Introduction to the History of Religions Part 19

By others he is regarded as the mythical first man, the first ancestor, with residence in the sky, deified as original ancestors sometimes were, and, as the first to die and enter the world beyond, made the king of that world.

Though Yama is not the sun in the Veda, it is possible that he was so regarded in the period preceding the Vedic theological construction, and in support of this view it may be said that the sun setting, descending into the depths, is a natural symbol of the close of man's life,[1280]

and rising, represents the man's life in the beyond--thus the sun would be identified with man, and not unnaturally with the first man, the first to die. In support of the other view may be cited the great role ascribed by many peoples to the first man: in savage lore he is often the creator or arranger of the world,[1281] and he is sometimes, like Yama, the son of the sun.[1282] Such an one, entering the other world, might become its lord, and in process of time be divinized and made the son of the creator sun.[1283] The Hindu figure is often compared to the Avestan first man, Yima; but Yima, so far as appears, was never divinized, and is not religiously of great importance. Nor do the late Jewish legends and theosophical speculations bear on the point under consideration: in Paradise, it is said, Adam was waited on by angels, the angels were commanded by G.o.d to pay him homage (so also in the Koran), and he is described as being the light of the world; and Philo and others conceived of a first or heavenly man (Adam Kadmon), free from ordinary human weakness, and identical with the Logos or the Messiah--therefore a judge in the largest sense of the word.[1284] But, while these conceptions testify to the strong appeal made to the imagination by the figure of the mythical first man, they throw little light on the original form of Yama--the early constructions do not include the judge of the other world, and the later ones are too late to explain so early a figure as the Vedic king of that world.

+736+. In the Rig-Veda Yama is specifically the overlord of the blessed dead--the pious who were thought worthy to dwell in heaven with the G.o.ds and to share to some extent their divinity; with the wicked he seems to have nothing to do. The general history of the conception of the future life suggests that in the earliest Indo-Iranian period there was a hades to which all the dead went.[1285] If there was a divine head of this hades (originally an underground deity, like Osiris, Allatu, and Ploutos) he would accompany the pious fathers when, in the later Hindu theologic construction, they were transported to heaven; and if the first ancestor occupied a distinguished place among the dead,[1286] he might be fused with the divine head into a sort of unity, and the result might be such a complex figure as Yama appears to be. However this may be, the Vedic Yama underwent a development in accordance with the changes in the religious ideas of the people, becoming at last an ethical judge of the dead.[1287]

+737+. _Persia._ The Mazdean theistic system presents special difficulties.[1288] The nature of its divine world is remarkable, almost unique, and the literature that has come down to us was edited at a comparatively late period, probably not before the middle of the third century of our era, so that it is not always easy to distinguish the earlier and the later elements of thought. It is generally regarded as certain that the two branches of the Aryan race, the Indian and the Persian, once dwelt together and formed one community, having the same general religious system: the material of spirits is substantially the same in the two and they have certain important names in common--to the Indian Asura, Soma, Mitra, the Persian Ahura, Haoma, Mithra correspond in form exactly. But in the way in which this material was modified and organized the two communities differ widely.

+738+. The peculiarity of the Persian system is that it practically disregards all the old G.o.ds except Mithra and Anahita, subst.i.tuting for them beings designated by names of qualities, and organizes all extrahuman Powers in two cla.s.ses--one under the Good Spirit (Spenta Mainyu), the other under the Bad Spirit (Angro Mainyu). The former is attended by six great beings, Immortal Spirits (Amesha-spentas): Good Mind, Best Order or Law, Holy Harmony or Wisdom, Piety, Well-being, Immortality.[1289] In the Gathas, which are commonly held to be the most ancient Zoroastrian doc.u.ments, these attendants of the supreme G.o.d are often nothing but qualities, but on the other hand are often personified and worshiped. The rival of the Good Spirit is surrounded similarly by lying spirits (_drujas_), among whom one, Aeshma, holds a prominent place. The two divine chiefs stand side by side in the earliest literature almost as coequal powers; but it is explained that the wicked one is to be destroyed with all his followers.

