opposition to Greek ideas, glorifies the shepherds as ideals of morality in contrast to the agriculturists.[1] Such a view could not but exert an influence on the figures of the myth. The persons of the myth who have our sympathy are generally presented as shepherds: Abel, Jacob, Moses, and David, are shepherds; whereas Cain is an agriculturist.
Moreover, the idea that the fall of the human race is connected with agriculture is found, besides the analogous cases commonly adduced by commentators, to be also often represented in the legends of the East African negroes, especially in the Calabar legend of the Creation communicated by Bastian,[2] which presents many interesting points of comparison with the Biblical story of the Fall. The first human pair is called by a bell at meal-times to Abasi (the Calabar God) in heaven; and in place of the forbidden tree of Genesis are put agriculture and propagation, which Abasi strictly denies to the first pair. The fall is denoted by the transgression of both these commands, especially through the use of implements of tillage, to which the woman is tempted by a female friend who is given to her. From that moment man fell and became mortal, so that, as the Bible story has it, he can 'eat bread only in the sweat of his face.' There agriculture is a curse, a fall from a more perfect stage to a lower and imperfect one. This view of the agricultural life is, how ever, not the conception of nomads only; it is proper also to nations which have not even reached the stage of nomadism, but stand a step lower—the hunters. To them their own condition appears the happiest, and that of the agri-
- ↑ De Sacrificio Kajin, p. 169, ed. Mangey, Oxford 1742. In another treatise Philo distinguishes two kinds of shepherds and two kinds of agriculturists, of which one kind is blameworthy, and the other praiseworthy. There is a distinction between ποιμήν and κηνοτροφός, and on the other hand between γῆς ἐργάτης (probably answering to the Hebrew ʿobêd adâmâ), and γεωργός (probably intended to represent the Hebrew îsh adâmâ). See De Agricultura, p. 303 et seq.
- ↑ Geographische und ethnologische Bilder, pp. 191–97.
