Note 26.1 — The Evolution of Religion

The religious affinities discoverable between the earlier and later “Mediterranean” systems may be classified according as they appear in the legends, in nomenclature and terminology, in external symbols and liturgical objects, in hieratic institutions, and finally in the ideas, aspirations, and concepts of faith. As regards legend and mythology, a great historic religion may of course claim to be free from all mythology; nevertheless it is a matter of experience that popular legends are sure at some period earlier or later to creep in, for the people insist on telling the old stories under changed names. I myself have heard the immemorial story of Odysseus walking inland with his oar, which the rustic mistakes for a winnowing-fan, told about St Peter, St Paul, and St John on the coast of the Peloponnese; just as an old Norse legend about Odin and Baldur is retold of Christ and St Peter.26.1 And students of mediæval hagiology will discover more and more clearly various fragments of pre-Christian mythology embedded in the legends of the saints. Such facts are the material of comparative folk-lore, which plays a useful but quite subordinate part in the work of comparative religion. Legends have indeed their own independent interest, poetical, ethical, and other; but the importance of mere mythology in the study of religion has been often much overrated; St Augustine, mistaking Greek legends for Greek religion, could discover no morality in it at all,26.2 and modern scholars have inherited the fallacy. Myths are often irresponsible, capricious, volatile, and flit like a vapour round the solid structure of real belief and ritual. A high religion may attract low myths: some of our own are not spotless, but Christianity can ignore them. The myth that is an essential fact for the student of religion is that which enshrines some living religious idea or institution, or one which proves the survival of some ritual or faith that belonged to an older system. I may note a few of this kind which illustrate the affinities of Judaic, Christian, and pagan legend. The cessation of human-sacrifice in the Mediterranean area, the awakening of the conviction that the practice was abhorrent to a merciful God, implied so momentous a change in religious and moral thought and practice that it would be strange if it left no legendary record of itself. We may discern one in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice; to which we find a very striking and close parallel in the Laconian legend of Helen, whose father intended to sacrifice her to God in order to stay a plague:27.1 the eagle, the messenger of God, swooped down and snatched the knife from the sacrificer’s hand, and let it fall on a kid that was pasturing near. Again, we are all familiar with the story of Jephtha’s vow: the fact is not so well known that a story identical in nearly every detail was told of Idomeneus, the Cretan hero,28.1 who vowed that if he returned home from the Trojan war he would sacrifice to God the first thing that he met on landing: his daughter was the first that met him—and Idomeneus “did with her according to his vow,” or intended to do so, and the people exiled him for it. Different from these, but belonging to the inner circle, so to speak, of sacred narrative, are one or two Gospel stories which are not peculiar to Palestine or to our sacred books. The miraculous star that guides sacred personages on a divine errand must be an Anatolian star-legend, for it is told of Æneas and his voyage to Italy.28.2 And a critical appreciation of the style of Hellenic folk-lore detects at once a marked Hellenic colour in the legends that gather around the birth and rearing of the Virgin in the apocryphal Gospel of St James. More important and suggestive of much more is the parallelism that we discover between the story of our Lord’s temptation and the temptation of Zarathustra in the Zend-Avesta: here also the evil god offers the holy prophet the kingdoms of the world if he will fall down and worship him.29.1