Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/785

Rh Beck, Schleiermacher, Martensen, Hodge, Ewald, Rothe, Hofmann), exercises a disturbing influence. More determinate conclusions on the definition of Scripture, such as can be the result only of completer historical investigation into the rise and object of the several books, must yet be reached before a thorough adjustment is possible between the religious interest and the scientific in Biblical hermeneutics.

1em  HERMES is the name of a Greek god (corresponding to the Roman Mercury) whose origin and real character are perhaps more difficult to define than is the case with any other Greek deity; here it is possible only to give an outline of one definite theory, and refer the reader to the works quoted at the end. He was not a god worshipped by the pure Doric or Ionic races, but is found in most places where A®olian, Achzan, and Pelasgic tribes can be traced. Jf we begin with the rudest races, summed up generally under the title of Pelasgic, we find Hermes often connected with the mysterious Cabiri. These deities, in the accounts we have, vary in number and sex, being sometimes two, sometimes three orfour. We may conclude that originally they were a pair, male and female, whom we may compare with Uranus and Gea, or with Cronus and Rhea. Often the female is doubled, as mother and daughter, resembling the relation of Demeter and Persephone; while the male also is transformed either into twin brothers, or into a father and his son by one of the female deities. Certainly the male deity seems sometimes to be regarded as Hermes, sometimes as Hephestus (see ), while in other places the two are associated. Hermes and Hephestus are perhaps local varieties of one type, which after having acquired distinct individuality in their separate homes were brought beside each other by subsequent intercourse. Hence we may understand how the epithet cyyeAos and the office of messenger between gods and men, which in the 27g Veda belong to Agni, the fire, are in Greek mythology attached to Hermes. This Pelasgic Hermes is an ithyphallic deity, the god of fertility and reproductive power, and bestower of riches in flocks and herds. Corresponding to this religious conception we have in mythology such epithets as épovvwos, dxakyra, &e. ; and in the hymn to Aphrodite (written perhaps in /Zolis in the ), Hermes and the Sileni (Latin Silvani) are the companions of the mountain nymphs. So in Arcadia, one of the chief seats of his worship, where on Cyllene his birthplace was shown, he was by Penelope the father of Pan. Penelope, the “ torch-eyed ” (Ahrens in Phzlol., 1879, p. 205), is a form of Athene, Odysseus of Hermes; and Hermes and Athene are associated as Hephestus with Athene in Attica. In the very mixed Attic people, it is not surprising to find the worship of Hermes widespread ; it is sometimes said to have been introduced from Samothrace. In Athens Hermes is the god of social life and intercourse in general, of streets and doorways, and of the palestra. He is worshipped as dyopatos and zporvAaos; and Herme, pillars supporting a bearded head and furnished with a phallus, stood all over the city. In Beeotia also we find Hermes, especially at Tanagra, where Hermes the champion, and Hermes xptoddpos, the averter of diseases, were worshipped. The Doric god Apollo, with the titles Agyicus and Paion, corresponds most closely to these last aspects of Hermes. As god of social intercourse he easily grows into the impersonation of cleverness, and at last into the patron of thieves. If we pass from religion to mythology, where we find all the successive ways of expres- sing views of nature preserved to us side by side, we find an immense variety of traditions. The most common subject in these tales is the struggle between darkness and light. When it is said that Hermes stole the oxen of Apollo, and after killing two of them nailed their skins on a rock, we have one of a class of myths described at length by Kuhn (Lntwickelungsstufen der Mythologie). The slain animal is the sun, who is killed every evening; and the hide, z.¢., the sky of night, is either hung up on the tree of heaven (as is the Golden Fleece) or fastened with the star- headed nails. Again, when Io, the moon, is watched by the hundred-eyed Argus (Sanskrit vajas, “ darkness”), the star- studded sky, Hermes slays Argus with a stone, the same which Cadmus and Jason use, viz., the rising sun. In both cases Hermes is the sun-god as hidden during the night away among the souls of the dead ; hence the Chthonian character