Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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t ALL ROADS LEAD T0 THULE. 25 ornamentation were symbols of volcanic clouds ot' smoke ris- ing from said craters. The names of Cain's sons fGen. iv. 18j are names of lnountains and particular localities. Naamah, the sister ot' Tubal-Cain, is the oasis Oncise, both names signi- fying the lovely. The Umar-k set upon Cain, by which Gvcry one should know him, was his singular clothing, his gazelle-skin clothing. The confusion of human language at the tower of Babel consisted simply of' the rise of dialeetic dit'- ferences among the Cainites in consequence ot' some invasion of their primitive home in Northern Syria. Abraham's bosom is the oasis Ruhbe, while Dives's place of torment was the water- less volcanic northern edge ot' it, et ceterct, et cetera. To a believer in the canons ot' sane historic investigation and criti- cism, the only value which this strange production possesses, is found, first, inthe illustration which it gives ot' the imperish- able interest of the Eden problem, even to those who deny the historical character of the Bibleg and, second, in the new proof' it affords, that all attempts to solve the problem in this isolated audi micro-topographical method are predestined to perpetual failure. , The time for studies of such narrowness as tl1is is past. The problem of the original home of the human race is not barely a question of Hebrew exegesis,-it is a race-problem. Every ancient people had an ancestral line running straight back to the primeval home of undistributed humanity. Each of these peoples l1ad sacredly preserved traditions of the events of that far-oft' morning-time of the world,-traditions so full ot' resemblances that it is impossible not to ascribe to them a common origin. In attempting to locate the primitive home of the race, therefore, the comparative method of investigation is the only one from which solid results can be expected. And, as in the interpretation of the mysterious land-marks enumerated in Gen. ii. 10-14, all scholarship and all exeget- ical ingenuity have confessedly been baflled, we must conclude that key, to a correct understanding of them is to be sought outside. 'of -the record, and that it can nowhere so appropriately and 'hopefullyibe sought as in the consentient traditions of the earljf'p'eb'ples, ot' the world. But, as demonstrated beyond contradiction in the pages of Paradise Found, these oldest

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24 BOSTON 'UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. and speculations of ethnologists and zoiilogists as to the begin- nings of human life? It nowhere even attempts to connect NVest-Shemitie thought and tradition with that oi' the East- Shemitie Assyrians and Babylonians. He denies the probabil- ity that the writer of the H didactic poem had ever heard of the Euphrates oi' Mesopotamia. He not only rationalizes away supernatural features by reducing the Edenic Cherubim to I-Iauranie volcanoes, but also docs all manner of arbitrary violence to those portions ot' the sacred text which relate to natural things. Cain is, in his view, the same as Adam. The story oi' the clothing of the first pair with skins, grew out ol' the habit of' a North Syrian tribe oi' gazelle hunters, who, to this day, wear skins. The two wives oi' Lamach, Adah and Zillah, were two rocky ridges of hills, whose modern names are Adscha and Selma. Enoch, who walked with God, was a figment of the imagination, - an abstraction :representing one-quarter part of the Egyptian Sothis period. I-lis H translation to heaven was simply the snpersession oi' the Egyptian time-reckoning by a new system? The open flowers in the ornamenta- tion of the interior of Solomon's temple were symbolieal of the open craters of' volcanoes. So the palm-trees in the same 1 Once he makes n hasty allusion to what we may call The VVarfare of Science, in its own camp, using Karl Vogt to dispose of Hneckel's Limurin : Karl Vogt verspoitet Haeekel, und Andere, dass sie ans Mada- gaskar den Rest eines weitcn Continents maehen, der, wahrseheinlleh zur Strafe fiir die Erzeugung des Menschen, griisstuntheils vom Meere ersaiift wurde, wiihrend doch die bis jetzt konstatirten Thatsuchen geniigen, um den nnwiderlegichen Beweis zu liefern dass alle jene Hypothesen iiber die Existcnz elnes Continents, do-r in den neueren Erdepochen Madagaskar mit dem iihrigen Festlande verhunden und sogar dem Menschengnschlechte als Wiege gedient hahen sell. eben nur Triinmereien ohne irgendwelehe thatsiichllehe Bcgriinilung sind, und dass das herrliche Lemnria. mit seinen Wiilmlern und den darln ulnherkletternden Almen des Menschen nicnmls eine andere Existenz gehabt haben kann als die es noch hente auf dem Boden des Meeres hat, Madagaskar aber blieb an der Schwelle der Miueenpcriode stehen und vermochte dieselbe nicht zu tibersehrelten, es hat seit der Eoeenzeit eine unahhiinglge geographische Region fpp, 5, fp, 2 Der Zusatz der Scthitentafel zu Hanok ' er wandclte mit Elohim und war nicht mehr' lasst sich recht wohl auch so ausdeuten : Der fabelhafte Vogel Phijnix, der die friihere Zeitrechnung rcpriisentirt und dann als ersehienen gedacht wurde, wenu dieselbe Gestirnung nach Verlauf von bcstimmteu Jahresreihen wieder eintraf, wandelt nach Einfiihrung der neuen Zeitrechnung mit Gott und war nicht mehr OJ p. 106.

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i 26 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. ethnic traditions everywhere point the searcher for the cradle of humanity, not to Mesopotamia, nor U Limuria, nor Ar- menia, nor Pamir., nor Syria, but to a primeval 't mountain of the world in the highest North, - a land of light, the start- ing-point of all sublunary life, the navel of the earth, the Atlantis of the Egyptian priests, the Atlas-station of the Greeks, the Nysa ofthe Dionysia, the Tulan or Tollan of the Toltecs, the Tula of the Lenapi, the Thule of the Romans, the Avalon of the Kclts. In some instances, the evidences of this fact are curiously if not comically embarrassing to the advocates of new hypotheses respecting the cradle of humanity, or respecting the origin of the Paradisaie tradition. For striking illustrations of this last statement, it is only necessary to refer to the recently published theories of E. Beau- vois, and Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourgg the former relating to the Paradise ideas of the Kelts, and the latter to those of the prehistoric tribes of Mexico and Central America. In his learned papers entitled L'EIys6e Tmnsatlaintique, and L'Eclen Occidemalf the first of these writers has brought together a most interesting and valuable mass of materialrillus- trative of the beliefs of the different branches of the .Keltic family, touching the Earthly Paradise. Without dogmatically asserting it, he suggests that the Grmco-Roman ideas of an Elysium at the ends of the earth, of the Islands of the Blessed in or beyond the Atlantic Ocean, of Ogygia the Eden-like isle of Kalypso, of the land of the Fountain of Youth, and so on, were all borrowed from this widespread people, who, in the march ot' nations into Europe, preceded the ancestors of both those classic peoples, and at the dawn of historic times were found Echelormd along the shores of the Atlantic from Celtiberia to the British Isles? But whence did the Kelts themselves derive them? To this question also, M. Beauvois gives no dog- matic answerg but he everywhere suggests that the historic basis of all these traditions is to be sought in an early acquaintance 1 Published in the Revue de Vhistoirc des Religions. Paris, 1883. pp. 273- 318, 673-727. 2 ln a note to p. 274, M. Beauvois seems very plainly and strongly to intimate, that, in his opinion. the whole classic pantheon originated on this west coast of Europe, among the Keltic tribes.