only the caricatures of history, and restores its living features with greater vividness and perfection.

Now we apply the name Saga (or tradition) to the story as it primarily arises and subsists without foreign aid, before the birth of the doubting or enquiring spirit. As such, it is the commencement and the native soil of all narrative and all history, just as a deep religious feeling is always the germ and basis of all high conception of history. For that reason, it possesses a peculiar character and a life of its own, which develops itself the more freely the less its opposite, critical history, is manifested; and therefore it made the greatest progress, and became most independent, in the early antiquity of all nations. We cannot be too mindful of the fact that, in contrast to our modern time, tradition is, as to origin, spirit, impulse, and contents, a thing per se, which may indeed-in its simplest shape at least-under similar conditions, be formed in any place and time, but which (like so much else) only once developed itself in all its capabilities-namely, at the beginning of all history, and in nations which early aspired to high culture. To these it was a rich treasury of memories, and an inexhaustible source of amusement and instruction. In our brief account of it here, however, we always specially refer to the form in which it appears in the Old Testament.

I. Tradition is formed by the co-operation of two powers of the mind-memory and imagination. But the circle where its play is most vivid, and its preservation most faithful, is at first very narrow, and may easily remain so even down to a later period. This circle is the home, the family, the throng of likeminded men, or in its greatest extent, in antiquity especially, one single nation. When therefore, in the remote past, nation separated itself very sharply from nation, each had its peculiar traditions, and each developed any given tradition in its peculiar way; and the shaping due to national character must therefore be admitted as an essential feature in all these traditions. And since the older and more peculiar a people is, the more its religion influences its national character, one can easily understand how powerfully the true religion of the Israelitish people must have preserved its traditions from degenerating into falsehood and exaggeration. Yet even this religion could not change the very nature and import of the traditions; indeed, generally speaking, tradition possesses too great inherent power to be thus constrained; and its power had moreover obtained the upper hand in this nation long before the higher religion arose and began to take root. Accordingly it is needful, even in the present

instance, to pursue this subject further, that we may obtain a deeper insight into the extent to which tradition influenced preeminently the early history of Israel.

1. An event, whether experienced or heard by report, makes a first powerful impression on the imagination. It is often the truest impression that it can produce; but so long as the story remains stationary there, in the mere imagination, it is still only tradition. It commonly remains a considerable time at that stage, however, without being fixed by writing; nay, it may even continue to develop itself for a time in spite of writing; for in ancient times, when the abundance and animation of tradition were great, writing had not so rapid an effect; indeed even now there are conditions in which its influence is small. When an event is very far removed as to time, the imagination forms only an indistinct idea of it, even though it have passed into written record, or live in accredited history. Thus the imagination is an agent in the formation of tradition, and the latter has its most fruitful soil where the former predominates. The substance of tradition, however, finds its storehouse in the memory alone for a longer or shorter time. The memory, however, as the only treasury of tradition, labours under many weaknesses; but easily discerns them, and more or less consciously employs several auxiliaries to remove them.

1) The memory will indeed faithfully receive and retain the striking incidents that have passed through not more than two or three hands, but as the tradition advances the minuter circumstances are gradually obliterated. It is difficult to form a correct idea of the circumstances under which a great event budded and reached maturity, since the eye is more attracted by the beaming light than the dark ground from which it shot forth: but when the first vivid impression has faded away and gone for ever, the bright centre of a great event will still more throw its outer sides into shade. The memory of a very signal event would at last survive only in a very barren and scanty form, if no reaction subsequently arose.

But this reaction is not always wanting. For the imperfect dress in which an important event is handed down cannot satisfy every one and for ever; and the lively imagination of the relator and auditor, rather than leave it so bare, will endeavour to supply the missing details. But when it is no longer possible to complete the story by referring to the original authority, it is left to the imagination of the relator to fill in the concomitant circumstances; and this is a main source of

that discrepancy which is a characteristic of tradition. Trivial variations of this sort are easily found throughout the traditional portions of the Bible; but nothing so well shows the extent to which they may run, as the fact that a story, essentially the same and sprung from one occurrence, is multiplied, by successive changes in the details, into two or more discordant narratives, which, being produced in different places and then subsequently brought together, finally appear as so many different events, and as such are placed beside one another in a book. This happened oftenest, of course, in such stories as were most frequently repeated on account of their popular subject; as in a beautiful tradition of David's youth (1 Sam. xxiv. and xxvi.), and still more markedly in a favourite tradition of the patriarchal time, which is now preserved in three forms (Gen. xii. 10-20, xx. and xxvi. 7-11). The same thing is also met with under similar circumstances in far later times.1 But the spirit of the event-the imperishable and permanent truth contained in it which sinks deeper into the mind the more frequently it is repeated, and, through countless variations in its reproductions, always beams forth like a bright ray-that spirit gains even greater purity and freedom, like the sun rising out of the mists of the morning. We may indeed say that in this respect tradition, dropping or holding loosely the more evanescent parts, but preserving the permanent basis of the story the more tenaciously, performs in its sphere the same purification which time works on all earthly things; and the venerable forms of history, so far from being disfigured or defaced by tradition, come forth from its laboratory born again in a purer light.

