Clavis Mythologiarum

BOOK I. OF THE PRIMEVAL DEPOSIT AND ITS DISPERSION. HEAD III. OF THE DISPERSION FROM SHINAR.

×It were premature, in the present stage of the inquiry, to do more than indicate the manner in which the second thesis, which affirms that the deposit was carried abroad at the Dispersion, is to be approached, and the distinctions which must be observed before any testimony is brought to bear upon it; for the Dispersion is an event of which the sacred text gives a relation at once so brief and so little qualified, that it has been usual to supply, from the several systems of the learned, what the text has omitted, and to regard the result as if it were the testimony of Scripture itself. I shall endeavour, under the present head, to set down what the text affirms of the builders, of the city which they left unfinished, and of the scattering which followed; to distinguish from it a second dispersal, which is of another character and was effected for another cause; and to examine two opinions of recent date, of which the one assigns the building of the tower to a single branch of the line of Ham, and the other makes of a hero of the Greeks the god of a people of that line, and neither of which, as I conceive, has been sufficiently distinguished from what is certain.1 The proof that the line of Ham was the line in which the deposit was chiefly corrupted does not belong to this head; it will be found under the heads which follow, and I shall here content myself with clearing the ground upon which it is to be built. NB-02-015 NB-03-009 NB-04-006

×The builders at Shinar, the sacred text relates, said one to another, "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth" (Gen. xi. 1–4).2 Their reason is given in their own words, and it is a precaution: lest we be scattered. The scattering was therefore foreseen by them before it was done to them, and the city was built against it; so that the Dispersion, whatever else it was, was not an event which took the builders by surprise, nor one which they would have been disposed to describe as the consequence of their own design. The text ascribes to them no other design, and I ascribe none; it does not say of the tower that it was an impiety, nor a defence, nor an altar, and any such supposition is to be ranked, until it has been supported by some testimony beyond the verse, among the things which the text may be made to bear and does not affirm. NB-02-015

×Of the event itself the text relates that the LORD scattered the builders abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and that "they left off to build the city" (Gen. xi. 8, 9).3 The work was left unfinished; and the name of the place is given from the event, the sacred writer himself saying why it was so called, namely, "because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth." I add no derivation of my own. That the name is not the name of the builders, but one given afterwards, is evident from the word therefore, and the observation is not without its consequence, since it follows that the name Babel, which is found in the sacred text as the name of the place, is a testimony to the event and is not a testimony to the persons; and that whatever is built upon it concerning the builders must be built upon some other foundation. The scattering is here the act of the LORD upon the whole earth, and it is the first of the two dispersals between which, in the entries which follow, I propose to distinguish. NB-03-009 NB-04-006

×The second dispersal is that which Bochart treats in the first book of his work upon the colonies of the Phenicians, in which he describes the colonies sent out by them in almost every region of the world, and assigns as the chief cause the want of room, the whole land having been taken up by the Hebrews (Bochart, Chanaan, lib. i. cap. 2).4 It is a second dispersal, and later than the first, and the two are to be kept distinct: the one is the act of the LORD upon the whole earth, and the other a departure by sea of a single people, for a reason which is in the text of Bochart and is not in the sacred text; and it is the more necessary to insist upon the distinction, since the evidence for the one is of a different class from the evidence for the other, and an argument which is good for the colonies of the Phenicians is not on that account good for the dispersion of the families of the earth. I do not suppose that Bochart has himself confounded them; but a reader who has the second before him may easily be led to carry its circumstances back into the first, and to suppose that nations were settled at Shinar by the same causes, and by the same methods, as the Phenician colonies in the islands of the sea; and I observe that if this were so, the deposit would have been carried abroad not by the Dispersion but by the commerce of a single nation, which is a very different thesis from that which I have undertaken to maintain. NB-04-006 NB-03-009

×Mr. Faber, in the third volume of his work on the origin of pagan idolatry, undertakes to state the system of Mr. Bryant respecting the building of Babel, and then to reject it: "As nothing, that falls from that learned writer can be unworthy of attention, however we may be disposed to differ from it; I shall first briefly state his system, and then adduce my reasons for rejecting it in favour of the generally received opinion" (Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. iii. bk. vi. ch. i.).5 As he reports it, the children of Cush under Nimrod left the orderly settlement of the nations and founded Babylon, so that the Cuthites alone built Babel. Two moderns whom I read are here at issue, and I cannot yet say which is right. The reasons of Mr. Faber are not here entered; they are to be examined when they have been read. It is not, however, to be concluded, from the fact that the opinion which he prefers is the generally received one, that it is the true one; the general reception of an opinion is a ground for hearing it, and is not a proof; and I observe, as a matter which touches the second thesis, that Mr. Bryant, if he has been rightly reported, has given to one son of Ham what the sacred text, in the verses which relate the building of the city, does not appear to assign to any son in particular, the persons named in those verses being the people of one language, and no other name being given them. NB-31-038 NB-03-009

×The second of the opinions to which I have referred is that of the same Mr. Faber respecting Cadmus, whom he takes not as a hero but as the tutelary god of a nation: "Cadmus, as we have already seen at large, was the Cadam or Codom or Gaudama of the east; under which appellation Buddha, the great god of the Chusic Shepherds, is still worshipped in Ceylon and Ava" (Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. iii. bk. vi. ch. v.).6 He says, further, that the Cadmians came into Greece from Egypt or Phenicia, while others of them stayed in Palestine, where they are the Cadmanites of Moses. If Cadmus is the god of a people, the question is not who he was, but what the people were; and a theory which has this for its consequence is not, in itself, to be censured, since it directs the inquiry to the place where it is most likely to be answered. Of Ceylon and Ava, however, and of the god who is worshipped there, I have nothing but his word, and no witness of that country by which to try the identity of the names; and the resemblance of Cadam to Cadmus is of the kind from which it were easy to build much, and which for that reason ought to be received only when it is supported by something else. I enter the opinion, as I have said, without adopting it, and without the least wish to pronounce against it until something further has been produced. NB-28-037