+739+. In some of the early hymns (Yacnas) Mithra is closely attached to Ahura Mazda--the two are called "the lofty and imperishable ones." The G.o.ddess Anahita, first mentioned in an inscription of Artaxerxes II, and described only in the late Fifth Yasht, appears to have been originally a deity of water. It was, doubtless, her popularity that led to her official recognition by Artaxerxes; possibly her formal recognition by the Mazdean leaders was a slow process, since she does not appear in the older Avesta. In the Yasht she receives worship (being in the form of a beautiful young woman) as the dispenser of all blessings that come from pure water; she is said to have been created by Ahura Mazda, and is wholly subordinated to him. Besides these two a great number of lesser G.o.ds are mentioned; the latter, apparently the old local G.o.ds and spirits here subordinated to the supreme G.o.d, are unimportant in the official cult. The souls of the departed also become objects of worship.

+740+. It thus appears that Zoroastrianism was a reform of the old polytheism. The movement closely resembles the struggle of the Hebrew prophets against the worship of the Canaanite Baals and other foreign G.o.ds. In both cases there is evidence going to show that popular cults continued after the leaders of the reform had thrown off the offensive elements of the old system: the Hebrew people continued to worship foreign G.o.ds long after the great prophets had p.r.o.nounced against them; and the official recognition of Ahura Mazda in the Achaemenian inscriptions[1290] by no means proves that lower forms of worship were not practiced in Persia by the people.[1291]

+741+. If we ask for the grounds of this recoil from the old G.o.ds, we must doubtless hold that ethical feeling was a powerful motive in the reform, though economic and other considerations were, doubtless, not without influence.

Since Ahura Mazda is ethically good and his worship ethically pure, there is clearly in its origin hostility to low modes of worship and to materialistic ideas. Possibly also we have here a struggle of a clan for the recognition of its own G.o.d, as among the Israelites the Yahweh party represented exclusive devotion to the old national G.o.d. If there was such a clan or party in Persia, it is obvious that it produced men of high intelligence and great moral and organizing power, and all that we know of the religious history leads us to suppose that the establishment of the supremacy of Ahura Mazda was the result of a long development.

+742+. As to the provenance of the Mazdean supreme lord, not a few scholars of the present day hold that he was identical with the Indian Varuna. It is in favor of this identification that the qualities of the two deities are the same, and there is also the noteworthy fact that Ahura Mazda is coupled with Mithra as Varuna is coupled with Mitra; according to this view the Mazdean deity was originally the G.o.d of the sky, by whose side naturally stands the sun. In a case like this, involving a general agreement between two systems of thought, there are two possible explanations of the relation between them: it may be supposed that one borrowed from the other (in the present case the borrowing would be on the part of the Persians); or the explanation may be that the two communities developed original material along the same general lines, though with local differences. In the absence of historical data it is perhaps impossible to say which of these explanations is to be preferred. There is, however, no little difficulty in the supposition that one community has actually borrowed its religious system from a neighbor; the general probability is that each followed its own line.

+743+. Nor is it probable that the rejection of the old divine names by the Persians was the result of hostility toward their Indian neighbors.

It is doubtless a curious fact that the Indian name for 'evil spirit,'

_asura_, is in Persian the name of a good spirit, Ahura, while the Indian _diva_, the general term for a G.o.d, is in Persian the designation of a wicked spirit, _daeva_. The Persian employment of _daeva_ for 'evil spirit' may be explained as a protest not against Indian G.o.ds, but against the deities of their own land; so the Hebrew prophets or their editors apply opprobrious names, "no-G.o.d" and other terms, to deities regarded by them as inadequate. The abstractions of the Mazdean system have been referred to above. They seem to have been resorted to from a feeling of profound disgust at the worship of some cla.s.s of people.

Unfortunately we have not the historical data that might make the situation clear. In the Gathas the people of Ahura Mazda are suffering from the incursions of predatory tribes, and the greater part of the appeals to the deity are for protection for the herds against their enemies. We thus have a suggestion of a struggle, political and religious, between the more civilized Aryans and the savage Tataric tribes around them.

+744+. In the later period of Mazdeanism the old t.i.tles of supreme deity were succeeded (though not displaced) by the terms "Boundless Time" and "Boundless s.p.a.ce," the latter doubtless suggested by the vault of heaven. These generalizations, however, had little influence on the development of the theological side of the religion, which has continued to regard Ahura Mazda and Angro Mainyu as the two heads of the world and the determiners of human life. The rituals of the Mazdean and Hindu faiths were influenced by the ethical developments of the two, becoming simpler and more humane with the advance toward elevated conceptions of G.o.d and man.

