theory “romantic and irrational.” He goes on to say: “The original of our speaking was from God; not that God put into Adam’s mouth the very sounds which he designed he should use as the names of things; but God made Adam with the powers of a man; he had the use of an understanding to form notions in his mind of the things about him, and he had the power to utter sounds which should be to himself the names of things according as he might think fit to call them.”
This echo of Gregory of Nyssa was for many years of little avail. Historians of philosophy still began with Adam, because only a philosopher could have named all created things. There was, indeed, one difficulty which had much troubled some theologians: this was, that fishes were not specially mentioned among the animals brought by Jehovah before Adam for naming. To meet this difficulty there was much argument, and some theologians laid stress on the difficulty of bringing fishes from the sea to the Garden of Eden to receive their names; but naturally other theologians replied that the almighty power which created the fishes could have easily brought them into the garden, one by one, even from the uttermost parts of the sea. This point, therefore, seems to have been left in abeyance.[418]
[418] For the danger of “the little system of the history of the world,” see Sayce, as above. On Dugald Stewart’s contention, see Max Muller, Lectures on Language, pp. 167, 168. For Sir William Jones, see his Works, London, 1807, vol. i, p. 199. For Schlegel, see Max Muller, as above. For an enormous list of great theologians, from the fathers down, who dwelt on the divine inspiration and wonderful gifts of Adam on this subject, see Canon Farrar, Language and Languages. The citation from Clement of Alexandria is Strom.. i, p. 335. See also Chrysostom, Hom. XIV in Genesin; also Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XI, p. 6. For the two quotations given above from Shuckford, see The Creation and Fall of Man, London, 1763, preface, p. lxxxiii; also his Sacred and Profane History of the World, 1753; revised edition by Wheeler, London, 1858. For the argument regarding the difficulty of bringing the fishes to be named into the Garden of Eden, see Massey, Origin and Progress of Letters, London, 1763, pp. 14-19.
It had continued, then, the universal belief in the Church that the names of all created things, except possibly fishes, were given by Adam and in Hebrew; but all this theory was whelmed in ruin when it was found that there were other and indeed earlier names for the same animals than those in the Hebrew language; and especially was this enforced on thinking men when the Egyptian discoveries began to reveal the pictures of animals with their names in hieroglyphics at a period earlier than that agreed on by all the sacred chronologists as the date of the Creation.
Still another part of the sacred theory now received its death-blow. Closely allied with the question of the origin of language was that of the origin of letters. The earlier writers had held that letters were also a divine gift to Adam; but as we go on in the eighteenth century we find theological opinion inclining to the belief that this gift was reserved for Moses. This, as we have seen, was the view of St. John Chrysostom; and an eminent English divine early in the eighteenth century, John Johnson, Vicar of Kent, echoed it in the declaration concerning the alphabet, that “Moses first learned it from God by means of the lettering on the tables of the law.” But here a difficulty arose–the biblical statement that God commanded Moses to “write in a book” his decree concerning Amalek before he went up into Sinai. With this the good vicar grapples manfully. He supposes that God had previously concealed the tables of stone in Mount Horeb, and that Moses, “when he kept Jethro’s sheep thereabout, had free access to these tables, and perused them at discretion, though he was not permitted to carry them down with him.” Our reconciler then asks for what other reason could God have kept Moses up in the mountain forty days at a time, except to teach him to write; and says, “It seems highly probable that the angel gave him the alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way unknown to us became his guide.”
But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the other parts of the sacred theory. Studies in Comparative Philology, based upon researches in India, began to be reenforced by facts regarding the inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria, the legends of Chaldea, and the folklore of China–where it was found in the sacred books that the animals were named by Fohi, and with such wisdom and insight that every name disclosed the nature of the corresponding animal.
But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were still made to support it. In 1788 James Beattie, in all the glory of his Oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a vigorous onslaught, declaring the new system of philology to be “degrading to our nature,” and that the theory of the natural development of language is simply due to the beauty of Lucretius’ poetry. But his main weapon was ridicule, and in this he showed himself a master. He tells the world, “The following paraphrase has nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems to have all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves”:
“When men out of the earth of old
A dumb and beastly vermin crawled;
For acorns, first, and holes of shelter, They tooth and nail, and helter skelter, Fought fist to fist; then with a club
Each learned his brother brute to drub; Till, more experienced grown, these cattle Forged fit accoutrements for battle.
At last (Lucretius says and Creech) They set their wits to work on SPEECH:
And that their thoughts might all have marks To make them known, these learned clerks Left off the trade of cracking crowns,
And manufactured verbs and nouns.”
But a far more powerful theologian entered the field in England to save the sacred theory of language–Dr. Adam Clarke. He was no less severe against Philology than against Geology. In 1804, as President of the Manchester Philological Society, he delivered an address in which he declared that, while men of all sects were eligible to membership, “he who rejects the establishment of what we believe to be a divine revelation, he who would disturb the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful disputations unhinge the minds of the simple and unreflecting, and endeavour to turn the unwary out of the way of peace and rational subordination, can have no seat among the members of this institution.” The first sentence in this declaration gives food for reflection, for it is the same confusion of two ideas which has been at the root of so much interference of theology with science for the last two thousand years. Adam Clarke speaks of those “who reject the establishment of what, WE BELIEVE, to be a divine revelation.” Thus comes in that customary begging of the question–the substitution, as the real significance of Scripture, of “WHAT WE BELIEVE” for what IS.
The intended result, too, of this ecclesiastical sentence was simple enough. It was, that great men like Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and their compeers, must not be heard in the Manchester Philological Society in discussion with Dr. Adam Clarke on questions regarding Sanskrit and other matters regarding which they knew all that was then known, and Dr. Clarke knew nothing.
But even Clarke was forced to yield to the scientific current. Thirty years later, in his Commentary on the Old Testament, he pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key. He says: “Mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the Hebrew….The proper names and other significations given in the Scripture seem incontestable evidence that the Hebrew language was the original language of the earth,–the language in which God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of his will to Moses and the prophets.” Here are signs that this great champion is growing weaker in the faith: in the citations made it will be observed he no longer says “IS,” but “SEEMS”; and finally we have him saying, “What the first language was is almost useless to inquire, as it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory information on this point.”
In France, during the first half of the nineteenth century, yet more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to make a last desperate defence of the sacred theory. The leaders in this effort were the three great Ultramontanes, De Maistre, De Bonald, and Lamennais. Condillac’s contention that “languages were gradually and insensibly acquired, and that every man had his share of the general result,” they attacked with reasoning based upon premises drawn from the book of Genesis. De Maistre especially excelled in ridiculing the philosophic or scientific theory. Lamennais, who afterward became so vexatious a thorn in the side of the Church, insisted, at this earlier period, that “man can no more think without words than see without light.” And then, by that sort of mystical play upon words so well known in the higher ranges of theologic reasoning, he clinches his argument by saying, “The Word is truly and in every sense `the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'”
But even such champions as these could not stay the progress of thought. While they seemed to be carrying everything before them in France, researches in philology made at such centres of thought as the Sorbonne and the College of France were undermining their last great fortress. Curious indeed is it to find that the Sorbonne, the stronghold of theology through so many centuries, was now made in the nineteenth century the arsenal and stronghold of the new ideas. But the most striking result of the new tendency in France was seen when the greatest of the three champions, Lamennais himself, though offered the highest Church preferment, and even a cardinal’s hat, braved the papal anathema, and went over to the scientific side.[419]
[419] For Johnson’s work, showing how Moses learned the alphabet, see the Collection of Discourses by Rev. John Johnson, A. M., Vicar of Kent, London, 1728, p. 42, and the preface. For Beattie, see his Theory of Language, London, 1788, p. 98; also pp. 100, 101. For Adam Clarke, see, for the speech cited, his Miscellaneous Works, London, 1837; for the passage from his Commentary, see the London edition of 1836, vol. i, p. 93; for the other passage, see Introduction to Bibliographical Miscellany, quoted in article, Origin of Language and Alphabetical Characters, in Methodist Magazine, vol. xv, p. 214. For De Bonald, see his Recherches Philosophiques, part iii, chap. ii, De l’Origine du Language, in his Oeuvres, Bruxelles, 1852, vol. i, Les Soirees de Saint Petersbourg, deuxieme entretien, passim. For Lamennais, see his Oeuvres Completes, Paris, 1836- ’37, tome ii, pp.78-81, chap. xv of Essai sur l’Indifference en Matiere de Religion.
In Germany philological science took so strong a hold that its positions were soon recognised as impregnable. Leaders like the Schlegels, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and above all Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm, gave such additional force to scientific truth that it could no longer be withstood. To say nothing of other conquests, the demonstration of that great law in philology which bears Grimm’s name brought home to all thinking men the evidence that the evolution of language had not been determined by the philosophic utterances of Adam in naming the animals which Jehovah brought before him, but in obedience to natural law.
True, a few devoted theologians showed themselves willing to lead a forlorn hope; and perhaps the most forlorn of all was that of 1840, led by Dr. Gottlieb Christian Kayser, Professor of Theology at the Protestant University of Erlangen. He does not, indeed, dare put in the old claim that Hebrew is identical with the primitive tongue, but he insists that it is nearer it than any other. He relinquishes the two former theological strongholds–first, the idea that language was taught by the Almighty to Adam, and, next, that the alphabet was thus taught to Moses–and falls back on the position that all tongues are thus derived from Noah, giving as an example the language of the Caribbees, and insisting that it was evidently so derived. What chance similarity in words between Hebrew and the Caribbee tongue he had in mind is past finding out. He comes out strongly in defence of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, and insists that “by the symbolical expression `God said, Let us go down,’ a further natural phenomenon is intimated, to wit, the cleaving of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed became impossible–that is to say, through a new or not universal flood, a partial inundation and temporary violent separation of great continents until the time of the rediscovery” By these words the learned doctor means nothing less than the separation of Europe from America.
While at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory of the origin and development of language was upon the continent considered as settled, and a well-ordered science had there emerged from the old chaos, Great Britain still held back, in spite of the fact that the most important contributors to the science were of British origin. Leaders in every English church and sect vied with each other, either in denouncing the encroachments of the science of language or in explaining them away.
But a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected. Perhaps the most notable effort in bringing it in was made by Dr. Wiseman, afterward Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. His is one of the best examples of a method which has been used with considerable effect during the latest stages of nearly all the controversies between theology and science. It consists in stating, with much fairness, the conclusions of the scientific authorities, and then in persuading one’s self and trying to persuade others that the Church has always accepted them and accepts them now as “additional proofs of the truth of Scripture.” A little juggling with words, a little amalgamation of texts, a little judicious suppression, a little imaginative deduction, a little unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done. One great service this eminent and kindly Catholic champion undoubtedly rendered: by this acknowledgment, so widely spread in his published lectures, he made it impossible for Catholics or Protestants longer to resist the main conclusions of science. Henceforward we only have efforts to save theological appearances, and these only by men whose zeal outran their discretion.
