Page:Mythology Among the Hebrews.djvu/132

his view of nature the nomad begins with the sky at night. The sky by itself is the dark, nightly, or clouded heaven; the sunshine on the sky is an accessory. Hence it comes that in Arabic the word Sky (samâ) is very often used even for 'Rain;' and the notions of rain and sky are so closely interwoven that even the traces of rain on the earth are called sky.^[1] In the language of the Bongo people there is only one word for sky and rain, hetōrro.^[2] On Semitic ground the Assyrian divine name Rammanu or Raman, must be mentioned here. If this name has any etymological connexion with the root râm 'to be high,' as Hesychius and some modern scholars say, though others derive it from raʿam thunder, Raʿamân 'the Thunderer,'^[3] then we find here again the primitive mythological idea that the intrinsically High is the dark stormy sky, or, personified, the God of Storms. So also in the old Hebrew myth the 'High' is the nightly or rainy sky. The best known myth that the Hebrews told of their Abh-râm is the story of the intended sacrifice of his only son Yiṣchâḳ, commonly called Isaac. But what is Yiṣchâḳ? Literally translated, the word denotes 'he laughs,' or 'the Laughing.' In the Semitic languages, especially in proper names and epithets, the use of the aorist^[4] (even in the second person, e.g. in the Arabic name Tazîd) is very frequent where we should employ a participle.^[5] So here. Now who is the 'He laughs,' the 'Smiling one'? No other but He who sits in heaven

the quality of father is not emphasized, finds an exact parallel in Δη( = Γη)μητήρ and Γαῖα.

1. Opuscula Arabica (ed. W. Wright, Leyden 1859), p. 30. 2; 34. 5. This usage is made possible by the signification Cloud, which is peculiar to the word samâ in Arabic (Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed, I. 544).
2. Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa, I. 311.
3. See the Count von Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, Leipzig 1876, I. p. 306 et seq.
4. Or Future, or Imperfect, as it is more generally termed.—Tr
5. It is worthy of note that in Arabic pluralia fracta can be formed from this class of proper names. An interesting example of this is Tanʿum^a b. Ḳamiʾata, the name of the ancestor of the tribe Tanâʿum. See Ibn Dureyd, Kitâb al-ishtiḳâḳ, p. 85 and gloss h.