+745+. In view of such facts as are known it may be surmised that the Mazdean system originated with an Aryan agricultural tribe or body of tribes dwelling near the Caspian Sea, in contact with hostile nomads.

These Aryans, we may a.s.sume, had the ordinary early apparatus of spirits and nature deities (G.o.ds of the sun, water, etc.), but, at the same time, a disposition to concentrate worship on a single G.o.d (probably a sky-G.o.d), who became the chief tribal deity and was naturally regarded as the source of all things good, the Good Spirit; the phenomena of life led them (as it led some other early peoples) to conceive of a rival spirit, the author of things hostile to life. With economic conditions and intellectual characteristics very different from those of their Hindu brethren, they developed no capacity for organizing an elaborate pantheon--they were practically monolatrous, were content with an all-sufficient Good Spirit (the Bad Spirit being tolerated as an intellectual necessity), gradually subordinated to him such G.o.ds as the popular feeling retained, and relegated to the sphere of evil the host of inferior hurtful spirits or G.o.ds (_daevas_) whose existence they could not deny.[1292] The religious leaders, representing and enforcing the tribal tendency of thought, in the course of time gave more and more definite shape to the cult; perhaps Zoroaster was a preeminent agent in this movement. Ethical purification, as a matter of course, went hand in hand with cultic organization. The old G.o.ds or spirits, a.s.sociates of the supreme G.o.d, became embodiments of moral conceptions, and a ritual of physical and moral purity was worked out. Such may have been the general history of the official system; data for a detailed chronological history are lacking.[1293]

+746+. _China._ Chinese religion is characterized by a remarkable restraint in ecclesiastical development: simple religious customs, no native priestly order, few G.o.ds, almost no myths. The basis of the popular religion is the usual material, comprising ancestors, spirits (including tutelary spirits), a few departmental G.o.ds (of war, of the kitchen, etc.), some of which are said to be deified men. The system is thus nearly the same as that of the central Asiatic Mongolians.[1294]

+747+. The reflective movement (which must have begun long before the sixth century B.C., the period of Confucius and Lao-tsze) is marked by the attempt to perfect the social organization, regard being paid mainly to visible, practical relations. Stress is laid on the principle of order in family and state, which is held to reflect the order of the universe;[1295] speculation is avoided, there is a minimum of religion.

In the more developed religious system the two prominent features are, first, the dominant conception of the unity of the family and of the state led to the emphasizing of the worship of ancestors--a cult which, going back to a very early time, has been interwoven in China with the individual and communal life in a thoroughgoing way, with a constant infusion of moral ideas; and in the next place, the order of society and of the external world is represented by Heaven.[1296]

+748+. Originally, doubtless, Heaven was the physical sky (as among the Hindus and Persians and many other peoples), but at an early period came to be practically the supreme G.o.d. A sort of monotheistic cult has thus been established as the official religion. The emperor is the Son of Heaven and the High Priest of the nation, and in the great annual sacrifices performed by him the host of minor powers is practically ignored and worship is addressed to the controlling powers of the world.

This official worship does not set aside the cult of the various spirits, whose existence is recognized by the minor officials as well as by the people. The cult of local spirits has grown to extraordinary dimensions. They fill the land, controlling the conditions of life and demanding constant regard; and the experts, who are supposed to know the laws governing the action of the spirits (for example, as to proper burial-places), wield enormous power, and make enormous charges of money. These spirits are treated as of subordinate importance in the official religion. The process by which China has reached this religious att.i.tude must have extended over millenniums, and, as is stated above, the intellectual movement in the direction of simplicity and clearness has been attended by an advance in ethical purity.

+749+. The tendency of Chinese thought is ill.u.s.trated by the two systems of philosophy which in the sixth century B.C. formulated the conception of a universal dominant order:[1297] Confucius represents the extreme logical development of natural order in human life as a product of cosmic order--he is content absolutely to deal with the practical affairs of life and discourages attempts to inquire into the nature of G.o.ds or into the condition of men after death. Lao-tsze, on the other hand, similarly taking the Way (_tao_), or Universal Order, as the informing and controlling power of the world, appears to have laid the stress on the relation between it and the human soul--a conception that has affinities with the Stoic Logos. But it is Confucianism that has remained the creed of educated China. Taoism, beginning, apparently, as a spiritual system, did not appeal to the Chinese feeling, and speedily degenerated into a system of magical jugglery. Thus the Chinese, with the feeblest religious sense to be found in any great nation, have nevertheless reached the grandiose conception of the all-embracing and all-controlling supreme Heaven. In their case the governing consideration has been the moral organization of social life, and Nature has swallowed up all great partial deities.