On both sides of the Atlantic, down to a recent period, we see these efforts, but we see no less clearly that they are mutually destructive. Yet out of this chaos among English-speaking peoples the new science began to develop steadily and rapidly. Attempts did indeed continue here and there to save the old theory. Even as late as 1859 we hear the eminent Presbyterian divine, Dr. John Cumming, from his pulpit in London, speaking of Hebrew as “that magnificent tongue–that mother-tongue, from which all others are but distant and debilitated progenies.”
But the honour of producing in the nineteenth century the most absurd known attempt to prove Hebrew the primitive tongue belongs to the youngest of the continents, Australia. In the year 1857 was printed at Melbourne The Triumph of Truth, or a Popular Lecture on the Origin of Languages, by B. Atkinson, M.R.C.P.L.–whatever that may mean. In this work, starting with the assertion that “the Hebrew was the primary stock whence all languages were derived,” the author states that Sanskrit is “a dialect of the Hebrew,” and declares that “the manuscripts found with mummies agree precisely with the Chinese version of the Psalms of David.” It all sounds like Alice in Wonderland. Curiously enough, in the latter part of his book, evidently thinking that his views would not give him authority among fastidious philologists, he says, “A great deal of our consent to the foregoing statements arises in our belief in the Divine inspiration of the Mosaic account of the creation of the world and of our first parents in the Garden of Eden.” A yet more interesting light is thrown upon the author’s view of truth, and of its promulgation, by his dedication: he says that, “being persuaded that literary men ought to be fostered by the hand of power,” he dedicates his treatise “to his Excellency Sir H. Barkly,” who was at the time Governor of Victoria.
Still another curious survival is seen in a work which appeared as late as 1885, at Edinburgh, by William Galloway, M.A., Ph.D., M.D. The author thinks that he has produced abundant evidence to prove that “Jehovah, the Second Person of the Godhead, wrote the first chapter of Genesis on a stone pillar, and that this is the manner by which he first revealed it to Adam; and thus Adam was taught not only to speak but to read and write by Jehovah, the Divine Son; and that the first lesson he got was from the first chapter of Genesis.” He goes on to say: “Jehovah wrote these first two documents; the first containing the history of the Creation, and the second the revelation of man’s redemption,…for Adam’s and Eve’s instruction; it is evident that he wrote them in the Hebrew tongue, because that was the language of Adam and Eve.” But this was only a flower out of season.
And, finally, in these latter days Mr. Gladstone has touched the subject. With that well-known facility in believing anything he wishes to believe, which he once showed in connecting Neptune’s trident with the doctrine of the Trinity, he floats airily over all the impossibilities of the original Babel legend and all the conquests of science, makes an assertion regarding the results of philology which no philologist of any standing would admit, and then escapes in a cloud of rhetoric after his well-known fashion.
This, too, must be set down simply as a survival, for in the British Isles as elsewhere the truth has been established. Such men as Max Muller and Sayce in England,–Steinthal, Schleicher, Weber, Karl Abel, and a host of others in Germany,–Ascoli and De Gubernatis in Italy,–and Whitney, with the scholars inspired by him, in America, have carried the new science to a complete triumph. The sons of Yale University may well be proud of the fact that this old Puritan foundation was made the headquarters of the American Oriental Society, which has done so much for the truth in this field.[420]
[420] For Mr. Gladstone’s view, see his Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture, London, 1890, pp. 241 et seq. The passage connecting the trident of Neptune with the Trinity is in his Juventus Mundi. To any American boy who sees how inevitably, both among Indian and white fishermen, the fish spear takes the three-pronged form, this utterance of Mr. Gladstone is amazing.
V. SUMMARY.
It may be instructive, in conclusion, to sum up briefly the history of the whole struggle.
First, as to the origin of speech, we have in the beginning the whole Church rallying around the idea that the original language was Hebrew; that this language, even including the medieval rabbinical punctuation, was directly inspired by the Almighty; that Adam was taught it by God himself in walks and talks; and that all other languages were derived from it at the “confusion of Babel.”
Next, we see parts of this theory fading out: the inspiration of the rabbinical points begins to disappear. Adam, instead of being taught directly by God, is “inspired” by him.
Then comes the third stage: advanced theologians endeavour to compromise on the idea that Adam was “given verbal roots and a mental power.”
Finally, in our time, we have them accepting the theory that language is the result of an evolutionary process in obedience to laws more or less clearly ascertained. Babel thus takes its place quietly among the sacred myths.
As to the origin of writing, we have the more eminent theologians at first insisting that God taught Adam to write; next we find them gradually retreating from this position, but insisting that writing was taught to the world by Noah. After the retreat from this position, we find them insisting that it was Moses whom God taught to write. But scientific modes of thought still progressed, and we next have influential theologians agreeing that writing was a Mosaic invention; this is followed by another theological retreat to the position that writing was a post-Mosaic invention. Finally, all the positions are relinquished, save by some few skirmishers who appear now and then upon the horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle method of “reconciling” the Babel myth with modern science.
Just after the middle of the nineteenth century the last stage of theological defence was evidently reached–the same which is seen in the history of almost every science after it has successfully fought its way through the theological period–the declaration which we have already seen foreshadowed by Wiseman, that the scientific discoveries in question are nothing new, but have really always been known and held by the Church, and that they simply substantiate the position taken by the Church. This new contention, which always betokens the last gasp of theological resistance to science, was now echoed from land to land. In 1856 it was given forth by a divine of the Anglican Church, Archdeacon Pratt, of Calcutta. He gives a long list of eminent philologists who had done most to destroy the old supernatural view of language, reads into their utterances his own wishes, and then exclaims, “So singularly do their labours confirm the literal truth of Scripture.”
Two years later this contention was echoed from the American Presbyterian Church, and Dr. B. W. Dwight, having stigmatized as “infidels” those who had not incorporated into their science the literal acceptance of Hebrew legend, declared that “chronology, ethnography, and etymology have all been tortured in vain to make them contradict the Mosaic account of the early history of man.” Twelve years later this was re-echoed from England. The Rev. Dr. Baylee, Principal of the College of St. Aidan’s, declared, “With regard to the varieties of human language, the account of the confusion of tongues is receiving daily confirmation by all the recent discoveries in comparative philology.” So, too, in the same year (1870), in the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, Dr. John Eadie, Professor of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, declared, “Comparative philology has established the miracle of Babel.”
A skill in theology and casuistry so exquisite as to contrive such assertions, and a faith so robust as to accept them, certainly leave nothing to be desired. But how baseless these contentions are is shown, first, by the simple history of the attitude of the Church toward this question; and, secondly, by the fact that comparative philology now reveals beyond a doubt that not only is Hebrew not the original or oldest language upon earth, but that it is not even the oldest form in the Semitic group to which it belongs. To use the words of one of the most eminent modern authorities, “It is now generally recognised that in grammatical structure the Arabic preserves much more of the original forms than either the Hebrew or Aramaic.”
History, ethnology, and philology now combine inexorably to place the account of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of races at Babel among the myths; but their work has not been merely destructive: more and more strong are the grounds for belief in an evolution of language.
A very complete acceptance of the scientific doctrines has been made by Archdeacon Farrar, Canon of Westminster. With a boldness which in an earlier period might have cost him dear, and which merits praise even now for its courage, he says: “For all reasoners except that portion of the clergy who in all ages have been found among the bitterest enemies of scientific discovery, these considerations have been conclusive. But, strange to say, here, as in so many other instances, this self-styled orthodoxy–more orthodox than the Bible itself–directly contradicts the very Scriptures which it professes to explain, and by sheer misrepresentation succeeds in producing a needless and deplorable collision between the statements of Scripture and those other mighty and certain truths which have been revealed to science and humanity as their glory and reward.”
Still another acknowledgment was made in America through the instrumentality of a divine of the Methodist Episcopal Church, whom the present generation at least will hold in honour not only for his scholarship but for his patriotism in the darkest hour of his country’s need–John McClintock. In the article on Language, in the Biblical Cyclopaedia, edited by him and the Rev. Dr. Strong, which appeared in 1873, the whole sacred theory is given up, and the scientific view accepted.[421]
[421] For Kayser, see his work, Ueber die Ursprache, oder uber eine Behauptung Mosis, dass alle Sprachen der Welt von einer einzigen der Noahhischen abstammen, Erlangen, 1840; see especially pp. 5, 80, 95, 112. For Wiseman, see his Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, London, 1836. For examples typical of very many in this field, see the works of Pratt, 1856; Dwight, 1858; Jamieson, 1868. For citation from Cumming, see his Great Tribulation, London, 1859, p. 4; see also his Things Hard to be Understood, London, 1861, p. 48. For an admirable summary of the work of the great modern philologists, and a most careful estimate of the conclusions reached, see Prof. Whitney’s article on Philology in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A copy of Mr. Atkinson’s book is in the Harvard College Library, it having been presented by the Trustees of the Public Library of Victoria. For Galloway, see his Philosophy of the Creation, Edinburgh and London, 1885, pp. 21, 238, 239, 446. For citation from Baylee, see his Verbal Inspiration the True Characteristic of God’s Holy Word, London, 1870, p. 14 and elsewhere. For Archdeacon Pratt, see his Scripture and Science not at Variance, London, 1856, p. 55. For the citation from Dr. Eadie, see his Biblical Cyclopaedia, London, 1870, p. 53. For Dr. Dwight, see The New-Englander, vol. xvi, p. 465. For the theological article referred to as giving up the sacred theory, see the Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, prepared by Rev. John McClintock, D. D., and James Strong, New York, 1873, vol. v, p. 233. For Arabic as an earlier Semitic development than Hebrew, as well as for much other valuable information on the questions recently raised, see article Hebrew, by W. R. Smith, in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For quotation from Canon Farrar, see his language and Languages, London, 1878, pp. 6,7.
It may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of theology have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding the origin of language, as against the old explanations by myth and legend. The result has been a blessing both to science and to religion. No harm has been done to religion; what has been done is to release it from the clog of theories which thinking men saw could no longer be maintained. No matter what has become of the naming of the animals by Adam, of the origin of the name Babel, of the fear of the Almighty lest men might climb up into his realm above the firmament, and of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of nations; the essentials of Christianity, as taught by its blessed Founder, have simply been freed, by Comparative Philology, from one more great incubus, and have therefore been left to work with more power upon the hearts and minds of mankind.
