Note 384 — Chapter V · THE MOST PROMINENT FIGURES IN HEBREW MYTHOLOGY.

For the description of the Sun as an Opener, I am enabled to insert a supplementary datum, borrowed from a book which was published when p. 97 of the present work (to which I refer back) was already printed. In a cuneiform Hymn to Samas, the Sun-god, he is addressed thus:

O Samas! from the back of the heavens thou hast come forth:

The barrier of the shining heavens thou hast opened;

Yea the gate of the heavens thou hast opened.

(German translation of George Smith’s Chaldean Account of Genesis, with additions by Dr. Fr. Delitzsch, Leipzig, 1876.) The passage quoted is one of Delitzsch’s additions, p. 284. I think this Hymn is a remarkable illustration of our hypothesis that Yiphtâch, ‘the Opener,’ is a linguistic description of the Sun.