+750+. _j.a.pan._ j.a.pan has produced no great G.o.d;[1298] out of the ma.s.s of nature G.o.ds reported in the Kojiki not one becomes preeminent. There is recognition of Heaven and Earth as the beginning of things, and of the sun as a deity, but neither the sky-G.o.d nor the sun-G.o.ddess becomes a truly high G.o.d. j.a.panese theistic development appears to have been crippled at an early period by the intrusion of Chinese influences; the very name of the national religion, Shinto, 'the Way of the G.o.ds,' is Chinese. The emperor was deified, and ancestor-worship became the princ.i.p.al popular cult;[1299] but Confucianism and Buddhism overlaid the native worship at an early period. The later forms of Shinto have moved rather toward the rejection of the old deities than toward the creation of a great national G.o.d.

+751+. _Semitic peoples._ Among the various Semitic peoples there is so marked a unity of thought that, as Robertson Smith has pointed out,[1300] we may speak of the Semitic religion, though there are noteworthy local differences. Generally we find among these communities, as elsewhere, a large number of local deities, scarcely distinguishable in their functions one from another.[1301] A noteworthy ill.u.s.tration of the long continuance of these local cults is given in the attempt of the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, to centralize the worship by bringing the statues of the local deities to Babylon; the result was a general popular protest. Similarly an attempt was made by King Josiah in the seventh century B.C. to centralize all Israelite worship in Jerusalem, but the history of the succeeding generations shows that the attempt was not successful. The local G.o.ds represent the clannic and tribal organization, to which the Semites appear to have clung with peculiar fondness.

+752+. Semitic religion shows an orderly advance through the medium of tribal and national feeling in conjunction with the regular moral and intellectual growth of the community. First one G.o.d and then another comes to the front as this or that city attains leadership, but these chief G.o.ds are substantially identical with one another in functions.

The genealogical relations introduced by the priestly theologians throw no light on the original characters of the deities and are often ignored in the inscriptions. A natural division into G.o.ds of the sky and G.o.ds of the earth may be recognized, but in the high G.o.ds this distinction practically disappears.

+753+. Turning first to the Tigris-Euphrates region, we find certain nature G.o.ds that attained more or less definite universal character.[1302] The physical sky becomes the G.o.d Anu, who, though certainly a great G.o.d, was never so prominent as certain other deities, and in a.s.syria yielded gradually to Ashur. Why the Semites, in marked contrast with the Indo-Europeans and the Chinese, have shown a relatively feeble recognition of the physical heaven we are not able to say; possibly the tribal feeling referred to above may have led to a centering of devotion on those deities that lay nearer to everyday life, or in the case of Babylonia it may be that the city with which Anu was particularly connected lost its early importance, and its deity in consequence yielded to others.[1303] The sun is a more definite and more practically important object than the expanse of the sky, and the Semitic sun-G.o.d, Shamash, plays a great role from the earliest to the latest times. The great king Hammurabi (commonly placed near the year 2000 B.C.), in his noteworthy civil code, takes Shamash as his patron, as the inspirer of wisdom and the controller of human right; and from this time onward this deity is invoked by the kings in their inscriptions. The worship of the sun was established in Canaan at an early time (as the name of the town Bethshemesh, 'house of Shemesh,'

shows), and under a.s.syrian influence was adopted by a large number of Israelites in the seventh century B.C.; the prophet Ezekiel represents prominent Israelites as standing in the court of the temple, turning their backs on the sacred house and worshiping the sun;[1304] but as to the nature of the sun-G.o.d and his worship in these cases we have no information. Other nature deities that rose to eminence are the moon-G.o.d, Sin, and the storm-G.o.d, Ramman.

+754+. The other deities of the Babylonian and a.s.syrian pantheons seem not to be connected by their names with natural phenomena. They are attached to particular cities or districts, and each district or city, as it becomes a great religious center, raises its favorite G.o.d to a position of preeminence. Generally the choice of a special deity by a particular city lies back of historical doc.u.ments, and the reason for such choice therefore cannot be definitely fixed. The attributes and functions of the resulting great G.o.ds, as has already been remarked, are substantially everywhere the same, and where one function becomes prominent, it is often possible to explain its prominence from the political or other conditions.