Nor has any harm been done to the Bible. On the contrary, this divine revelation through science has made it all the more precious to us. In these myths and legends caught from earlier civilizations we see an evolution of the most important religious and moral truths for our race. Myth, legend, and parable seem, in obedience to a divine law, the necessary setting for these truths, as they are successively evolved, ever in higher and higher forms. What matters it, then, that we have come to know that the accounts of Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, and much else in our sacred books, were remembrances of lore obtained from the Chaldeans? What matters it that the beautiful story of Joseph is found to be in part derived from an Egyptian romance, of which the hieroglyphs may still be seen? What matters it that the story of David and Goliath is poetry; and that Samson, like so many men of strength in other religions, is probably a sun-myth? What matters it that the inculcation of high duty in the childhood of the world is embodied in such quaint stories as those of Jonah and Balaam? The more we realize these facts, the richer becomes that great body of literature brought together within the covers of the Bible. What matters it that those who incorporated the Creation lore of Babylonia and other Oriental nations into the sacred books of the Hebrews, mixed it with their own conceptions and deductions? What matters it that Darwin changed the whole aspect of our Creation myths; that Lyell and his compeers placed the Hebrew story of Creation and of the Deluge of Noah among legends; that Copernicus put an end to the standing still of the sun for Joshua; that Halley, in promulgating his law of comets, put an end to the doctrine of “signs and wonders”; that Pinel, in showing that all insanity is physical disease, relegated to the realm of mythology the witch of Endor and all stories of demoniacal possession; that the Rev. Dr. Schaff, and a multitude of recent Christian travellers in Palestine, have put into the realm of legend the story of Lot’s wife transformed into a pillar of salt; that the anthropologists, by showing how man has risen everywhere from low and brutal beginnings, have destroyed the whole theological theory of “the fall of man”? Our great body of sacred literature is thereby only made more and more valuable to us: more and more we see how long and patiently the forces in the universe which make for righteousness have been acting in and upon mankind through the only agencies fitted for such work in the earliest ages of the world–through myth, legend, parable, and poem.
CHAPTER XVIII.
FROM THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY,
I. THE GROWTH OF EXPLANATORY TRANSFORMATION MYTHS.
A few years since, Maxime Du Camp, an eminent member of the French Academy, travelling from the Red Sea to the Nile through the Desert of Kosseir, came to a barren slope covered with boulders, rounded and glossy.
His Mohammedan camel-driver accounted for them on this wise:
“Many years ago Hadji Abdul-Aziz, a sheik of the dervishes, was travelling on foot through this desert: it was summer: the sun was hot and the dust stifling; thirst parched his lips, fatigue weighed down his back, sweat dropped from his forehead, when looking up he saw–on this very spot–a garden beautifully green, full of fruit, and, in the midst of it, the gardener.
“`O fellow-man,’ cried Hadji Abdul-Aziz, `in the name of Allah, clement and merciful, give me a melon and I will give you my prayers.'”
The gardener answered: `I care not for your prayers; give me money, and I will give you fruit.’
“`But,’ said the dervish, `I am a beggar; I have never had money; I am thirsty and weary, and one of your melons is all that I need.’
“`No,’ said the gardener; `go to the Nile and quench your thirst.’
“Thereupon the dervish, lifting his eyes toward heaven, made this prayer: `O Allah, thou who in the midst of the desert didst make the fountain of Zem-Zem spring forth to satisfy the thirst of Ismail, father of the faithful: wilt thou suffer one of thy creatures to perish thus of thirst and fatigue? ‘
“And it came to pass that, hardly had the dervish spoken, when an abundant dew descended upon him, quenching his thirst and refreshing him even to the marrow of his bones.
“Now at the sight of this miracle the gardener knew that the dervish was a holy man, beloved of Allah, and straightway offered him a melon.
“`Not so,’ answered Hadji Abdul-Aziz; `keep what thou hast, thou wicked man. May thy melons become as hard as thy heart, and thy field as barren as thy soul!’
“And straightway it came to pass that the melons were changed into these blocks of stone, and the grass into this sand, and never since has anything grown thereon.”
In this story, and in myriads like it, we have a survival of that early conception of the universe in which so many of the leading moral and religious truths of the great sacred books of the world are imbedded.
All ancient sacred lore abounds in such mythical explanations of remarkable appearances in nature, and these are most frequently prompted by mountains, rocks, and boulders seemingly misplaced.
In India we have such typical examples among the Brahmans as the mountain-peak which Durgu threw at Parvati; and among the Buddhists the stone which Devadatti hurled at Buddha.
In Greece the Athenian, rejoicing in his belief that Athena guarded her chosen people, found it hard to understand why the great rock Lycabettus should be just too far from the Acropolis to be of use as an outwork; but a myth was developed which explained all. According to this, Athena had intended to make Lycabettus a defence for the Athenians, and she was bringing it through the air from Pallene for that very purpose; but, unfortunately, a raven met her and informed her of the wonderful birth of Erichthonius, which so surprised the goddess that she dropped the rock where it now stands.
So, too, a peculiar rock at Aegina was accounted for by a long and circumstantial legend to the effect that Peleus threw it at Phocas.
A similar mode of explaining such objects is seen in the mythologies of northern Europe. In Scandinavia we constantly find rocks which tradition accounts for by declaring that they were hurled by the old gods at each other, or at the early Christian churches.
In Teutonic lands, as a rule, wherever a strange rock or stone is found, there will be found a myth or a legend, heathen or Christian, to account for it.
So, too, in Celtic countries: typical of this mode of thought in Brittany and in Ireland is the popular belief that such features in the landscape were dropped by the devil or by fairies.
Even at a much later period such myths have grown and bloomed. Marco Polo gives a long and circumstantial legend of a mountain in Asia Minor which, not long before his visit, was removed by a Christian who, having “faith as a grain of mustard seed,” and remembering the Saviour’s promise, transferred the mountain to its present place by prayer, “at which marvel many Saracens became Christians.”[422]
[422] For Maxime Du Camp, see Le Nil: Egypte et Nubie, Paris, 1877, chapter v. For India, see Duncker, Geschichte des Alterthums, vol. iii, p. 366; also Coleman, Mythology of the Hindus, p. 90. For Greece, as to the Lycabettus myth, see Leake, Topography of Athens, vol. i, sec. 3; also Burnouf, La Legende Athenienne, p. 152. For the rock at Aegina, see Charton, vol. i, p. 310. For Scandanavia, see Thorpe, Northern Antiquities, passim. For Teutonic countries, see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie; Panzer, Beitrag zur deutschen Mythologie, vol. ii; Zingerle, Sagen aus Tyrol, pp. 111 et seq., 488, 504, 543; and especially J. B. Friedrich, Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur, pp. 116 et seq. For Celtic examples I am indebted to that learned and genial scholar, Prof. J. P. Mahaffy, of Trinity College, Dublin. See also story of the devil dropping a rock when forced by the archangel Michael to aid him in building Mont Saint-Michel on the west coast of France, in Sebillot’s Traditions de la Haute Bretagne, vol. i, p. 22; also multitudes of other examples in the same work. For Marco Polo, see in Grynaeus, p. 337; also Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome ii, pp. 274 et seq., where the legend is given in full.
Similar mythical explanations are also found, in all the older religions of the world, for curiously marked meteoric stones, fossils, and the like.
Typical examples are found in the imprint of Buddha’s feet on stones in Siam and Ceylon; in the imprint of the body of Moses, which down to the middle of the last century was shown near Mount Sinai; in the imprint of Poseidon’s trident on the Acropolis at Athens; in the imprint of the hands or feet of Christ on stones in France, Italy, and Palestine; in the imprint of the Virgin’s tears on stones at Jerusalem; in the imprint of the feet of Abraham at Jerusalem and of Mohammed on a stone in the Mosque of Khait Bey at Cairo; in the imprint of the fingers of giants on stones in the Scandinavian Peninsula, in north Germany, and in western France; in the imprint of the devil’s thighs on a rock in Brittany, and of his claws on stones which he threw at churches in Cologne and Saint-Pol-de-Leon; in the imprint of the shoulder of the devil’s grand mother on the “elbow-stone” at the Mohriner see; in the imprint of St. Otho’s feet on a stone formerly preserved in the castle church at Stettin; in the imprint of the little finger of Christ and the head of Satan at Ehrenberg; and in the imprint of the feet of St. Agatha at Catania, in Sicily. To account for these appearances and myriads of others, long and interesting legends were developed, and out of this mass we may take one or two as typical.
One of the most beautiful was evolved at Rome. On the border of the medieval city stands the church of “Domine quo vadis”; it was erected in honour of a stone, which is still preserved, bearing a mark resembling a human footprint–perhaps the bed of a fossil.
Out of this a pious legend grew as naturally as a wild rose in a prairie. According to this story, in one of the first great persecutions the heart of St. Peter failed him, and he attempted to flee from the city: arriving outside the walls he was suddenly confronted by the Master, whereupon Peter in amazement asked, “Lord, whither goest thou?” (Domine quo vadis?); to which the Master answered, “To Rome, to be crucified again.” The apostle, thus rebuked, returned to martyrdom; the Master vanished, but left, as a perpetual memorial, his footprint in the solid rock.
Another legend accounts for a curious mark in a stone at Jerusalem. According to this, St. Thomas, after the ascension of the Lord, was again troubled with doubts, whereupon the Virgin Mother threw down her girdle, which left its imprint upon the rock, and thus converted the doubter fully and finally.
And still another example is seen at the very opposite extreme of Europe, in the legend of the priestess of Hertha in the island of Rugen. She had been unfaithful to her vows, and the gods furnished a proof of her guilt by causing her and her child to sink into the rock on which she stood.[423]
[423] For myths and legend crystallizing about boulders and other stones curiously shaped or marked, see, on the general subject, in addition to works already cited, Des Brosses, Les Dieux Fetiches, 1760, passim, but especially pages 166, 167; and for a condensed statement as to worship paid them, see Gerard de Rialle, Mythologie comparee, vol. vi, chapter ii. For imprints of Buddha’s feet, see Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind, London, 1878, pp. 115 et seq.; also Coleman, p. 203, and Charton, Voyageurs anciens et modernes, tome i, pp. 365, 366, where engravings of one of the imprints, and of the temple above another, are seen. There are five which are considered authentic by the Siamese, and a multitude of others more or less strongly insisted upon. For the imprint os Moses’ body, see travellers from Sir John Mandeville down. For the mark of Neptune’s trident, see last edition of Murray’s Handbook of Greece, vol. i, p. 322; and Burnouf, La Legende Athenienne, p. 153. For imprint of the feet of Christ, and of the Virgin’s girdle and tears, see many of the older travellers in Palestine, as Arculf, Bouchard, Roger, and especially Bertrandon de la Brocquiere in Wright’s collection, pp. 339, 340; also Maundrell’s Travels, and Mandeville. For the curious legend regarding the imprint of Abraham’s foot, see Weil, Biblische Legenden der Muselmanner, pp. 91 et seq. For many additional examples in Palestine, particularly the imprints of the bodies of three apostles on stones in the Garden of Gethsemane and of St. Jerome’s body in the desert, see Beauvau, Relation du Voyage du Lavant, Nancy, 1615, passim. For the various imprints made by Satan and giants in Scandanavia and Germany, see Thorpe, vol. ii, p. 85; Friedrichs, pp. 126 and passim. For a very rich collection of such explanatory legends regarding stones and marks in Germany, see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marchen und Gebrauche aus Meklenburg, Wien, 1880, vol. ii, pp. 420 et seq. For a woodcut representing the imprint of Christ’s feet on the stone from which he ascended to heaven, see woodcut in Mandeville, edition of 1484, in the White Library, Cornell University. For the legend of Domine quo vadis, see many books of travel and nearly all guide books for Rome, from the mediaeval Mirabilia Romae to the latest edition of Murray. The footprints of Mohammed at Cairo were shown to the present writer in 1889. On the general subject, with many striking examples, see Falsan, La Periode glaciaire, Paris, 1889, pp. 17, 294, 295.
