The question as to the nature and the com- ponents of man’s personality was one that could not fail to engage the attention of ancient thought in other quarters as well. Along with the ob- servations which point to its answer, it always forced itself afresh to the front, and in particular exercised an influence even upon the formation of speech. But nowhere did the attempts to solve the problem stand in so close a relation to religion as was the case in Israel.
2. It is otherwise with those questions belonging to the realm of psychology which relate to the destiny of man, the goal of the development of humanity or of one particular people. Oestions of this kind presuppose a greater advance of thought, and, above all, a rich historical experi- ence. Reflexions on his destiny are quite beyond man in a state of nature; and, even where a com- mencement has been made with political and social order, he holds to empirical results, without in- quiring after the Whence and the Why. To belong to a particular people with particular settlements and under the protection of a particular national god, is as much a matter of course to him as to have an occupation by which he procures a liveli- hood. But what is remote from the reflexion of the individual already occupied the popular mind collectively in primeval times, and led_to those profound speculations which meet us to-day in the form of the myth, i.e. the clothing of speculative thoughts in history. The people of Israel are no more strangers to such myths than are other nations, and in this particular they have con- formed to the course which we may observe in the case of alZ ancient peoples: they have taken over from prehistoric times a store of myths and legends, to which they have then given a particular development on their own soil, subjecting them in part to transformation. The manner in which this has been done gives the most valuable indica- tions as to the inmost character of the popular mind. And here we come face to face with the fact that in this point Israel holds a unique position. The myths taken over from foreign heathen soil have ‘been so transformed and filled with truly religious contents that they have become for all time a part of the revealed religion of Israel. For we cannot consent to regard such
* From the standpoint of trichotomy this would have to be expressed something to the effect that reason forsook him, while the functions of the ‘soul’ continued unimpaired. But the point is that no such distinction between ruah and nephesh is known to the Hebrew mind.
and wisdom.
a transformation as if it were merely the acci- dental result of the inward impulse which drives men to religious and philosophical speculation, but as a fruit of the spirit of God working in Israel as the people of revelation. And the cir- cumstance that the spirit of God resorted to this clothing of the profoundest religious thoughts in
the form of childlike naive narratives, appears to
us so far from being a cause of offence that we see in this accommodation to the human under- standing an evidence of superior Divine pedagogic (a) This remark applies in a very special manner to that myth which first concerns
us here, namely, the story of Paradise and the Fail (Gn 2 and 3); for this is intended to answer the question as to man’s original destiny and the reasons for his actual condition now.
While the derivation of the Biblical story of the Fall from a Babylonian source* is as yet unproved,
in spite of numerous attempts to establish it, its connexion with the parallel narrative in the Zend religion does not admit of an
doubt. That the
latter, moreover, is not a later corruption of what, according to the orthodox conception, is the
strictly historical narrative of the Bible, is evident from the simple fact that the dualistic basis (7.e.
the opposition, essential to the Zend religion, be-
tween a good and an evil deity) manifestly played a ruling part in the original narrative. The Hebrew narrator, whose conception of God left
no room for this dualism, has got rid of it only
by the difficult expedient of making the serpent (which in the Zend religion is the embodiment of the evil deity) a creature of God, like all the rest of the animals. In this way, indeed, the question remains unanswered how this creature of God comes to step out of the ranks of the rest and to assume a hostile attitude towards the Creator. We shall make no attempt here at an analysis of the narrative as a masterly, unsurpassed ac- count of the origin of sin. We remark only that we cannot, with many moderns, find its deepest meaning exhausted by setting it down as a de- scription of how sin comes into being in the case of every individual, or of how man rose from a condition of primitive rudeness and unconscious- ness to conscious freedom and culture. On the contrary, Christian dogmatics was and is quite within its right in discovering in Gn 2.3 an account of a Fall, ie. of the origin of sin and the consequent woes of the world. _Man’s original state, according to the Divine will, was one of undisturbed fellowship with God, who also had His dwelling-place within the sphere of man’s abode, the Garden of Eden. The root of sin is pride, which wilfully seeks to go beyond the bounds prescribed by God, and produces disregard of His clear prohibition. But the fruits of dis- obedience are the loss of the former intimate communion with God, expulsion from His home, a life of endless toil and trouble, and at last death in place of the eternal duration of life that was formerly open to him. This myth has been called a lament over the loss of Paradise, and has been set in parallelism with the Greek myth of the Golden Age. ‘There is justification for both these ways of looking at it. But with all this the main point must not be overlooked, namely, the em-