+755+. Moreover, as in all theological constructions that follow great political unifications, it was natural to extend the domain of a princ.i.p.al G.o.d to whatever department of life or of nature appealed especially to the theologian. When we find certain G.o.ds invested with solar functions it does not follow that they were originally sun-G.o.ds--such functions may be a necessary result of their preeminence.

Out of the great ma.s.s of Babylonian and a.s.syrian deities we may select a few whose cults ill.u.s.trate the method of development of the religious conceptions. As non-Semitic (Sumerian) religious and other ideas and words appear to have been adopted by the Semitic Babylonians, it is not always easy to distinguish between Semitic and non-Semitic conceptions in the cults as known to us.

+756+. _Babylonia._ The G.o.d Ea appears to have been originally the local deity of Eridu, a city which in early times stood on the Persian Gulf.

This proximity to the sea may account for the fact that Ea was generally a.s.sociated with water (in Babylonia, as elsewhere, there were many deities of waters). It is not certain that this was his original role, but it was, in any case, a.s.signed him in the course of the theistic construction. It is not improbable that in the original form of the Babylonian epic it was Ea who sent the flood and saved one man--a natural representation for the G.o.d of Eridu; in later recensions of the poem it is first Bel and then Marduk who a.s.sumes the princ.i.p.al role. As Eridu was probably a prominent political center, Ea, as its chief G.o.d, naturally became the creator, the bestower of wisdom, the author of the arts of life, in general a universal G.o.d. As the political center shifted, the popular interest changed and Ea yielded more or less to other G.o.ds, continuing, however, throughout the whole Babylonian and a.s.syrian period to receive high consideration.

+757+. Enlil, the G.o.d of Nippur, had a similar career; originally local, he became supreme. A peculiar feature of his history is the fact that the t.i.tle Bel, 'lord' (which is the Semitic equivalent of the non-Semitic Enlil), clung to him in a peculiar way and practically ousted the original name. This t.i.tle was a.s.signed to various G.o.ds (so in Canaan the t.i.tle Baal), and its special appropriation by the G.o.d of Nippur must be referred to the preponderant importance of that city in the period before the rise of Babylon. In the Babylonian system he is lord of the lower world, that is, apparently, the divine king of the earth; his original domain, the district of Nippur, was extended to embrace the whole world--a sort of extension that was common in all ancient religions. His importance is evident from the fact that he was a member of the early triad, Anu, Bel, Ea, names that have been supposed to represent three divisions of the world into heaven, earth, and ocean.

It seems probable, however, that this triadic grouping was the work of relatively late constructionists; it is more likely that the original prominence of these three deities was due to the fact that they represented the more important political communities.[1305]

+758+. A particularly good ill.u.s.tration of the dependence of a G.o.d's position on the political position of his region is furnished by the G.o.d Marduk, a name the meaning of which is uncertain. He is first clearly mentioned in the inscriptions of Hammurabi (ca. 2000 B.C.), but mentioned in such a way that his cult must go back to a much earlier time. From the devotion paid him by Hammurabi, and much later by Nebuchadrezzar II (sixth century B.C.), it is generally a.s.sumed that he was the local G.o.d of Babylon. He rose with the fortunes of this city, finally becoming supreme: he was regarded as creator, and invested with all the highest functions; in the later astronomical constructions he is represented as the arranger of the zodiacal system and all that was connected with it, but, as is pointed out above, this is no ground for regarding him as having been originally a sun-G.o.d. A glimpse into the method of theological reconstruction is afforded by the representation in the cosmogonic epic where he is invested with supreme power by the older G.o.ds--this invest.i.ture is with probability regarded by a.s.syriologists as representing the leadership attained by the city of Babylon (ca. 2000 B.C.), whose religious hegemony lasted throughout the existence of the Babylonian state.

+759+. _a.s.syria._ The a.s.syrian pantheon is in general identical with that of Babylon, but has certain features which are due to the peculiar character of the a.s.syrian civilization. The G.o.d Ashur, originally the local G.o.d of the city or district of Ashur, and then the chief G.o.d of a.s.syria, was naturally a war-G.o.d--a.s.syria was essentially a military nation, differing in this regard from Babylonia. He is, however, more than a mere G.o.d of war--he has all high attributes, and came to represent in a.s.syria that approach to monotheism which in Babylon was embodied in the later cult of Marduk.