Another and very fruitful source of explanatory myths is found in ancient centres of volcanic action, and especially in old craters of volcanoes and fissures filled with water.
In China we have, among other examples, Lake Man, which was once the site of the flourishing city Chiang Shui–overwhelmed and sunk on account of the heedlessness of its inhabitants regarding a divine warning.
In Phrygia, the lake and morass near Tyana were ascribed to the wrath of Zeus and Hermes, who, having visited the cities which formerly stood there, and having been refused shelter by all the inhabitants save Philemon and Baucis, rewarded their benefactors, but sunk the wicked cities beneath the lake and morass.
Stories of similar import grew up to explain the crater near Sipylos in Asia Minor and that of Avernus in Italy: the latter came to be considered the mouth of the infernal regions, as every schoolboy knows when he has read his Virgil.
In the later Christian mythologies we have such typical legends as those which grew up about the old crater in Ceylon; the salt water in it being accounted for by supposing it the tears of Adam and Eve, who retreated to this point after their expulsion from paradise and bewailed their sin during a hundred years.
So, too, in Germany we have multitudes of lakes supposed to owe their origin to the sinking of valleys as a punishment for human sin. Of these are the “Devil’s Lake,” near Gustrow, which rose and covered a church and its priests on account of their corruption; the lake at Probst-Jesar, which rose and covered an oak grove and a number of peasants resting in it on account of their want of charity to beggars; and the Lucin Lake, which rose and covered a number of soldiers on account of their cruelty to a poor peasant.
Such legends are found throughout America and in Japan, and will doubtless be found throughout Asia and Africa, and especially among the volcanic lakes of South America, the pitch lakes of the Caribbean Islands, and even about the Salt Lake of Utah; for explanatory myths and legends under such circumstances are inevitable.[424]
[424] As to myths explaining volcanic craters and lakes, and embodying ideas of the wrath of Heaven against former inhabitants of the neighboring country, see Forbiger, Alte Geographie, Hamburg, 1877, vol. i, p. 563. For exaggerations concerning the Dead Sea, see ibid., vol. i, p. 575. For the sinking of Chiang Shui and other examples, see Denny’s Folklore of China, pp. 126 et seq. For the sinking of the Phrygian region, the destruction of its inhabitants, and the saving of Philemon and Baucis, see Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book viii; also Botticher, Baumcultus der Alten, etc. For the lake in Ceylon arising from the tears of Adam and Eve, see variants of the original legend in Mandeville and in Jurgen Andersen, Reisebeschreibung, 1669, vol. ii, p. 132. For the volcanic nature of the Dead Sea, see Daubeny, cited in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Palestine. For lakes in Germany owing their origin to human sin and various supernatural causes, see Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marche und Gebrauche aus Meklenburg, vol. i, pp. 397 et seq. For lakes in America, see any good collection of Indian legends. For lakes in Japan sunk supernaturally, see Braun’s Japanesische Marche und Sagen, Leipsic, 1885, pp. 350, 351.
To the same manner of explaining striking appearances in physical geography, and especially strange rocks and boulders, we mainly owe the innumerable stories of the transformation of living beings, and especially of men and women, into these natural features.
In the mythology of China we constantly come upon legends of such transformations–from that of the first Counsellor of the Han dynasty to those of shepherds and sheep. In the Brahmanic mythology of India, Salagrama, the fossil ammonite, is recognised as containing the body of Vishnu’s wife, and the Binlang stone has much the same relation to Siva; so, too, the nymph Ramba was changed, for offending Ketu, into a mass of sand; by the breath of Siva elephants were turned into stone; and in a very touching myth Luxman is changed into stone but afterward released. In the Buddhist mythology a Nat demon is represented as changing himself into a grain of sand.
Among the Greeks such transformation myths come constantly before us–both the changing of stones to men and the changing of men to stones. Deucalion and Pyrrha, escaping from the flood, repeopled the earth by casting behind them stones which became men and women; Heraulos was changed into stone for offending Mercury; Pyrrhus for offending Rhea; Phineus, and Polydectes with his guests, for offending Perseus: under the petrifying glance of Medusa’s head such transformations became a thing of course.
To myth-making in obedience to the desire of explaining unusual natural appearances, coupled with the idea that sin must be followed by retribution, we also owe the well-known Niobe myth. Having incurred the divine wrath, Niobe saw those dearest to her destroyed by missiles from heaven, and was finally transformed into a rock on Mount Sipylos which bore some vague resemblance to the human form, and her tears became the rivulets which trickled from the neighbouring strata.
Thus, in obedience to a moral and intellectual impulse, a striking geographical appearance was explained, and for ages pious Greeks looked with bated breath upon the rock at Sipylos which was once Niobe, just as for ages pious Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans looked with awe upon the salt pillar at the Dead Sea which was once Lot’s wife.
Pausanias, one of the most honest of ancient travellers, gives us a notable exhibition of this feeling. Having visited this monument of divine vengeance at Mount Sipylos, he tells us very naively that, though he could discern no human features when standing near it, he thought that he could see them when standing at a distance. There could hardly be a better example of that most common and deceptive of all things–belief created by the desire to believe.
In the pagan mythology of Scandinavia we have such typical examples as Bors slaying the giant Ymir and transforming his bones into boulders; also “the giant who had no heart” transforming six brothers and their wives into stone; and, in the old Christian mythology, St. Olaf changing into stone the wicked giants who opposed his preaching.
So, too, in Celtic countries we have in Ireland such legends as those of the dancers turned into stone; and, in Brittany, the stones at Plesse, which were once hunters and dogs violating the sanctity of Sunday; and the stones of Carnac, which were once soldiers who sought to kill St. Cornely.
Teutonic mythology inherited from its earlier Eastern days a similar mass of old legends, and developed a still greater mass of new ones. Thus, near the Konigstein, which all visitors to the Saxon Switzerland know so well, is a boulder which for ages was believed to have once been a maiden transformed into stone for refusing to go to church; and near Rosenberg in Mecklenburg is another curiously shaped stone of which a similar story is told. Near Spornitz, in the same region, are seven boulders whose forms and position are accounted for by a long and circumstantial legend that they were once seven impious herdsmen; near Brahlsdorf is a stone which, according to a similar explanatory myth, was once a blasphemous shepherd; near Schwerin are three boulders which were once wasteful servants; and at Neustadt, down to a recent period, was shown a collection of stones which were once a bride and bridegroom with their horses–all punished for an act of cruelty; and these stories are but typical of thousands.
At the other extremity of Europe we may take, out of the multitude of explanatory myths, that which grew about the well-known group of boulders near Belgrade. In the midst of them stands one larger than the rest: according to the legend which was developed to account for all these, there once lived there a swineherd, who was disrespectful to the consecrated Host; whereupon he was changed into the larger stone, and his swine into the smaller ones. So also at Saloniki we have the pillars of the ruined temple, which are widely believed, especially among the Jews of that region, to have once been human beings, and are therefore known as the “enchanted columns.”
Among the Arabs we have an addition to our sacred account of Adam–the legend of the black stone of the Caaba at Mecca, into which the angel was changed who was charged by the Almighty to keep Adam away from the forbidden fruit, and who neglected his duty.
Similar old transformation legends are abundant among the Indians of America, the negroes of Africa, and the natives of Australia and the Pacific islands.
Nor has this making of myths to account for remarkable appearances yet ceased, even in civilized countries.
About the beginning of this century the Grand Duke of Weimar, smitten with the classical mania of his time, placed in the public park near his palace a little altar, and upon this was carved, after the manner so frequent in classical antiquity, a serpent taking a cake from it. And shortly there appeared, in the town and the country round about, a legend to explain this altar and its decoration. It was commonly said that a huge serpent had laid waste that region in the olden time, until a wise and benevolent baker had rid the world of the monster by means of a poisoned biscuit.