×The view which I propose, as at present sketched, is that the Dispersion, in so far as it is related by Moses, was a single act of the LORD upon the whole earth; that it was foreseen by the builders and attempted by them to be prevented; that it was effected after the confusion of their language; and that the families which were scattered carried with them, in the several regions to which they came, the deposit which had been delivered to the first men, in such form and in such measure as each had retained. The later migrations by sea, of which Bochart treats, and the settlements in the countries between, are to be referred to a second cause, and are not to be confounded with this; and it is not until the two have been distinguished that the testimony of any single nation can be fairly put to the question, whether it is the remembrance of the first dispersal, or the report of the second. I do not here undertake the proof of the corruption in the line of Ham, which belongs to the three heads next following; I indicate only that the proof requires, as its first condition, that the scattering should be understood as the sacred text relates it, and not as it has been made to appear by the systems which have been framed upon it. NB-02-015 NB-04-006 NB-31-038

×It may be objected, in the first place, that the distinction between the two dispersals is one which the text does not make, and which I have therefore imported; to which I answer that the text, which is silent as to the later migrations, does not for that reason exclude them, and that the distinction is made not by the text but by the sources, of which the one speaks of an act of the LORD and the other of a want of room. It may be objected, in the second place, that the foresight of the builders, upon which I have laid a stress, is a matter of inference from a single verse; to which I answer that the verse contains their own words, and that an inference from words which are given as spoken is of a better class than most which have been drawn from the same chapter. It may be objected, in the third place, that in declining to decide between Mr. Bryant and Mr. Faber I have evaded the question; to which I answer that a question is evaded only when the means of answering it are in the hands of the inquirer, and that I have undertaken to read, and not to pronounce, until the testimonies have been collected. And it may be objected, lastly, that the opinion respecting Cadmus, if it were established, would be of the greatest service to the present view, since it would shew a god of the line of Ham carried into Greece by a nation of that line; to which I answer that an opinion which would be of service is not on that account the more to be received, and that I should regard myself as having acquired a doubtful advantage if the question were decided in my favour by a resemblance of names. These objections, and others which may be urged with less force, will be considered at greater length under the next head. NB-02-015 NB-03-009 NB-04-006 NB-28-037 NB-31-038

Footnotes

  1. The first of the two opinions is that of Mr. Bryant, as reported by Mr. Faber, and the second is Mr. Faber's own; each is examined in its place in the paragraphs which follow. I have not thought it necessary to anticipate the use which is to be made of them. ↩

  2. Gen. xi. 1–4. The verses relate also that the people journeyed from the east and found a plain in the land of Shinar, and that they made brick and had brick for stone, and slime for morter; I do not rest anything upon these circumstances, which are of no consequence to the present question. See also the preceding head, in which the first two verses of the chapter are examined. ↩

  3. Gen. xi. 8, 9. The verses contain two statements of the scattering, one at the beginning and the other at the end, and the second is the more particular, as it follows the account of the name; I take them together, as relating a single act. It is to be observed that the name is derived by the sacred writer himself, and that I have not, in the present head, entered into any inquiry as to the sense of the word in the language in which it was first spoken. ↩

  4. Bochart, Chanaan, lib. i. cap. 2. The heading of the chapter enumerates the colonies, which were sent, he says, to Cyprus, Egypt, Cilicia, Pisidia, Caria, Rhodes, Bithynia, Thrace, Samothrace, and other islands, Crete, Greece, Illyria, Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Africa, and elsewhere; and he adds, as helping causes, that the sea, the harbours, and the timber of Lebanon were all at hand. The words which I have used in the text are those of the cause which he gives as the chief; and I have set aside, as not bearing upon the present question, the verses of the poet which he quotes. The passage is entered here as a witness to a dispersal, and not as a witness to that Dispersion with which the second thesis is concerned. ↩

  5. Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. iii. bk. vi. ch. i. The section is entitled, in the table of the contents, a theory of Mr. Bryant that the Cuthites alone were concerned in the building of Babel, shewn to be untenable; and the author speaks of him in the same place as the late Mr. Bryant. I have no wish to anticipate the examination of the reasons by which the theory is said to be shewn untenable; and the reader will observe that I have said nothing as to their force, which I have not yet determined. See, for the question of the share of the several sons of Ham, the fourth head of the present Book, and, for the origin of the opinion, the fifth. ↩

  6. Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. iii. bk. vi. ch. v. The sentence which I have quoted is a continuation of the author's account, which he gives in the same place, of the emigrants whom Diodorus brings out of Egypt with Danaus; and of the particular he says that he understands it in the same manner as the last, that is, as the removal of a nation and not of a person. I do not know that Diodorus is in this place a witness to anything but the emigration, and I have not therefore cited him. ↩

← BOOK I. OF THE PRIMEVAL DEPOSIT AND ITS DISPERSION. HEAD II. OF THE ONE LANGUAGE, AND OF ITS CONFUSION.BOOK I. OF THE PRIMEVAL DEPOSIT AND ITS DISPERSION. HEAD IV. OF THE SONS OF HAM. →