+760+. Babylonian and a.s.syrian _female deities_ are of two cla.s.ses: those who are merely consorts of the male deities, and those who represent fertility. The first cla.s.s we may pa.s.s over--the G.o.ddesses of this cla.s.s are vague in character and functions and play no important part in the religious system; they appear to be artificial creations of the systematizers. The deities of the second cla.s.s, however, are important. From a very early time the fertility of nature has been referred appropriately to female Powers, and in the Semitic pantheon a large number of such divinities occur. A deity of this sort naturally becomes a mother-G.o.ddess, with all the attributes that pertain to this character; in some cases a mother-G.o.ddess becomes supreme.

+761+. A very early female divinity is Bau, worshiped particularly at the city Lagash and by King Gudea. Her function as patron of productiveness is probably indicated in the spring festival held in her honor on New Year's Day, in which she is worshiped as the giver of the fruits of the earth. There are several local female deities that seem to be substantially identical in character with Bau. Innanna (or Ninni) in Uruk (Erech) was the mistress of the world and of war, and Nana is hardly to be distinguished from her.[1306] In Agade Anunit has a similar role; in Lagash Nina was the determiner of fate, and the mother of the G.o.ddesses.

+762+. These names appear to be t.i.tles signifying 'mistress,' 'lady,'

and this is probably the meaning of the name of the great G.o.ddess who finally ousted or absorbed her sisters, Ishtar.[1307] In the earliest form in which Ishtar appears, in the old poetry, she is the deity of fertility; when she goes down to the Underworld all productiveness of plants and men ceases; and her primitive character at this time appears in the account of her marriages with animals, in which there is to be recognized the trace of the old zoolatrous period; but as patron of fertility she becomes in time a great G.o.ddess and takes on universal attributes--she is the mother of G.o.ds and men, universal protector and guide. Where war was the chief pursuit she became a G.o.ddess of war; in this character she appears in Babylonia as early as the time of Hammurabi, and later in a.s.syria. In the genealogical constructions she was brought into connection, as daughter, wife, or other relation, with any G.o.d that the particular conditions suggested. As the a.s.syrians grew morally she was endowed with all the highest virtues (so in the Penitential Psalms), and occupied so preeminent a position that under favorable circ.u.mstances she might perhaps have become the only G.o.d of the land.

+763+. If her name signified originally 'lord' or 'lady,' the occurrence of several Ishtars in a.s.syria (particularly Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela) is easily understood; so in Canaan, as we learn from the Old Testament, there was a great number of local Ashtarts.[1308] We can thus also explain the male deities Ashtar in Moab and Athtar in South Arabia.[1309] None of these, however, attained the eminence of the Babylonian and a.s.syrian Ishtar; her supremacy in Mesopotamia was due doubtless in part to the political importance of the cities that adopted her. She had her rivals, as we have seen, in Marduk and Ashur and others; and that she was able to maintain herself is to be ascribed in some measure to the importance attached by her worshipers to the fertilizing power of nature.

+764+. The other Semitic peoples, with the exception of the Hebrews, offer little material for tracing the development of the great G.o.ds. For the Aramean region the records are spa.r.s.e; Aramean deities appear to be of the same character as the Canaanite.[1310] In Canaan (including Phoenicia) out of the vast number of local divinities, the Baals and Ashtarts, few attained to eminence, and it is doubtful whether any one of them deserves the t.i.tle "great."[1311] The divine patrons of cities were locally powerful; such were the Baal of Tyre, called Melkart ('the king of the city'), the Ashtart of Sidon, and Tanit of Carthage;[1311]

these owed their reputation to their official positions, and there is no other record of their development. The same thing is true of the Moabite Kemosh, the Ammonite Malkom (Milkom), and the Philistine Dagan (Dagon) and Baalzebub. None of these became ethically great or approached universality. The Phoenician Eshmun was known to the Greeks, and was identified by them with their Asklepios (aesculapius), probably because among the various functions attaching to him as local deity healing was prominent; but of his theologic history little is known.[1312] Several North Arabian deities, especially Dusares (Dhu ash-Shara) and the G.o.ddesses Al-Lat and Al-Uzza, were widely worshiped, their cults extending over the whole Nabatean region; but the communities to which they belonged never produced a great civilization or attained great political significance, and these deities always retained traces of their local nature.[1313] The same remark is to be made of the South Arabian G.o.ds known to us; they were locally important, but we have little information concerning their characters.[1314]

