childlike description:
they have, as Gu. has said, all the charm which belongs to the
artless but profound reasoning of an intelligent child. The classical
example is the story of Paradise and the Fall in chs. 2. 3, which contains
one explicit instance of ætiology (224: why a man cleaves to his
wife), and implicitly a great many more: why we wear clothes and
detest snakes, why the serpent crawls on his belly, why the peasant has
to drudge in the fields, and the woman to endure the pangs of travail,
etc. (p. 95). Similarly, the account of creation explains why there are
so many kinds of plants and animals, why man is lord of them all, why
the sun shines by day and the moon by night, etc.; why the Sabbath
is kept. The Flood-story tells us the meaning of the rainbow, and of
the regular recurrence of the seasons: the Babel-myth accounts for the
existing diversities of language amongst men. Pure examples of
ætiology are practically confined to the first eleven chapters; but the
same general idea pervades the patriarchal history, specialised under
the headings which follow.