2) The memory, however, always tries to lighten its labour. Therefore when, in the constant progress of events, new stories, more important than all that went before, come crowding on out of the recent present, the circle of the older traditions gradually contracts, and, if the accumulation of later matter is very great, contracts so as at length to leave hardly anything of the remoter times but isolated and scanty reminiscences. Thus tradition has also a tendency to suffer the mass of its records to be more and more compressed and melted away, obscured and lost. This may be traced throughout the Old

Cf. the story in the Gospels mentioned in vol. v. p. 363, and foll. The two narratives in Acts v. 19-26 and xii. 4-11 have a like resemblance; and how such cases of reduplication could arise is well shown by the instances mentioned in vol. iv. p. 365.

In the Samaritan Chronicle (chap. xx. and foll., cf. xxix. p. 148, Msc.) the miracle of the sun standing still is made to occur twice, and is expressly emphasized as having so occurred.

Testament; the Hebrew tradition about the earliest times-the main features of which, as we have it, were fixed in the interval from the fourth to the sixth century after Moses-still has a great deal to tell about Moses and his contemporaries; much less about the long sojourn in Egypt, and the three patriarchs; and almost nothing special about the primitive times which preceded these patriarchs, when the nation was not, nor even its fathers,' yet in Canaan. So, too, the Books of Samuel relate many particulars of David's later life passed in the splendour of royalty, but less about his youth before he was king. And everything might be thus traced by stages.

But because this tendency of tradition would in the course of centuries produce its total dissipation, perhaps with the exception of an obscure memory of some very signal events, therefore it all the more seeks some external support to sustain and perpetuate itself. The most natural aids of the memory in all ages are signs; even our letters of the alphabet and books are originally nothing more, and it is only subsequently that they became, by a new art, the means of speaking to those at a distance. But whereas in later times, when writing has got into daily use, this single means becomes universally available, and makes all other auxiliaries less necessary, we have here to conceive times in which writing was used but little or not at all -in which tradition therefore, if once subjected to this tendency to lose its records, fades away more and more irresistibly, and is obliged to have recourse to all possible aids to preserve itself from destruction. Of these aids, in general there are threo kinds, in the following order :

a.) There are recollections which, on account of their peculiar form or power, serve as supports of tradition, and which, although themselves propagated by the memory, afford the memory an abiding aid for preserving history. Songs have this capability in a preeminent degree; and while the charm of their diction secures their own more lasting transmission, the artistic fetters of their form preserve their contents more unalterably than prose can do. But great events beget a multitude of songs, since the elevation of mind which they produce awakens poets, or calls forth an emulation to celebrate memorable incidents; and the earliest kind of poetry, the lyrical, springs so immediately from the events and thoughts which agitate an age, that it reproduces the freshest and truest pictures of them. Moreover, the Hebrews and Arabs were just the peoples among whom every important event and time of great emotion at once generated a multitude of songs, and who

C

retained a preference for this simple kind of poetry in the later stages of their civilisation. Songs therefore became a chief support of tradition; they preserved many historical traits, which otherwise would have been lost; just as, conversely, the historical allusions, of which songs are full, subsequently demanded explanation when the favourite verses were separated. The propagation of songs and traditions thus went hand-inhand, and each could reciprocally illustrate the other; but at every step tradition felt that the best vouchers it could produce were citations from songs. How very much this applies not only to Arabian but also to Hebrew tradition, this work will so frequently prove, especially in its earlier parts, that it is superfluous to cite particular illustrations here; but how decidedly antiquity, down to the time of David, regarded songs as one of the best auxiliaries of the memory, is shown by the story of David's providing for the publication and transmission of his dirge on Jonathan and Saul, by causing the sons of Judah to learn it correctly by heart,' which in our days would be equivalent to sending it to the press.

Proverbs which have an historical origin afford a similar support to tradition. For genuine popular proverbs, which have sprung from memorable events, do not always contain propositions of naked truth, but often allude to the incident which gave them birth; and as they thus require history for their own intelligibility, they preserve many historical reminiscences which would otherwise be lost. That Hebrew tradition-in this respect also like that of the Arabs-leans especially on these supports, is evident from cases like Gen. x. 9 and 1 Sam. x.11. cf. xix. 24, where the proverb is cited. Some cases of this sort, however, require close observation to detect them in the present form of the narrative: thus the stories of Gideon and Jephthah (Judges vi.-viii., xii.) would not by any means have been preserved so completely, if they had not been sustained by a number of proverbs. Occasionally even a new story has been formed, by later development, out of a proverbial phrase about a remarkable incident of antiquity; of which the passage in Judges vi. 36-40 is a striking example.

This appears to be the meaning of np, 2 Sam. i. 18; for that it means bow,' and thus became a casual name of the song, is highly improbable from the mere connection in which it occurs; it must stand for the Aramaic, and signify rightly, correctly.' There is similar evidence in Ps. lx. 1 [title], which inscrip

tion may belong to the original Davidic portion of this Psalm. The expressions in Deut. xxxi. 19 et seq. are, on the other hand, coloured by the Deuteronomist's special object, but may still evince the value attached in antiquity to historical popular

songs.