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and powers which belonged to his father… The feminine counterpart or wife of the chief god was usually a local goddess of little or no importance; on the other hand, her son by the chief god was nearly as important as his father, because it was assumed that he would succeed to his rank and throne when the elder god had passed away. The conception of the triad or trinity is, in Egypt, probably as old as the belief in gods, and it seems to be based on the anthropomorphic views which were current in the earliest times about them” (E. A. Wallis Budge,
The Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1904, i. 113
sq.). If the Christian doctrine of the Trinity took shape under Egyptian influence, the function originally assigned to the Holy Spirit may have been that of the divine mother. In the apocryphal
Gospel to the Hebrews, as Mr. F. C. Conybeare was kind enough to point out to me, Christ spoke of the Holy Ghost as his mother. The passage is quoted by Origen (
Comment. in Joan. II. vol. iv. col. 132, ed. Migne), and runs as follows: “My mother the Holy Spirit took me a moment ago by one of my hairs and carried me away to the great Mount Tabor.” Compare Origen,
In Jeremiam Hom. XV. 4, vol. iii. col. 433, ed. Migne. In the reign of Trajan a certain Alcibiades, from Apamea in Syria, appeared at Rome with a volume in which the Holy Ghost was described as a stalwart female about ninety-six miles high and broad in proportion. See Hippolytus,
Refut. omnium haeresium, ix. 13, p. 462, ed. Duncker and Schneidewin. The Ophites represented the Holy Spirit as “the first woman,” “mother of all living,” who was beloved by “the first man” and likewise by “the second man,” and who conceived by one or both of them “the light, which they call Christ.” See H. Usener,
Das Weihnachtsfest, pp. 116
sq., quoting Irenaeus, i. 28. As to a female member of the Trinity, see further
id.,
Dreiheit, ein Versuch mythologischer Zahlenlehre (Bonn, 1903), pp. 41
sqq.; Gibbon,
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 1. vol. ix. p. 261, note g (Edinburgh, 1811). Mr. Conybeare tells me that Philo Judaeus, who lived in the first half of the first century of our era, constantly defines God as a Trinity in Unity, or a Unity in Trinity, and that the speculations of this Alexandrian Jew deeply influenced the course of Christian thought on the mystical nature of the deity. Thus it seems not impossible that the ancient Egyptian doctrine of the divine Trinity may have been distilled through Philo into Christianity. On the other hand it has been suggested that the Christian Trinity is of Babylonian origin. See H. Zimmern, in E. Schrader's
Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament,
3 pp. 418
sq., 440.
14
L. W. King, Babylonian Religion and Mythology (London, 1899), p. 8.
15
Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, 17.
16
This is in substance the explanation briefly suggested by F. Liebrecht, and developed more fully and with certain variations of detail by S. Reinach. See F. Liebrecht, Des Gervasius von Tilbury Otia Imperialia (Hanover, 1856), p. 180; S. Reinach, Cultes, mythes et religions, iii. (Paris, 1908), pp. 1 sqq. As to the worship of Tammuz or Adonis in Syria and Greece see my Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Second Edition (London, 1907). In Plutarch's narrative confusion seems to have arisen through the native name (Tammuz) of the deity, which either accidentally coincided with that of the pilot (as S. Reinach thinks) or was erroneously transferred to him by a narrator (as F. Liebrecht supposed). An entirely different explanation of the story has been proposed by Dr. W. H. Roscher. He holds that the god whose death was lamented was the great ram-god of Mendes in Egypt, whom Greek writers constantly mistook for a goat-god and identified with Pan. A living ram was always revered as an incarnation of the god, and when it died there was a great mourning throughout all the land of Mendes. Some stone coffins of the sacred animal have been found in the ruins of the city. See Herodotus, ii. 46, with A. Wiedemann's commentary; W. H. Roscher, “Die Legende vom Tode des groszen Pan,” Fleckeisen's Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, xxxviii. (1892) pp. 465-477. Dr. Roscher shews that Thamus was an Egyptian name, comparing Plato, Phaedrus, p. 274 d e; Polyaenus, iii. 2. 5; Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. Tyan. vi. 5. 108. As to the worshipful goat, or rather ram, of Mendes, see also Diodorus Siculus, i. 84; Strabo, xvii. 1. 19, p. 802; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ii. 39, p. 34, ed. Potter; Suidas, s. v. Μένδην.
17
F. Liebrecht, op. cit. pp. 180 sq.; W. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites,2 pp. 412, 414. The latter writer observes with justice that “the wailing for 'Uncūd, the divine Grape-cluster, seems to be the last survival of an old vintage piaculum.” “The dread of the worshippers,” he adds, “that the neglect of the usual ritual would be followed by disaster, is particularly intelligible if they regarded the necessary operations of agriculture as involving the violent extinction of a particle of divine life.” On the mortality of the gods in general and of the Teutonic gods in particular, see J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,4 i. 263 sqq.; compare E. H. Meyer, Mythologie der Germanen (Strasburg, 1903), p. 288. As to the mortality of the Irish gods, see Douglas Hyde, Literary History of Ireland (London, 1899), pp. 80 sq.
18
“Der Muata Cazembe und die Völkerstämme der Maravis, Chevas, Muembas, Lundas und andere von Süd-Afrika,” Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde, vi. (1856) p. 395; F. T. Valdez, Six Years of a Traveller's Life in Western Africa (London, 1861), ii. 241 sq.
19
See Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 6, 7 sq.
20
See Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 26 sqq.
21
W. W. Gill, Myths and Songs of the South Pacific (London, 1876), p. 163.
22
H. A. Junod, Les Ba-Ronga (Neuchatel, 1898), pp. 381 sq.
23
W. Barbrooke Grubb, An Unknown People in an Unknown Land (London, 1911), p. 120.
24
T. C. Hodson, The Naga Tribes of Manipur (London, 1911), p. 159.
25
Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda (London, 1911), p. 281.
26
Ch. Wilkes, Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition (London, 1845), iii. 96.
27
U.S. Exploring Expedition, Ethnology and Philology, by H. Hale (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 65. Compare Th. Williams, Fiji and the Fijians,2 i. 183; J. E. Erskine, Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific (London, 1853), p. 248.
28
G. Turner, Samoa, p. 335.
29
Martin Flad, A Short Description of the Falasha and Kamants in Abyssinia, p. 19.
30
H. Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,2 i. (Berlin, 1906) p. 81; id., Herakleitos von Ephesos2 (Berlin, 1909), p. 50, Frag. 136, ψυχαὶ ἀρηίφατοι καθαρώτεραι ἢ ἐνὶ νούσοις.
31
F. de Castelnau, Expédition dans les parties centrales de l'Amérique du Sud, iv. (Paris, 1851) p. 380. Compare id. ii. 49 sq. as to the practice of the Chavantes, a tribe of Indians on the Tocantins river.
32
R. Southey, History of Brazil, iii. (London, 1819) p. 619; R. F. Burton, in The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse (Hakluyt Society, London, 1874), p. 122.
33
C. von Dittmar, “Über die Koräken und die ihnen sehr nahe verwandten Tschuktschen,” Bulletin de la Classe
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