CHAPTER IX.
ARGUMENT FROM THE USE OF MYTHOLOGY.
One of the peculiarities of our poet (which I have elsewhere
compared with a similar characteristic in Dante) is his willingness
to appropriate mythic forms of expression from heathendom.
This willingness was certainly not due to a feeble grasp
of his own religion; it was rather due partly to the poet's
craving for imaginative ornament, partly to his sympathy
with his less developed readers, and a sense that some of
these forms were admirably adapted to give reality to the
conception of the 'living God.' Several of these points of
contact with heathendom have been indicated in my analysis
of the poem. I need not again refer to these, but the semi-mythological
allusions to supernatural beings who had once
been in conflict with Jehovah (xxi. 22, xxv. 2), and the cognate
references to the dangerous cloud-dragon (see below)
ought not to be overlooked. Both in Egypt and in Assyria
and Babylonia, we find these very myths in a fully developed
form. The 'leviathan' of iii. 8, the dragon probably of vii. 12
(tannīn) and certainly of xxvi. 13 (nākhāsh), and the 'rahab'
of ix. 13, xxvi. 12, remind us of the evil serpent Apap, whose
struggle with the sun-god Ra is described in chap. xxxix. of
the Book of the Dead and elsewhere. 'A battle took place,'
says M. Maspero, 'between the gods of light and fertility and
the "sons of rebellion," the enemies of light and life. The
former were victorious, but the monsters were not destroyed.
They constantly menace the order of nature, and, in order
to resist their destructive action, God must, so to speak, create
the world anew every day.'[1] An equally close parallel is
- ↑ Maspero, Histoire ancienne de l'Orient, ed. 1, p. 30. Comp. Chabas' translation from the Harris papyrus, Records of the Past, x. 142-146.