+765+. The clearest example of the orderly advance of a deity to preeminence is afforded by the Hebrew Yahweh (Jehovah). Originally, it would seem, a local deity, the G.o.d of certain tribes on the northern boundary of Arabia,[1315] he was adopted by the Hebrews under conditions which are not quite clear, and was developed by them in accordance with their peculiar genius. At first morally and intellectually crude, he became as early as the eighth century B.C. ethically high and practically omnipotent.[1316] For many centuries he was regarded merely as the most powerful of the G.o.ds, superior to the deities of other nations, and it was only after the beginning of our era that the Hebrew thought discarded all other G.o.ds and made "Yahweh" synonymous with "G.o.d." In each period of their history the conception that the Hebrews had of him was in accord with the economic and intellectual features of the time.[1317]

+766+. A word may be added respecting the Semitic t.i.tles Ilu, or El, and Elohim, which have been supposed by some recent writers to prove the existence of an early monotheism, particularly in Southern Arabia. The terms mean simply 'G.o.d,' and were applied by early Semitic communities to any deity, particularly to the local G.o.d. In the Arabia of Mohammed's time a tribe would call its deity simply "the G.o.d," a sufficient designation of him for the place;[1318] this designation, in Arabic _al-ilahu_, came to be p.r.o.nounced "Allah," and this familar term, as is remarked above, was adopted by Mohammed and expanded (probably under the influence of some advanced Arabian circle of thinkers of his time) into the conception of the one only G.o.d, which he and others had derived from Christians and Jews. In certain parts of the Old Testament also "Elohim"

stands for the national G.o.d, conceived of as all-sufficient. But these are late conceptions. There is no proof that in South Arabia or in Babylonia the term Ilu meant anything else than the local deity, though such a deity would naturally receive all the attributes that his worshipers demanded in their religious constructions. Most of the appellations of Semitic deities are epithets, and while this mode of conceiving of the G.o.ds militated against the development of them into distinct personalities and the construction of a pantheon, it was favorable, on the other hand, to isolation and to the tendency to elevate any favorite deity to a position of preeminence.

+767+. _Greece._ The Greeks, with their rich imagination and artistic feeling, filled the world with divine figures, well-defined types of Greek character, ideals of Greek thought. Greece alone has constructed a true pantheon, a community of G.o.ds all individualized, but all compacted into a family or a body of government. The question of their historical development involves great difficulties, partly because the wide diffusion of their cults in h.e.l.las occasioned many local expansions of the original conceptions in the various regions, partly because most of the deities appear fully or almost fully formed in the earliest literary monuments, so that we are dependent on cultic procedures and pa.s.sing allusions for a knowledge of their preliterary character. Without, then, attempting an investigation of the obscure prehistoric theogonic period, the general lines of growth of some of the princ.i.p.al divine personages may be followed (as far as the data permit) as examples of the way in which the great G.o.ds were gradually created.[1319]

+768+. Zeus, originally doubtless a sky-G.o.d (not the sun), represents an old Indo-European divine conception, found substantially also among all the great peoples of antiquity, as well as in many half-civilized tribes. But nowhere has he attained so eminent a position as in Greece.

The Hindu Dyaus (the 'shining one')[1320] is not prominent in the Vedic mythology or in later times, and the Mazdean Ahura Mazda, if he was originally the sky, had dropped his physical characteristics and become only a spirit; the Latin Jupiter approaches Zeus most nearly in name and character. A sky-G.o.d is naturally conceived of as universal ruler,[1321]

but in any particular region he a.s.sumes the characteristics of the ruling human personages of the place and time. Zeus appears first as a barbarian chieftain with the ordinary qualities of such persons. Stories that have come down about him reflect a period of what now seems immorality, though it was the recognized morality of the time; he is deceitful and changeable and completely unregardful of any definite marriage laws. His cult in some places (for example, in Arcadia) had savage features. Whether he had originally in the h.e.l.lenic world a special home, and if so what it was, cannot now be determined.[1322]

+769+. In the historical period he appears as a chief G.o.d in many places in Greece, gradually absorbs the functions of other G.o.ds, and receives numerous t.i.tles derived from places and functions. He is the father of G.o.ds and men, but not the sole creator of the world. His gradual rise in moral character may be traced in the literature. In Homer he is a universalized Agamemnon, with very much the intellectual and moral qualities of Agamemnon; a process of growth in the conception of him in the Homeric poems is indicated by the incongruities in his portraiture--at one time he is a creature of impulse and pa.s.sion, at another time a dignified and thoughtful ruler. In Pindar and the tragedians of the fifth century he has become the representative of justice and order in the world, and in later writers he comes to be more specifically the embodiment of everything that is good in the universe.

