History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Part 65

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 ma.s.s 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 sanct.i.ty 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 ma.s.s of old legends, and developed a still greater ma.s.s 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 Sp.o.r.nitz, in the same region, are seven boulders whose forms and position are accounted for by a long and circ.u.mstantial 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 mult.i.tude 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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sical 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 G.o.ds 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 c.o.x, 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, pa.s.sim; also Baumeister, Denkmaler des cla.s.sischen 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 Ellw.a.n.gen: 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, pa.s.sim, especially p. 116 et seq.; also, for a ma.s.s 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 mult.i.tudes 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 Superst.i.tions; 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 ma.s.s of curious doc.u.ments 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 t.i.tans, 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 h.e.l.lenen, book i, chap.

xix; also Ovid, Metamorphoses, pa.s.sim; 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 sh.e.l.ls of our best ideas; and how the atmosphere is created in which these husks and rinds and sh.e.l.ls in due time wither, shrivel, and fall away, so that the fruit itself may be gathered to sustain a n.o.bler 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 n.o.blest 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e 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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses 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 sh.o.r.es 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 sh.o.r.es, 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 t.i.ticaca 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 superst.i.tions that birds attempting to fly over the sea are suffocated. 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, pa.s.sim.

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 circ.u.mstantial 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 circ.u.mstantial, 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 mora.s.s, 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.