So, too, but a few years since, in the heart of the State of New York, a swindler of genius having made and buried a “petrified giant,” one theologian explained it by declaring it a Phoenician idol, and published the Phoenician inscription which he thought he had found upon it; others saw in it proofs that “there were giants in those days,” and within a week after its discovery myths were afloat that the neighbouring remnant of the Onondaga Indians had traditions of giants who frequently roamed through that region.[425]
[425] For transformation myths and legends, identifying rocks and stones with gods and heroes, see Welcker, Gotterlehre, vol. i, p. 220. For recent and more accessible statements for the general reader, see Robertson Smith’s admirable Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, Edinburgh, 1889, pp. 86 et seq. For some thoughtful remarks on the ancient adoration of stones rather than statues, with refernce to the anointing of stones at Bethel by Jacob, see Dodwell, Tour through Greece, vol. ii, p. 172; also Robertson Smith, as above, Lecture V. For Chinese transformation legends, see Denny’s Folklore of China, pp. 96, 128. For Hindu and other ancient legends of transformations, see Dawson, Dictionary of Hindu Mythology; also Coleman, as above; also Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, pp. 81-97, etc. For such transformations in Greece, see the Iliad, and Ovid, as above; also Stark, Niobe und die Niobiden, p. 444 and elsewhere; also Preller, Griechische Mythologie, passim; also Baumeister, Denkmaler des classischen Alterthums, article Niobe; also Botticher,as above; also Curtius, Griechische Geschichte, vol.i, pp. 71, 72. For Pausanius’s naive confession regarding the Sipylos rock, see book i, p. 215. See also Texier, Asie Mineure, pp. 265 et seq.; also Chandler, Travels in Greece, vol. ii, p. 80, who seems to hold to the later origin of the statue. At the end of Baumeister there is an engraving copied from Stuart which seems to show that, as to the Niobe legend, at a later period, Art was allowed to help Nature. For the general subject, see Scheiffle, Programm des K. Gymnasiums in Ellwangen: Mythologische Parallelen, 1865. For Scandinavian and Teutonic transformation legends, see Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, vierte Ausg., vol. i, p. 457; also Thorpe, Northern Antiquities; also Friedrich, passim, especially p. 116 et seq.; also, for a mass of very curious ones, Karl Bartsch, Sagen, Marchen und gebrauche aus Meklenburg, vol. i, pp. 420 et seq.; also Karl Simrock’s edition of the Edda, ninth edition, p. 319; also John Fiske, Myths and Myth-makers, pp. 8, 9. On the universality of such legends and myths, see Ritter’s Erdkunde, vol. xiv, pp. 1098-1122. For Irish examples, see Manz, Real-Encyclopadie, article Stein; and for multitudes of examples in Brittany, see Sebillot, Traditions de la Haute- Bretagne. For the enchanted columns at Saloniki, see the latest edition of Murray’s Handbook of Turkey, vol. ii, p. 711. For the legend of the angel changed into stone for neglecting to guard Adam, see Weil, university librarian at Heidelberg, Biblische Legende der Muselmanner, Frankfort-am-Main, 1845, pp. 37, 84. For similar transformation legends in Australia and among the American Indians, see Andrew Lang, Mythology, French translation, pp. 83, 102; also his Myth, Ritual, and Religion, vol. i, pp. 150 et seq., citing numerous examples from J. G. Muller, Urreligionen, and Dorman’s Primitive Superstitions; also Report of the Bureau of Ethnoligy for 1880-’81; and for an African example, see account of the rock at Balon which was once a woman, in Berenger-Feraud, Contes populaires de la Senegambie, chap. viii. For the Weimar legend, see Lewes, Life of Goethe, book iv. For the myths which arose about the swindling “Cardiff giant” in the State of New York, see especially an article by G. A. Stockwell, M. D., in The Popular Science Monthly for June, 1878; see also W. A. McKinney in The New-Englander for October, 1875; and for the “Phoenician inscription,” given at length with a translation, see the Rev. Alexander McWhorter, in The Galaxy for July, 1872. The present writer visited the “giant” shortly after it was “discovered,” carefully observed it, and the myths to which it gave rise, has in his possession a mass of curious documents regarding this fraud, and hopes ere long to prepare a supplement to Dr. Stockwell’s valuable paper.
To the same stage of thought belongs the conception of human beings changed into trees. But, in the historic evolution of religion and morality, while changes into stone or rock were considered as punishments, or evidences of divine wrath, those into trees and shrubs were frequently looked upon as rewards, or evidences of divine favour.
A very beautiful and touching form of this conception is seen in such myths as the change of Philemon into the oak, and of Baucis into the linden; of Myrrha into the myrtle; of Melos into the apple tree; of Attis into the pine; of Adonis into the rose tree; and in the springing of the vine and grape from the blood of the Titans, the violet from the blood of Attis, and the hyacinth from the blood of Hyacinthus.
Thus it was, during the long ages when mankind saw everywhere miracle and nowhere law, that, in the evolution of religion and morality, striking features in physical geography became connected with the idea of divine retribution.[426]
[426] For the view taken in Greece and Rome of transformations into trees and shrubs, see Botticher, Baumcultus der Hellenen, book i, chap. xix; also Ovid, Metamorphoses, passim; also foregoing notes.
But, in the natural course of intellectual growth, thinking men began to doubt the historical accuracy of these myths and legends–or, at least, to doubt all save those of the theology in which they happened to be born; and the next step was taken when they began to make comparisons between the myths and legends of different neighbourhoods and countries: so came into being the science of comparative mythology–a science sure to be of vast value, because, despite many stumblings and vagaries, it shows ever more and more how our religion and morality have been gradually evolved, and gives a firm basis to a faith that higher planes may yet be reached.
Such a science makes the sacred books of the world more and more precious, in that it shows how they have been the necessary envelopes of our highest spiritual sustenance; how even myths and legends apparently the most puerile have been the natural husks and rinds and shells of our best ideas; and how the atmosphere is created in which these husks and rinds and shells in due time wither, shrivel, and fall away, so that the fruit itself may be gathered to sustain a nobler religion and a purer morality.
The coming in of Christianity contributed elements of inestimable value in this evolution, and, at the centre of all, the thoughts, words, and life of the Master. But when, in the darkness that followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, there was developed a theology and a vast ecclesiastical power to enforce it, the most interesting chapters in this evolution of religion and morality were removed from the domain of science.
So it came that for over eighteen hundred years it has been thought natural and right to study and compare the myths and legends arising east and west and south and north of Palestine with each other, but never with those of Palestine itself; so it came that one of the regions most fruitful in materials for reverent thought and healthful comparison was held exempt from the unbiased search for truth; so it came that, in the name of truth, truth was crippled for ages. While observation, and thought upon observation, and the organized knowledge or science which results from these, progressed as regarded the myths and legends of other countries, and an atmosphere was thus produced giving purer conceptions of the world and its government, myths of that little geographical region at the eastern end of the Mediterranean retained possession of the civilized world in their original crude form, and have at times done much to thwart the noblest efforts of religion, morality, and civilization.
II. MEDIAEVAL GROWTH OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.
The history of myths, of their growth under the earlier phases of human thought and of their decline under modern thinking, is one of the most interesting and suggestive of human studies; but, since to treat it as a whole would require volumes, I shall select only one small group, and out of this mainly a single myth–one about which there can no longer be any dispute–the group of myths and legends which grew upon the shore of the Dead Sea, and especially that one which grew up to account for the successive salt columns washed out by the rains at its southwestern extremity.
The Dead Sea is about fifty miles in length and ten miles in width; it lies in a very deep fissure extending north and south, and its surface is about thirteen hundred feet below that of the Mediterranean. It has, therefore, no outlet, and is the receptacle for the waters of the whole system to which it belongs, including those collected by the Sea of Galilee and brought down thence by the river Jordan.
It certainly–or at least the larger part of it–ranks geologically among the oldest lakes on earth. In a broad sense the region is volcanic: On its shore are evidences of volcanic action, which must from the earliest period have aroused wonder and fear, and stimulated the myth-making tendency to account for them. On the eastern side are impressive mountain masses which have been thrown up from old volcanic vents; mineral and hot springs abound, some of them spreading sulphurous odours; earthquakes have been frequent, and from time to time these have cast up masses of bitumen; concretions of sulphur and large formations of salt constantly appear.
The water which comes from the springs or oozes through the salt layers upon its shores constantly brings in various salts in solution, and, being rapidly evaporated under the hot sun and dry wind, there has been left, in the bed of the lake, a strong brine heavily charged with the usual chlorides and bromides–a sort of bitter “mother liquor” This fluid has become so dense as to have a remarkable power of supporting the human body; it is of an acrid and nauseating bitterness; and by ordinary eyes no evidence of life is seen in it.
Thus it was that in the lake itself, and in its surrounding shores, there was enough to make the generation of explanatory myths on a large scale inevitable.
The main northern part of the lake is very deep, the plummet having shown an abyss of thirteen hundred feet; but the southern end is shallow and in places marshy.
The system of which it forms a part shows a likeness to that in South America of which the mountain lake Titicaca is the main feature; as a receptacle for surplus waters, only rendering them by evaporation, it resembles the Caspian and many other seas; as a sort of evaporating dish for the leachings of salt rock, and consequently holding a body of water unfit to support the higher forms of animal life, it resembles, among others, the Median lake of Urumiah; as a deposit of bitumen, it resembles the pitch lakes of Trinidad.[427]
[427] For modern views of the Dead Sea, see the Rev. Edward Robinson, D. D., Biblical Researches, various editions; Lynch’s Exploring Expedition; De Saulcy, Voyage autour de la Mer Morte; Stanley’s Palestine and Syria; Schaff’s Through Bible Lands; and other travellers hereafter quoted. For good photogravures, showing the character of the whole region, see the atlas forming part of De Luynes’s monumental Voyage d’Exploration. For geographical summaries, see Reclus, La Terre, Paris, 1870, pp. 832-834; Ritter, Erdkunde, volumes devoted to Palestine and especially as supplemented in Gage’s translation with additions; Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, vol. ix, p. 736, where a small map is given presenting the difference in depth between the two ends of the lake, of which so much was made theologically before Lartet. For still better maps, see De Saulcy, and especially De Luynes, Voyage d’Exploration (atlas). For very interesting panoramic views, see last edition of Canon Tristram’s Land of Israel, p. 635. For the geology, see Lartet, in his reports to the French Geographical Society, and especially in vol. iii of De Luynes’s work, where there is an admirable geological map with sections, etc.; also Ritter; also Sir J. W. Dawson’s Egypt and Syria, published by the Religious Tract Society; also Rev. Cunningham Geikie, D. D., Geology of Palestine; and for pictures showing salt formation, Tristram, as above. For the meteorology, see Vignes, report to De Luynes, pp. 65 et seq. For chemistry of the Dead Sea, see as above, and Terreil’s report, given in Gage’s Ritter, vol. iii, appendix 2, and tables in De Luynes’s third volume. For zoology of the Dead Sea, as to entire absence of life in it, see all earlier travellers; as to presence of lower forms of life, see Ehrenberg’s microscopic examinations in Gage’s Ritter. See also reports in third volume of De Luynes. For botany of the Dead Sea, and especially regarding “apples of Sodom,” see Dr. Lortet’s La Syrie, p. 412; also Reclus, Nouvelle Geographie, vol. ix, p. 737; also for photographic representations of them, see portfolio forming part of De Luynes’s work, plate 27. For Strabo’s very perfect description, see his Geog., lib. xvi, cap. ii; also Fallmerayer, Werke, pp. 177, 178. For names and positions of a large number of salt lakes in various parts of the world more or less resembling the Dead Sea, see De Luynes, vol. iii, pp. 242 et seq. For Trinidad “pitch lakes,” found by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595, see Lengegg, El Dorado, part i, p. 103, and part ii, p. 101; also Reclus, Ritter, et al. For the general subject, see Schenkel, Bibel-Lexikon, s.v. Todtes Meer, an excellent summery. The description of the Dead Sea in Lenormant’s great history is utterly unworthy of him, and must have been thrown together from old notes after his death. It is amazing to see in such a work the old superstitions that birds attempting to fly over the sea are sufficated. See Lenormant, Histoire ancienne de l’Orient, edition of 1888, vol. vi, p. 112. For the absorption and adoption of foreign myths and legends by the Jews, see Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, p. 390. For the views of Greeks and Romans, see especially Tacitus, Historiae, book v, Pliny, and Strabo, in whose remarks are the germs of many of the mediaeval myths. For very curious examples of these, see Baierus, De Excidio Sodomae, Halle, 1690, passim.
