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and Jacob embodies a mythological motive (p. 359), which is repeated in the case of Zeraḥ and Pereẓ (ch. 38). The whole story of Jacob and Esau presents several points of contact with that of the brothers Hypsouranios (Šamem-rum) and Usōos in the Phœnician mythology (Usōos = Esau: see pp. 360, 124). There appears also to be a Homeric variant of the incest of Reuben (p. 427). These phenomena are among the most perplexing which we encounter in the study of Hebrew tradition. We can as yet scarcely conjecture the hidden source from which such widely ramified traditions have sprung, though we may not on that account ignore the existence of the problem. It would be at all events a groundless anticipation that the facts will lead us to resolve the patriarchs into mythological abstractions. They are rather to be explained by the tendency already referred to (p. ix), to mingle myth with legend by transferring mythical incidents to historic personages.

3. It remains, before we go on to consider the historical elements of the tradition, to classify the leading types of mythical, or semi-mythical (p. ix), motive which appear in the narratives of Genesis. It will be seen that while they undoubtedly detract from the literal historicity of the records, they represent points of view which are of the greatest historical interest, and are absolutely essential to the right interpretation of the legends.

(a) The most comprehensive category is that of ætiological or explanatory myths; i.e., those which explain some familiar fact of experience by a story of the olden time. Both the questions asked and the answers returned are frequently of the most naïve and childlike description: they have, as Gu. has said, all the charm which belongs to the artless but profound reasoning of an intelligent child. The classical example is the story of Paradise and the Fall in chs. 2. 3, which contains one explicit instance of ætiology (2$24$: why a man cleaves to his wife), and implicitly a great many more: why we wear clothes and detest snakes, why the serpent crawls on his belly, why the peasant has to drudge in the fields, and the woman to endure the pangs of travail, etc. (p. 95). Similarly, the account of creation explains why there are so many kinds of plants and animals, why man is lord of them all, why the sun shines by day and the moon by night, etc.; why the Sabbath is kept. The Flood-story tells us the meaning of the rainbow, and of the regular recurrence of the seasons: the Babel-myth accounts for the existing diversities of language amongst men. Pure examples of ætiology are practically confined to the first eleven chapters; but the same general idea pervades the patriarchal history, specialised under the headings which follow.