Parallel Myths Read Online Free PDF Page A

Holy;
quoted by Victor Gollancz in
From Darkness to Light
.
Max Eyth recounts in his story “Berufs-Tragik” * the building of the mighty bridge over the estuary of the Ennobucht. † The most profound and thorough labor of the intellect, the most assiduous and devoted professional toil, had gone into the construction of the great edifice, making it in all its significance and purposefulness a marvel of human achievement. In spite of endless difficulties and gigantic obstacles, the bridge is at length finished, and stands defying water and waves. Then there comes a raging cyclone, and building and builder are swept into the deep. Utter meaninglessness seems to triumph over richest significance, blind “destiny” seems to stride on its way over prostrate virtues and merit. The narrator tells how he visits the scene of the tragedy and returns again:
    “When we got to the end of the bridge, there was hardly a breath of wind; high above, the sky showed blue-green, and with an eerie brightness. Behind us, like an open grave, lay the Ennobucht. The Lord of life and death hovered over the waters in silent majesty. We felt his presence, as one feels one’s own hand. And the old man and I knelt down before the open grave and before Him.”
    Why did they kneel? Why did they feel constrained to do so? One does not kneel before a cyclone or the blind forces of nature, nor even before Omnipotence merely as such. But one does kneel before the wholly uncomprehended Mystery, revealed yet unrevealed, and one’s soul is stilled by feeling the way of its working, and therein its justification.
    * “Achilles’ heel” comes from the Homeric epic. The gods had advised Achilles’ mother that he would be impervious to injury if bathed in a sacred pool. His entire body was invulnerable to spears and arrows, except for his heel, which is the spot where his mother held him as she dipped him in the water. Needless to say, only a wound to the heel could kill him. Achilles’ tendon is likewise named for him.
    * An interesting insight into anthropomorphism is given by the German-born American theologian Paul Tillich in volume I of his
Systematic Theology:
The gods are subpersonal and suprapersonal at one and the same time. Animal-gods are not deified brutes; they are expressions of man’s ultimate concern symbolized in various forms of animal vitality. This animal vitality stands for a transhuman, divine-demonic vitality. The stars as gods are not deified astral bodies; they are expressions of man’s ultimate concern symbolized in the order of the stars and in their creative and destructive power. The subhuman-superhuman character of the mythological gods is a protest against the reduction of divine power to human measure. In the moment when this protest loses its effectiveness, the gods become glorified men rather than gods…. Therefore religion imagines divine personalities whose qualities disrupt and transcend their personal form in every respect. They are subpersonal or transpersonal personalities, a paradoxical combination which mirrors the tension between the concrete and the ultimate in man’s ultimate concern and in every type of the idea of God.
    * Ha loshen ha kodesh: Hebrew, “the holy tongue.” Yiddish, the German-derived “secular” language of the Central and Eastern European Jews, is
mama loshen
, or “the mother tongue.”
    * From Robert Graves,
The White Goddess
.
    In India, the same pattern holds true and appears to be influenced by ancient Babylonia:
Hindi
    MANGALVAAR —Mangal, the planet Mars.
    BUDHVAAR —Budh, the planet Neptune.
    BRIHISPATIVAAR —Brihispati, the planet Jupiter, the priest of the gods (devas).
    SHUKRAVAAR —Shukra, the planet Venus
(Sanskrit:
Shukravaasarah).
    SHANIVAAR —Shani, the planet Saturn
(Sanskrit:
Shanivaasarah).
    Sanskrit
    INDUVAASARAH —Indra, the sky god.
    GURUHVAASARAH —Guruh, the planet Jupiter.
    * A.D., Anno Domini—Latin: “The Year of the Lord;” B.C. —“Before