Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/207

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legends of the Semitic East and to be rooted as it were in the rehgious conceptions of primitive man.

Dr. Pahner deals first of all with the vision of the ladder, or rather stairway, which the patriarch saw rising up into heaven, and traces it back to the stairway of the Babylonian ziggurat, or temple-tower, which led from the lowest stage of the building up to the topmost chamber, where the deity was supposed to reside. In the ziggurat he sees a representation of that " Mountain of the World " on whose summit the Babylonians believed that the gods dwelt; and he ingeniously connects the latter with the title of sadu rabu, or "great mountain," applied to Bel, which seems to have been the origin of the El Shaddai of the book of Genesis.

The angels who passed from heaven to earth are. Dr. Palmer points out, originally identical with the stars which Jacob had seen twinkling above the stair-like rocks of the hills of Beth-el before he had lain down to sleep. The belief that the stars are animate beings is found all over the world ; and their identity with the angels is indicated not only in apocalyptic works like the Book of Enoch but even in passages of the Bible like Is. xxiv. 21, 22, and Jude 13. In fact, "the hosts of heaven," of whom Jahveh was lord in Israel, as Assur was in Assyria, were primarily the stars, and in Assyrian the same word tsalm means both "host" and "star." The astrological idea of the influence of the heavenly bodies upon the lives and actions of men is but an application on the scientific side of the beliefs which on the theological side resolved the stars into angelic legions.

From the vision of the patriarch Dr. Palmer passes on to the Beth-el or consecrated stone which marked the spot where it had been seen. The Beth-el or Baetylos was characteristic of Semitic religion wherever it was found. The deity was regarded as immanent in certain stones in a special way ; they were veritable "abodes of God," in which the godhead was localised and present among men. So deeply implanted was this beUef in the Semitic mind that even Mohammed found it impossible to eradicate it; and the reverence still paid to the black stone of the Ka'abah at Mecca is a permanent witness to the fact. Why particular stones should excite feelings of awe and worship is a psychological phenomenon which still awaits explanation ; but the fact is an undoubted one and is common to all races of mankind. Indeed, I myself remember how, when as a boy I saw Stonehenge for the