He represents the Greek conception of civic authority, and thus the nearest approach to monotheism discoverable in the Greek mythological system; and as embodying the finer side of religious feeling he both punishes and forgives sin.

+770+. Next in importance to Zeus as representative of Greek religious thought stands Apollo. The meaning of the name and the original seat of the G.o.d are obscure; he appears to have been a Pan-h.e.l.lenic deity; he was definitely shaped by the whole ma.s.s of h.e.l.lenic thought. Originally, perhaps, the local deity of some hunting and pastoral region, and possessing the quasi-universal attributes of such deities, the wide diffusion of his cult (through conditions not known to us) brought him into relation with many sides of life. While he shares this many-sidedness with several other G.o.ds, the Greek genius of theographic organization a.s.signed him special headship in certain distinctively h.e.l.lenic conceptions. Zeus embodied the theocratic idea, and Apollo the ideas of Pan-h.e.l.lenic civic unity, artistic feeling, and the more intimate ethical and religious experience. He became the patron of the Amphictyonic a.s.sembly and of literature and art, and, especially in connection with the Delphic oracle, the fosterer of ethical conceptions of ritual and of sin. How it came to pa.s.s that these particular departments were a.s.signed him it is not possible to say. Such specialization was natural to the Greeks, but the determining conditions in particular cases have not been recorded, and can only be surmised.

His growth kept pace with that of the h.e.l.lenic people--in the Iliad he is a partisan, and his words and deeds do not always command our respect, but in the later theological constructions he throws off his crudeness. His connection with the sun was a natural consequence of his rise to eminence; he is not a sun-G.o.d in the earliest literary remains.

+771+. Poseidon, second only to Zeus in power, is also of obscure origin.[1323] His specific marine character is certain, though as a great G.o.d he had many relations and functions.[1324] Possibly he was originally the local deity of some marine region, and by reason of the importance of his native place, or simply through the intimate relationship between the Greek communities, and in accordance with the Greek spirit of organization, came to be generally recognized as the G.o.d of the ocean.[1325] Though he was widely revered he remained largely a nature G.o.d--he never attained the majesty and moral supremacy of Zeus, never, indeed, represented specifically any refined moral or religious conception. Whether this ethical and religious meagerness was a consequence of the vagueness of the relation between the sea and human life, or of some other fact, is a point that can hardly be determined.

+772+. Hermes, to judge from his history, was the creation of some pastoral community, an ideal of rustic excellence: fleet of foot, a leader in popular amus.e.m.e.nts, skilled in simple music, eminent in an art much valued in early times--the art of stealing cattle. When he was taken into the circle of Greek theological thought his swiftness recommended him to the position of messenger of the G.o.ds,[1326] and his function as psychopompos, the guide of souls to the other world, would then follow naturally; from this function it cannot, however, be inferred that he was originally a chthonic deity--a character that does not accord with the early portraitures of him. Like other G.o.ds he grew morally, but he never reached ethical distinction. Skill in theft was in early times often regarded as a virtue,[1327] and in general he who got the better of his fellows was esteemed a master of good luck and prosperity; and a bestower of outward prosperity Hermes came to be.[1328] His main quality was cleverness, in contrast with the intellectual power of Apollo.

+773+. On the other hand, another rustic figure, the Arcadian herd-G.o.d Pan,[1329] never developed into a great h.e.l.lenic G.o.d. His worship was widely diffused; he appears often in artistic representations, and Pindar thought him worthy of a hymn (of which, unfortunately, only fragments survive), but in general he remained uncouth and half savage, a goatlike figure, the companion of satyrs, or (as the Homeric hymn depicts him) a merrymaker. He seems to have been an embodiment of the lower rustic pleasures, a local G.o.d, probably not a divinized goat.[1330]