In all this there is nothing presenting any special difficulty to the modern geologist or geographer; but with the early dweller in Palestine the case was very different. The rocky, barren desolation of the Dead Sea region impressed him deeply; he naturally reasoned upon it; and this impression and reasoning we find stamped into the pages of his sacred literature, rendering them all the more precious as a revelation of the earlier thought of mankind. The long circumstantial account given in Genesis, its application in Deuteronomy, its use by Amos, by Isaiah, by Jeremiah, by Zephaniah, and by Ezekiel, the references to it in the writings attributed to St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. Jude, in the Apocalypse, and, above all, in more than one utterance of the Master himself–all show how deeply these geographical features impressed the Jewish mind.
At a very early period, myths and legends, many and circumstantial, grew up to explain features then so incomprehensible.
As the myth and legend grew up among the Greeks of a refusal of hospitality to Zeus and Hermes by the village in Phrygia, and the consequent sinking of that beautiful region with its inhabitants beneath a lake and morass, so there came belief in a similar offence by the people of the beautiful valley of Siddim, and the consequent sinking of that valley with its inhabitants beneath the waters of the Dead Sea. Very similar to the accounts of the saving of Philemon and Baucis are those of the saving of Lot and his family.
But the myth-making and miracle-mongering by no means ceased in ancient times; they continued to grow through the medieval and modern period until they have quietly withered away in the light of modern scientific investigation, leaving to us the religious and moral truths they inclose.
It would be interesting to trace this whole group of myths: their origin in times prehistoric, their development in Greece and Rome, their culmination during the ages of faith, and their disappearance in the age of science. It would be especially instructive to note the conscientious efforts to prolong their life by making futile compromises between science and theology regarding them; but I shall mention this main group only incidentally, confining my self almost entirely to the one above named–the most remarkable of all–the myth which grew about the salt pillars of Usdum.
I select this mainly because it involves only elementary principles, requires no abstruse reasoning, and because all controversy regarding it is ended. There is certainly now no theologian with a reputation to lose who will venture to revive the idea regarding it which was sanctioned for hundreds, nay, thousands, of years by theology, was based on Scripture, and was held by the universal Church until our own century.
The main feature of the salt region of Usdum is a low range of hills near the southwest corner of the Dead Sea, extending in a southeasterly direction for about five miles, and made up mainly of salt rock. This rock is soft and friable, and, under the influence of the heavy winter rains, it has been, without doubt, from a period long before human history, as it is now, cut ever into new shapes, and especially into pillars or columns, which sometimes bear a resemblance to the human form.
An eminent clergyman who visited this spot recently speaks of the appearance of this salt range as follows:
“Fretted by fitful showers and storms, its ridge is exceedingly uneven, its sides carved out and constantly changing;…and each traveller might have a new pillar of salt to wonder over at intervals of a few years.”[428]
[428] As to the substance of the “pillars” or “statues” or “needles” of salt at Usdum, many travellers speak of it as “marl and salt.” Irby and Mangles, in their Travels in Egypt, Nubia, Syria, and the Holy Land, chap. vii, call it “salt and hardened sand.” The citation as to frequent carving out of new “pillars” is from the Travels in Palestine of the Rev. H. F. Osborn, D. D.; see also Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, vol.ii, pp. 478, 479. For engravings of the salt pillar at different times, compare that given by Lynch in 1848, when it appeared as a column forty feet high, with that given by Palmer as the frontpiece to his Desert of the Exodus, Cambridge, England, 1871, when it was small and “does really bear a curious resemblance to an Arab woman with a child upon he shoulders”, and this again with the picture of the salt formation at Usdum given by Canon Tristram, at whose visit there was neither “pillar” nor “statue.” See The Land of Israel, by H. B. Tristram, D. D., F. R. S., London, 1882, p. 324. For similar pillars of salt washed out from the mud at Catalonia, see Lyell.
Few things could be more certain than that, in the indolent dream-life of the East, myths and legends would grow up to account for this as for other strange appearances in all that region. The question which a religious Oriental put to himself in ancient times at Usdum was substantially that which his descendant to-day puts to himself at Kosseir. “Why is this region thus blasted?” “Whence these pillars of salt?” or “Whence these blocks of granite?” “What aroused the vengeance of Jehovah or of Allah to work these miracles of desolation?”
And, just as Maxime Du Camp recorded the answer of the modern Shemite at Kosseir, so the compilers of the Jewish sacred books recorded the answer of the ancient Shemite at the Dead Sea; just as Allah at Kosseir blasted the land and transformed the melons into boulders which are seen to this day, so Jehovah at Usdum blasted the land and transformed Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt, which is seen to this day.
No more difficulty was encountered in the formation of the Lot legend, to account for that rock resembling the human form, than in the formation of the Niobe legend, which accounted for a supposed resemblance in the rock at Sipylos: it grew up just as we have seen thousands of similar myths and legends grow up about striking natural appearances in every early home of the human race. Being thus consonant with the universal view regarding the relation of physical geography to the divine government, it became a treasure of the Jewish nation and of the Christian Church–a treasure not only to be guarded against all hostile intrusion, but to be increased, as we shall see, by the myth-making powers of Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans for thousands of years. The spot where the myth originated was carefully kept in mind; indeed, it could not escape, for in that place alone were constantly seen the phenomena which gave rise to it. We have a steady chain of testimony through the ages, all pointing to the salt pillar as the irrefragable evidence of divine judgment. That great theological test of truth, the dictum of St. Vincent of Lerins, would certainly prove that the pillar was Lot’s wife, for it was believed so to be by Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans from the earliest period down to a time almost within present memory– “always, everywhere, and by all.” It would stand perfectly the ancient test insisted upon by Cardinal Newman,” Securus judicat orbis terrarum.”
For, ever since the earliest days of Christianity, the identity of the salt pillar with Lot’s wife has been universally held and supported by passages in Genesis, in St. Luke’s Gospel, and in the Second Epistle of St. Peter–coupled with a passage in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which to this day, by a majority in the Christian Church, is believed to be inspired, and from which are specially cited the words, “A standing pillar of salt is a monument of an unbelieving soul.”[429]
[429] For the usual biblical citations, see Genesis xix, 26; St. Luke xvii, 32; II Peter ii, 6. For the citation from Wisdom, see chap. x, v. 7. For the account of the transformation of Lot’s wife put into its proper relations with the Jehovistic and Elohistic documents, see Lenormant’s La Genese, Paris, 1883, pp. 53, 199, and 317, 318.
Never was chain of belief more continuous. In the first century of the Christian era Josephus refers to the miracle, and declares regarding the statue, “I have seen it, and it remains at this day”; and Clement, Bishop of Rome, one of the most revered fathers of the Church, noted for the moderation of his statements, expresses a similar certainty, declaring the miraculous statue to be still standing.
In the second century that great father of the Church, bishop and martyr, Irenaeus, not only vouched for it, but gave his approval to the belief that the soul of Lot’s wife still lingered in the statue, giving it a sort of organic life: thus virtually began in the Church that amazing development of the legend which we shall see taking various forms through the Middle Ages–the story that the salt statue exercised certain physical functions which in these more delicate days can not be alluded to save under cover of a dead language.
This addition to the legend, which in these signs of life, as in other things, is developed almost exactly on the same lines with the legend of the Niobe statue in the rock of Mount Sipylos and with the legends of human beings transformed into boulders in various mythologies, was for centuries regarded as an additional confirmation of revealed truth.
In the third century the myth burst into still richer bloom in a poem long ascribed to Tertullian. In this poem more miraculous characteristics of the statue are revealed. It could not be washed away by rains; it could not be overthrown by winds; any wound made upon it was miraculously healed; and the earlier statements as to its physical functions were amplified in sonorous Latin verse.
With this appeared a new legend regarding the Dead Sea; it became universally believed, and we find it repeated throughout the whole medieval period, that the bitumen could only he dissolved by such fluids as in the processes of animated nature came from the statue.
The legend thus amplified we shall find dwelt upon by pious travellers and monkish chroniclers for hundreds of years: so it came to he more and more treasured by the universal Church, and held more and more firmly–“always, everywhere, and by all.”
In the two following centuries we have an overwhelming mass of additional authority for the belief that the very statue of salt into which Lot’s wife was transformed was still existing. In the fourth, the continuance of the statue was vouched for by St. Silvia, who visited the place: though she could not see it, she was told by the Bishop of Segor that it had been there some time before, and she concluded that it had been temporarily covered by the sea. In both the fourth and fifth centuries such great doctors in the Church as St. Jerome, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Cyril of Jerusalem agreed in this belief and statement; hence it was, doubtless, that the Hebrew word which is translated in the authorized English version “pillar,” was translated in the Vulgate, which the majority of Christians believe virtually inspired, by the word “statue”; we shall find this fact insisted upon by theologians arguing in behalf of the statue, as a result and monument of the miracle, for over fourteen hundred years afterward.[430]
[430] See Josephus, Antiquities, book i, chap. xi; Epist. I; Cyril Hieros, Catech., xix; Chrysostom, Hom. XVIII, XLIV, in Genes.; Irenaeus, lib. iv, c. xxxi, of his Heresies, edition Oxon., 1702. For St. Silvia, see S. Silviae Aquitanae Peregrinatio ad Loca Sancta, Romae, 1887, p. 55; also edition of 1885, p. 25. For recent translation, see Pilgrimage of St. Silvia, p. 28, in publications of Palestine Text Society for 1891. For legends of signs of continued life in boulders and stones into which human beings have been transformed for sin, see Karl Bartsch, Sage, etc., vol. ii, pp. 420 et seq.
About the middle of the sixth century Antoninus Martyr visited the Dead Sea region and described it, but curiously reversed a simple truth in these words: “Nor do sticks or straws float there, nor can a man swim, but whatever is cast into it sinks to the bottom.” As to the statue of Lot’s wife, he threw doubt upon its miraculous renewal, but testified that it was still standing.
In the seventh century the Targum of Jerusalem not only testified that the salt pillar at Usdum was once Lot’s wife, but declared that she must retain that form until the general resurrection. In the seventh century too, Bishop Arculf travelled to the Dead Sea, and his work was added to the treasures of the Church. He greatly develops the legend, and especially that part of it given by Josephus. The bitumen that floats upon the sea “resembles gold and the form of a bull or camel”; “birds can not live near it”; and “the very beautiful apples” which grow there, when plucked, “burn and are reduced to ashes, and smoke as if they were still burning.”
