Hebrew Myths (21 page)

Some days later, the sorrowing Amitlai, pale from lack of sleep, returned to the cave where she had left her son, but found no sign of him; and her tears flowed afresh to think him devoured by wild beasts. On the riverbank she saw a grown boy, and said: ‘Peace be with you!’, whereupon the following colloquy took place:

Amitlai returned, and when Terah heard her tale, he bowed low before the King, and asked leave to address him. Nimrod said: ‘Lift up your head, and say what you would have me hear!’ Terah told him all, repeating Abram’s message; and Nimrod blanched. He asked his chief princes and councillors: ‘What shall be done?’ They cried: ‘Divine King, do you fear a little child? Does not your kingdom hold princes by the thousand thousand, besides countless lesser nobles and overseers? Send the least of your nobles to secure the child and shut him in your royal prison.’ But Nimrod asked: ‘What infant ever grew to boyhood within twenty days, or sent me a message by his mother that there is a God in Heaven who sees yet cannot be seen, and whose glory fills the world?’

Then Satan, dressed in raven-black silk, prostrated himself before the King and, being given leave to raise his head, said: ‘Why be confounded by a child’s babble? Let me offer you good counsel!’ Nimrod asked: ‘What counsel is that?’ Satan answered: ‘Throw open your armouries and deal out weapons to every prince, noble and warrior in your land, so that they may secure the child and bring him here to serve you.’

This Nimrod did; but when Abram saw the approaching army, he prayed for deliverance, and God interposed a cloud of darkness between him and his enemies. They ran in terror to the King, crying: ‘It were better if we departed from Ur!’ Nimrod gave them leave of absence, paid for their journey and fled himself to the Land of Babel.
²³⁹

***

1
. The birth of Abraham is laconically recorded in
Genesis
XI. 27: ‘Terah begot Abram, Nahor and Haran.’ Myths of Abraham’s miraculous birth and his escape from King Nimrod have survived among the Near Eastern Jews. Both these versions are midrashic, and draw on a common stock of Indo-European mythology. The second was sung until recently as a Ladino (i.e. Sephardic Spanish) ballad at birth celebrations in Salonica.

2
. Lord Raglan, in
The Hero
, examines myths of many diverse heroes—Greek, Latin, Persian, Celtic and Germanic, listing their common characteristics. The hero’s mother is always a princess, his reputed father a king and her near kinsman; the circumstances of his conception are unusual, and he is also reputed to be the son of a god; at his birth, an attempt is made, usually by his father or grandfather, to kill him. The hero is spirited away by his mother, reared in a far country by lowly foster-parents; nothing is known of his childhood, but on reaching manhood, he returns home, overcomes the king, sometimes also a dragon, giant or wild beast, marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor, and becomes king himself.

3
. Sometimes the child is set adrift in a boat by his mother, as were Moses and Romulus; sometimes, exposed on a mountainside, as were Cyrus, Paris and Oedipus—though Oedipus is also said to have been set adrift. The later stages of the hero’s progress, his assumption of power, successful wars, and eventual tragic death, are equally constant. The myth represents a dramatic ritual in honour of the Divine Child, the fertile Spirit of the New Year. His ‘advent’, which gave its name to the rites at Eleusis near Athens, was celebrated in a sacred cave, where shepherds and cattlemen carried him by torchlight. The Spirit of the New Year, in fact, defeats the Spirit of the Old Year, marries the Earth-princess, becomes King, and is himself superseded at the close of his reign.

4
. Abraham, however, like all succeeding patriarchs who obeyed God, was spared the disgraceful end of Romulus (torn in pieces by his fellow-shepherds); of Cyrus (impaled by a Scythian queen); of Paris (killed in the fall of Troy); of Oedipus, Jason and Theseus (all dethroned and exiled). Moses, though forbidden to enter the Promised Land for his sin of smiting the rock at Marah, died nobly, earned a splendid funeral and an interment by God Himself.

5
. The only Israelite for whom almost the entire mythic sequence has been claimed was Jesus of Nazareth; yet his own people repudiated the divine parentage awarded him by Greek-speaking Christians. The Gospels make Jesus come of royal stock, his putative father being a close kinsman of his mother; shepherds worshipped him in the cave, he lay cradled in the usual winnowing-basket, astrologers saw his star in the East, King Herod murdered the infants of Bethlehem. Jesus was then spirited away across
the desert, and returned incognito to Israel years later. The Apocryphal Gospels also celebrate his precocity as a child.

6
. Certain elements in the two Abraham nativity myths may be borrowed from Christian sources, though that of Cyrus told by Herodotus comes close enough to the first version—wicked king, astrologers and substituted victim. Moreover, Cyrus had been praised in
Isaiah
XL–XLVIII as God’s servant chosen for the destruction of Babylon and the freeing of Nebuchadrezzar’s Judaean captives; and remained a national hero in Israel even after he failed to fulfill all Isaiah’s prophecies.

7
. In the second version, Gabriel’s lacteous finger recalls the beasts—wolves, bears, mares, goats, bitches—divinely sent to suckle such heroes as Oedipus, Romulus, Hippothous, Pelias, Paris and Aegisthus; the riverside, and the murder of innocents, recall the story of Moses.

8
. A child who walks, talks and grows up soon after birth occurs in the Greek myths of Hermes and Achilles, and in the
Hanes Taliesin
, a Welsh Divine Child myth.

9
. That Amitlai wrapped Abraham in her own garment is understood by Near Eastern Jews as the still prevalent custom of dressing infant sons as daughters, to ward off ill-luck. In the original story, however, this garment is more likely to have been a token by which she afterwards recognized Abraham. Her
qolsani
ailment may stand for
calcinaccio
—a fever burning like a lime-kiln.

10
. The mention of Abram’s brother Haran seems to be a gloss on the text identifying him with Nahor, King of Harran (see 23.
1
and 36.
5
).

(
a
) Some say that Gabriel raised the boy Abram on his shoulders and, in the twinkling of an eye, flew through the air from Ur to Babel. In the market place, Abram met his father Terah, who had fled there with Nimrod. Terah at once warned the King that his wonderworking son had pursued them to the city; and Nimrod, though greatly afraid, sent for him. Abram entered the palace, testified in a loud voice to the Living God before the whole court and, shaking Nimrod’s throne, named him a blasphemer. At this, the royal idols ranged all about fell flat on their faces, and so did the King himself. After two hours and a half, he dared raise his head and inquire faintly: ‘Was that the voice of your ever-living God?’ Abram answered: ‘No, Abram spoke, the least of His creatures.’ Nimrod then acknowledged God’s power, and let Terah depart in peace. Terah accordingly went to Harran, accompanied by Abram, Sarai and Lot.
²⁴⁰

(
b
) Others say that Abram returned to Babel full of wisdom from studying under Noah. He found his father Terah still commanding King Nimrod’s armies, and still bowing down to idols of wood and stone—twelve great ones and many lesser. Abram thereupon asked his mother Amitlai to kill and dress a lamb. Having set the dish before these idols, he watched whether any of them would eat. When they never moved a finger, he mocked, and said to Amitlai: ‘Could it be that the dish is too small, or the lamb lacking in savour? Pray kill three other lambs, and season them more delicately!’ She did so, and he offered this dish also to the idols; but again they never stirred.

The Spirit of God came upon Abram. He took an axe and hacked them in pieces, leaving untouched only the largest; then put the axe into its hand and went away. Terah had heard the noise and, running into the hall, saw what destruction his son had made. He sent for Abram and cried angrily: ‘What is this?’

Abram answered: ‘I offered food to your idols; doubtless they have quarrelled over it. Has not the largest of them hacked the lesser ones in pieces?’

Terah said: ‘Do not deceive me! These are images of wood and stone, fashioned by the hand of man.’

Abram asked: ‘If so, how can they eat the food that you offer them daily? Or how can they answer your prayers?’ He then preached the Living God, reminding Terah of the Deluge, God’s punishment for wickedness. While Terah doubted what answer to make, Abram caught up the axe, and hacked the surviving idol in pieces.

Terah thereupon denounced Abram to King Nimrod, who at once imprisoned him. Afterwards, when the astrologers recognized Abram as the destined Emperor, Nimrod ordered him and Haran, his brother, to be thrown bound into a fiery furnace. Flames soon consumed the twelve men chosen for this task, and also Haran, who was an unbeliever; but Abram stood unhurt with his garments unsinged, though fire had scorched away the ropes that bound him. Nimrod cried to his remaining guards: ‘Cast this felon into the furnace, or you shall all die!’ But they lamented, crying: ‘Would the King condemn us to be burned, as were our comrades?’

Then Satan prostrated himself before Nimrod, and said: ‘Give me timber, ropes and tools! I will build my lord a siege-catapult to hurl Abram into the fiery furnace from a convenient distance.’ Nimrod agreed, and Satan set to work. First he tested the catapult, using huge boulders; then took Abram and bound him. Though implored by Amitlai to bow down and worship the King, Abram said: ‘No, Mother; for water can quench the fire of man, but not the fire of God!’ Then he prayed, and instantly the flames died down; moreover, God made the logs bud, blossom and yield fruit, until the furnace became a royal pleasure garden in which Abram walked freely among angels.

(
c
) All the astrologers, councillors and courtiers then praised the Living God; and Nimrod, standing abashed, gave Abram his two chief slaves, by name Oni and Eliezer, besides rich treasures of silver, gold and crystal. Three hundred of Nimrod’s men also joined Abram, when he went away to Harran.
²⁴¹

***

1
. These legends have no Scriptural authority.
Genesis
tells only that Abraham married his half-sister Sarai, and that Terah took them and his nephew Lot from Ur of the Chaldees to Harran, where he died, and where God later commanded Abraham: ‘Go hence to the land which I will
show you!’ (
Genesis
XII. 1). But according to a tradition quoted by Stephen, a Greek-speaking Egyptian Jew (
Acts
VII. 2–4), God gave Abraham this order while he still lived at Ur.

2
. The tale of the fiery furnace may have been told to fortify the midrashic explanation of ‘Ur Kasdim’ as meaning ‘furnace of the Chaldeans’. It is drawn partly from
Daniel
III, according to which Daniel and his three companions were thrown into a fiery furnace by King Nebuchadrezzar for refusing to worship idols, but escaped unharmed; partly from
Bel and the Dragon
, an apocryphal addition to
Daniel
, according to which Daniel exposed the powerlessness of King Cyrus’s idols, proved that his priests had themselves eaten the food-offerings set before Bel’s golden image, and was permitted by Cyrus to pull down his temple. Gabriel helped Daniel (
Daniel
VIII. 16 and IX. 21), as he here helps Abraham.

3
. Both legends are based on a prophecy in
Jeremiah
:

(
a
) When Terah died in Harran, God ordered Abram to visit Canaan, the land of his inheritance, and laid a curse on all who opposed him. Abram set out at the age of seventy-five, with Sarai, Lot, their retainers, cattle and treasures; said goodbye to Nahor, and journeyed southward. At Shechem, God appeared again to Abram, saying: ‘This is the land which your children shall possess!’ Having built Him an altar there, Abram next pitched his tent between Bethel and Ai; but famine drove him on farther, until he reached the border of Egypt, where he warned Sarai: ‘If the Egyptians know you to be my wife, they will grow jealous, I fear, and kill me. Tell them only: “I am Abram’s sister.”’