In the eighth century the Venerable Bede takes these statements of Arculf and his predecessors, binds them together in his work on The Holy Places, and gives the whole mass of myths and legends an enormous impulse.[431]
[431] For Antoninus Martyr, see Tobler’s edition of his work in the Itinera, vol. i, p. 100, Geneva, 1877. For the Targum of Jerusalem, see citation in Quaresmius, Terrae Sanctae Elucidation, Peregrinatio vi, cap. xiv; new Venice edition. For Arculf, see Tobler. For Bede, see his De Locis Sanctis in Tobler’s Itinera, vol. i, p. 228. For an admirable statement of the mediaeval theological view of scientific research, see Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, Stuttgart, 1887, chap. vi.
In the tenth century new force is given to it by the pious Moslem Mukadassi. Speaking of the town of Segor, near the salt region, he says that the proper translation of its name is “Hell”; and of the lake he says, “Its waters are hot, even as though the place stood over hell-fire.”
In the crusading period, immediately following, all the legends burst forth more brilliantly than ever.
The first of these new travellers who makes careful statements is Fulk of Chartres, who in 1100 accompanied King Baldwin to the Dead Sea and saw many wonders; but, though he visited the salt region at Usdum, he makes no mention of the salt pillar: evidently he had fallen on evil times; the older statues had probably been washed away, and no new one had happened to be washed out of the rocks just at that period.
But his misfortune was more than made up by the triumphant experience of a far more famous traveller, half a century later–Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela.
Rabbi Benjamin finds new evidences of miracle in the Dead Sea, and develops to a still higher point the legend of the salt statue of Lot’s wife, enriching the world with the statement that it was steadily and miraculously rene wed; that, though the cattle of the region licked its surface, it never grew smaller. Again a thrill of joy went through the monasteries and pulpits of Christendom at this increasing “evidence of the truth of Scripture.”
Toward the end of the thirteenth century there appeared in Palestine a traveller superior to most before or since–Count Burchard, monk of Mount Sion. He had the advantage of knowing something of Arabic, and his writings show him to have been observant and thoughtful. No statue of Lot’s wife appears to have been washed clean of the salt rock at his visit, but he takes it for granted that the Dead Sea is “the mouth of hell,” and that the vapour rising from it is the smoke from Satan’s furnaces.
These ideas seem to have become part of the common stock, for Ernoul, who travelled to the Dead Sea during the same century, always speaks of it as the “Sea of Devils.”
Near the beginning of the fourteenth century appeared the book of far wider influence which bears the name of Sir John Mandeville, and in the various editions of it myths and legends of the Dead Sea and of the pillar of salt burst forth into wonderful luxuriance.
This book tells us that masses of fiery matter are every day thrown up from the water “as large as a horse”; that, though it contains no living thing, it has been shown that men thrown into it can not die; and, finally, as if to prove the worthlessness of devout testimony to the miraculous, he says: “And whoever throws a piece of iron therein, it floats; and whoever throws a feather therein, it sinks to the bottom; and, because that is contrary to nature, I was not willing to believe it until I saw it.”
The book, of course, mentions Lot’s wife, and says that the pillar of salt “stands there to-day,” and “has a right salty taste.”
Injustice has perhaps been done to the compilers of this famous work in holding them liars of the first magnitude. They simply abhorred scepticism, and thought it meritorious to believe all pious legends. The ideal Mandeville was a man of overmastering faith, and resembled Tertullian in believing some things “because they are impossible”; he was doubtless entirely conscientious; the solemn ending of the book shows that he listened, observed, and wrote under the deepest conviction, and those who re-edited his book were probably just as honest in adding the later stories of pious travellers.
The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, thus appealing to the popular heart, were most widely read in the monasteries and repeated among the people. Innumerable copies were made in manuscript, and finally in print, and so the old myths received a new life.[432]
[432] For Fulk of Chartres and crusading travellers generally, see Bongars’ Gesta Dei and the French Recueil; also Histories of the Crusades by Wilken, Sybel, Kugler, and others; see also Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. ii, p. 109, and Tobler, Bibliographia Geographica Palestinae, 1867, p. 12. For Benjamin of Tudela’s statement, see Wright’s Collection of Travels in Palestine, p. 84, and Asher’s edition of Benjamin of Tudela’s travels, vol. i, pp. 71, 72; also Charton, vol. i, p. 180. For Borchard or Burchard, see full text in the Reyssbuch dess Heyligen Landes; also Grynaeus, Nov. Orbis, Basil, 1532, fol. 298, 329. For Ernoul, see his L’Estat de la Cite de Hierusalem, in Michelant and Reynaud, Itineraires Francaises au 12me et 13me Siecles. For Petrus Diaconus, see his book De Locis Sanctis, edited by Gamurrini, Rome, 1887, pp. 126, 127. For Mandeville I have compared several editions, especially those in the Reyssbuch, in Canisius, and in Wright, with Halliwell’s reprint and with the rare Strasburg edition of 1484 in the Cornell University Library: the whole statement regarding the experiment with iron and feathers is given differently in different copies. The statement that he saw the feathers sink and the iron swim is made in the Reyssbuch edition, Frankfort, 1584. The story, like the saints’ legends, evidently grew as time went on, but is none the less interesting as showing the general credulity. Since writing the above, I have been glad to find my view of Mandeville’s honesty confirmed by the Rev. Dr. Robinson, and by Mr. Gage in his edition of Ritter’s Palestine.
In the fifteenth century wonders increased. In 1418 we have the Lord of Caumont, who makes a pilgrimage and gives us a statement which is the result of the theological reasoning of centuries, and especially interesting as a typical example of the theological method in contrast with the scientific. He could not understand how the blessed waters of the Jordan could be allowed to mingle with the accursed waters of the Dead Sea. In spite, then, of the eye of sense, he beheld the water with the eye of faith, and calmly announced that the Jordan water passes through the sea, but that the two masses of water are not mingled. As to the salt statue of Lot’s wife, he declares it to be still existing; and, copying a table of indulgences granted by the Church to pious pilgrims, he puts down the visit to the salt statue as giving an indulgence of seven years.
Toward the end of the century we have another traveller yet more influential: Bernard of Breydenbach, Dean of Mainz. His book of travels was published in 1486, at the famous press of Schoeffer, and in various translations it was spread through Europe, exercising an influence wide and deep. His first important notice of the Dead Sea is as follows: “In this, Tirus the serpent is found, and from him the Tiriac medicine is made. He is blind, and so full of venom that there is no remedy for his bite except cutting off the bitten part. He can only be taken by striking him and making him angry; then his venom flies into his head and tail.” Breydenbach calls the Dead Sea “the chimney of hell,” and repeats the old story as to the miraculous solvent for its bitumen. He, too, makes the statement that the holy water of the Jordan does not mingle with the accursed water of the infernal sea, but increases the miracle which Caumont had announced by saying that, although the waters appear to come together, the Jordan is really absorbed in the earth before it reaches the sea.
As to Lot’s wife, various travellers at that time had various fortunes. Some, like Caumont and Breydenbach, took her continued existence for granted; some, like Count John of Solms, saw her and were greatly edified; some, like Hans Werli, tried to find her and could not, but, like St. Silvia, a thousand years before, were none the less edified by the idea that, for some inscrutable purpose, the sea had been allowed to hide her from them; some found her larger than they expected, even forty feet high, as was the salt pillar which happened to be standing at the visit of Commander Lynch in 1848; but this only added a new proof to the miracle, for the text was remembered, “There were giants in those days.”
Out of the mass of works of pilgrims during the fifteenth century I select just one more as typical of the theological view then dominant, and this is the noted book of Felix Fabri, a preaching friar of Ulm. I select him, because even so eminent an authority in our own time as Dr. Edward Robinson declares him to have been the most thorough, thoughtful, and enlightened traveller of that century.
Fabri is greatly impressed by the wonders of the Dead Sea, and typical of his honesty influenced by faith is his account of the Dead Sea fruit; he describes it with almost perfect accuracy, but adds the statement that when mature it is “filled with ashes and cinders.”
As to the salt statue, he says: “We saw the place between the sea and Mount Segor, but could not see the statue itself because we were too far distant to see anything of human size; but we saw it with firm faith, because we believed Scripture, which speaks of it; and we were filled with wonder.”
To sustain absolute faith in the statue he reminds his reader’s that “God is able even of these stones to raise up seed to Abraham,” and goes into a long argument, discussing such transformations as those of King Atlas and Pygmalion’s statue, with a multitude of others, winding up with the case, given in the miracles of St. Jerome, of a heretic who was changed into a log of wood, which was then burned.
He gives a statement of the Hebrews that Lot’s wife received her peculiar punishment because she had refused to add salt to the food of the angels when they visited her, and he preaches a short sermon in which he says that, as salt is the condiment of food, so the salt statue of Lot’s wife “gives us a condiment of wisdom.”[433]
[433] For Bernard of Breydenbach, I have used the Latin edition, Mentz, 1486, in the White collection, Cornell University, also the German edition in the Reyssbuch. For John of Solms, Werli, and the like, see the Reyssbuch, which gives a full text of their travels. For Fabri (Schmid), see, for his value, Robinson; also Tobler, Bibliographia, pp. 53 et seq.; and for texts, see Reyssbuch, pp. 122b et seq., but best the Fratris Fel. Fabri Evagatorium, ed. Hassler, Stuttgart, 1843, vol. iii, pp. 172 et seq. His book now has been translated into English by the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society.
There were, indeed, many discrepancies in the testimony of travellers regarding the salt pillar–so many, in fact, that at a later period the learned Dom Calmet acknowledged that they shook his belief in the whole matter; but, during this earlier time, under the complete sway of the theological spirit, these difficulties only gave new and more glorious opportunities for faith.
For, if a considerable interval occurred between the washing of one salt pillar out of existence and the washing of another into existence, the idea arose that the statue, by virtue of the soul which still remained in it, had departed on some mysterious excursion. Did it happen that one statue was washed out one year in one place and another statue another year in another place, this difficulty was surmounted by believing that Lot’s wife still walked about. Did it happen that a salt column was undermined by the rains and fell, this was believed to be but another sign of life. Did a pillar happen to be covered in part by the sea, this was enough to arouse the belief that the statue from time to time descended into the Dead Sea depths–possibly to satisfy that old fatal curiosity regarding her former neighbours.
Did some smaller block of salt happen to be washed out near the statue, it was believed that a household dog, also transformed into salt, had followed her back from beneath the deep. Did more statues than one appear at one time, that simply made the mystery more impressive.
In facts now so easy of scientific explanation the theologians found wonderful matter for argument.
One great question among them was whether the soul of Lot’s wife did really remain in the statue. On one side it was insisted that, as Holy Scripture declares that Lot’s wife was changed into a pillar of salt, and as she was necessarily made up of a soul and a body, the soul must have become part of the statue. This argument was clinched by citing that passage in the Book of Wisdom in which the salt pillar is declared to be still standing as “the monument of an unbelieving SOUL.” On the other hand, it was insisted that the soul of the woman must have been incorporeal and immortal, and hence could not have been changed into a substance corporeal and mortal. Naturally, to this it would be answered that the salt pillar was no more corporeal than the ordinary materials of the human body, and that it had been made miraculously immortal, and “with God all things are possible.” Thus were opened long vistas of theological discussion.[434]
[434] For a brief statement of the main arguments for and against the idea that the soul of Lot’s wife remained within the salt statue, see Cornelius a Lapide, Commentarius in Pentateuchum, Antwerp, 1697, chap. xix.
As we enter the sixteenth century the Dead Sea myths, and especially the legends of Lot’s wife, are still growing. In 1507 Father Anselm of the Minorites declares that the sea sometimes covers the feet of the statue, sometimes the legs, sometimes the whole body.
In 1555, Gabriel Giraudet, priest at Puy, journeyed through Palestine. His faith was robust, and his attitude toward the myths of the Dead Sea is seen by his declaration that its waters are so foul that one can smell them at a distance of three leagues; that straw, hay, or feathers thrown into them will sink, but that iron and other metals will float; that criminals have been kept in them three or four days and could not drown. As to Lot’s wife, he says that he found her “lying there, her back toward heaven, converted into salt stone; for I touched her, scratched her, and put a piece of her into my mouth, and she tasted salt.”
At the centre of all these legends we see, then, the idea that, though there were no living beasts in the Dead Sea, the people of the overwhelmed cities were still living beneath its waters, probably in hell; that there was life in the salt statue; and that it was still curious regarding its old neighbours.
Hence such travellers in the latter years of the century as Count Albert of Lowenstein and Prince Nicolas Radziwill are not at all weakened in faith by failing to find the statue. What the former is capable of believing is seen by his statement that in a certain cemetery at Cairo during one night in the year the dead thrust forth their feet, hands, limbs, and even rise wholly from their graves.
There seemed, then, no limit to these pious beliefs. The idea that there is merit in credulity, with the love of myth-making and miracle-mongering, constantly made them larger. Nor did the Protestant Reformation diminish them at first; it rather strengthened them and fixed them more firmly in the popular mind. They seemed destined to last forever. How they were thus strengthened at first, under Protestantism, and how they were finally dissolved away in the atmosphere of scientific thought, will now be shown.[435]
[435] For Father Anselm, see his Descriptio Terrae Sanctae, in H. Canisius, Thesaurus Monument Eccles., Basnage edition, Amsterdam, 1725, vol. iv, p. 788. For Giraudet, see his Discours du Voyage d’Outre-Mer, Paris, 1585, p. 56a. For Radziwill and Lowenstein, see the Reyssbuch, especially p. 198a.
III. POST-REFORMATION CULMINATION OF THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS.–BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.
The first effect of the Protestant Reformation was to popularize the older Dead Sea legends, and to make the public mind still more receptive for the newer ones.
Luther’s great pictorial Bible, so powerful in fixing the ideas of the German people, showed by very striking engravings all three of these earlier myths–the destruction of the cities by fire from heaven, the transformation of Lot’s wife, and the vile origin of the hated Moabites and Ammonites; and we find the salt statue, especially, in this and other pictorial Bibles, during generation after generation.
Catholic peoples also held their own in this display of faith. About 1517 Francois Regnault published at Paris a compilation on Palestine enriched with woodcuts: in this the old Dead Sea legend of the “serpent Tyrus” reappears embellished, and with it various other new versions of old stories. Five years later Bartholomew de Salignac travels in the Holy Land, vouches for the continued existence of the Lot’s wife statue, and gives new life to an old marvel by insisting that the sacred waters of the Jordan are not really poured into the infernal basin of the Dead Sea, but that they are miraculously absorbed by the earth.
These ideas were not confined to the people at large; we trace them among scholars.
In 1581, Bunting, a North German professor and theologian, published his Itinerary of Holy Scripture, and in this the Dead Sea and Lot legends continue to increase. He tells us that the water of the sea “changes three times every day”; that it “spits forth fire” that it throws up “on high” great foul masses which “burn like pitch” and “swim about like huge oxen”; that the statue of Lot’s wife is still there, and that it shines like salt.
In 1590, Christian Adrichom, a Dutch theologian, published his famous work on sacred geography. He does not insist upon the Dead Sea legends generally, but declares that the statue of Lot’s wife is still in existence, and on his map he gives a picture of her standing at Usdum.
Nor was it altogether safe to dissent from such beliefs. Just as, under the papal sway, men of science were severely punished for wrong views of the physical geography of the earth in general, so, when Calvin decided to burn Servetus, he included in his indictment for heresy a charge that Servetus, in his edition of Ptolemy, had made unorthodox statements regarding the physical geography of Palestine.[436]
[436] For biblical engravings showing Lot’s wife transformed into a salt statue, etc., see Luther’s Bible, 1534, p. xi; also the pictorial Electoral Bible; also Merian’s Icones Biblicae of 1625; also the frontpiece of the Luther Bible published at Nuremberg in 1708; also Scheuchzer’s Kupfer-Bibel, Augsburg, 1731, Tab. lxxx. For the account of the Dead Sea serpent “Tyrus,” etc., see La Grande Voyage de Hierusalem, Paris (1517?), p. xxi. For De Salignac’s assertion regarding the salt pillar and suggestion regarding the absorption of the Jordan before reaching the Dead Sea, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, Magdeburg, 1593, SS 34 and 35. For Bunting, see his Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, Magdeburg, 1589, pp. 78, 79. For Andrichom’s picture of the salt statue, see map, p. 38, and text, p. 205, of his Theatrum Terrae Sanctae, 1613. For Calvin and Servetus, see Willis, Servetus and Calvin, pp. 96, 307; also the Servetus edition of Ptolemy.
Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the making of new myths. Thus, in his Most Devout Journey, published in 1608, Jean Zvallart, Mayor of Ath in Hainault, confesses himself troubled by conflicting stories about the salt statue, but declares himself sound in the faith that “some vestige of it still remains,” and makes up for his bit of freethinking by adding a new mythical horror to the region–“crocodiles,” which, with the serpents and the “foul odour of the sea,” prevented his visit to the salt mountains.
In 1615 Father Jean Boucher publishes the first of many editions of his Sacred Bouquet of the Holy Land. He depicts the horrors of the Dead Sea in a number of striking antitheses, and among these is the statement that it is made of mud rather than of water, that it soils whatever is put into it, and so corrupts the land about it that not a blade of grass grows in all that region.
In the same spirit, thirteen years later, the Protestant Christopher Heidmann publishes his Palaestina, in which he speaks of a fluid resembling blood oozing from the rocks about the Dead Sea, and cites authorities to prove that the statue of Lot’s wife still exists and gives signs of life.
Yet, as we near the end of the sixteenth century, some evidences of a healthful and fruitful scepticism begin to appear.
The old stream of travellers, commentators, and preachers, accepting tradition and repeating what they have been told, flows on; but here and there we are refreshed by the sight of a man who really begins to think and look for himself.
First among these is the French naturalist Pierre Belon. As regards the ordinary wonders, he had the simple faith of his time. Among a multitude of similar things, he believed that he saw the stones on which the disciples were sleeping during the prayer of Christ; the stone on which the Lord sat when he raised Lazarus from the dead; the Lord’s footprints on the stone from which he ascended into heaven; and, most curious of all, “the stone which the builders rejected.” Yet he makes some advance on his predecessors, since he shows in one passage that he had thought out the process by which the simpler myths of Palestine were made. For, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, he sees a field covered with small pebbles, and of these he says: “The common people tell you that a man was once sowing peas there, when Our Lady passed that way and asked him what he was doing; the man answered “I am sowing pebbles” and straightway all the peas were changed into these little stones.”
His ascribing belief in this explanatory transformation myth to the “common people” marks the faint dawn of a new epoch.
Typical also of this new class is the German botanist Leonhard Rauwolf. He travels through Palestine in 1575, and, though devout and at times credulous, notes comparatively few of the old wonders, while he makes thoughtful and careful mention of things in nature that he really saw; he declines to use the eyes of the monks, and steadily uses his own to good purpose.
As we go on in the seventeenth century, this current of new thought is yet more evident; a habit of observing more carefully and of comparing observations had set in; the great voyages of discovery by Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, and others were producing their effect; and this effect was increased by the inductive philosophy of Bacon, the reasonings of Descartes, and the suggestions of Montaigne.
So evident was this current that, as far back as the early days of the century, a great theologian, Quaresmio of Lodi, had made up his mind to stop it forever. In 1616, therefore, he began his ponderous work entitled The Historical, Theological, and Moral Explanation of the Holy Land. He laboured upon it for nine years, gave nine years more to perfecting it, and then put it into the hands of the great publishing house of Plantin at Antwerp: they were four years in printing and correcting it, and when it at last appeared it seemed certain to establish the theological view of the Holy Land for all time. While taking abundant care of other myths which he believed sanctified by Holy Scripture, Quaresmio devoted himself at great length to the Dead Sea, but above all to the salt statue; and he divides his chapter on it into three parts, each headed by a question: First, “HOW was Lot’s wife changed into a statue of salt?” secondly, “WHERE was she thus transformed?” and, thirdly, “DOES THAT STATUE STILL EXIST?” Through each of these divisions he fights to the end all who are inclined to swerve in the slightest degree from the orthodox opinion. He utterly refuses to compromise with any modern theorists. To all such he says, “The narration of Moses is historical and is to be received in its natural sense, and no right-thinking man will deny this.” To those who favoured the figurative interpretation he says, “With such reasonings any passage of Scripture can be denied.”
As to the spot where the miracle occurred, he discusses four places, but settles upon the point where the picture of the statue is given in Adrichom’s map. As to the continued existence of the statue, he plays with the opposing view as a cat fondles a mouse; and then shows that the most revered ancient authorities, venerable men still living, and the Bedouins, all agree that it is still in being. Throughout the whole chapter his thoroughness in scriptural knowledge and his profundity in logic are only excelled by his scorn for those theologians who were willing to yield anything to rationalism.
So powerful was this argument that it seemed to carry everything before it, not merely throughout the Roman obedience, but among the most eminent theologians of Protestantism.
As regards the Roman Church, we may take as a type the missionary priest Eugene Roger, who, shortly after the appearance of Quaresmio’s book, published his own travels in Palestine. He was an observant man, and his work counts among those of real value; but the spirit of Quaresmio had taken possession of him fully. His work is prefaced with a map showing the points of most importance in scriptural history, and among these he identifies the place where Samson slew the thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, and where he hid the gates of Gaza; the cavern which Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise; the spot where Balaam’s ass spoke; the tree on which Absalom was hanged; the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel; the steep place where the swine possessed of devils plunged into the sea; the spot where the prophet Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire; and, of course, the position of the salt statue which was once Lot’s wife. He not only indicates places