The tradition of the Cashinaua, the aborigines of western Brazil, is narrated as follows: "The lightnings flashed and the thunders roared terribly and all were afraid. Then the heaven burst and the fragments fell down and killed everything and everybody. Heaven and earth changed places.
Nothing that had life was left upon the earth." u
In this tradition are included the same elements: the lightnings and thunderings, "the bursting of heaven," the fall of meteorites. About the change of places between heaven and earth there is more to say, and I shall not postpone the subject for long.
8 Olrik, Ragnarok (German ed.), p. 446.
9 Ibid., p. 406. The tradition was told by the Eskimos to P. Egede (1734-1740).
10 L. Frobenius, Die Weltanschauung der Naturvolker (1898), pp. 355-357.
11 Bellamy, Moons, Myths and Man, p. 80.
CHAPTER 4
Boiling Earth and Sea
TWO CELESTIAL BODIES were driven near to each other. The interior of the terrestrial globe pushed toward the exterior, The earth, disturbed in its rotation, developed heat. The land surface became hot. Various sources of many peoples describe the melting of the earth's surface and the boiling of the sea.
The earth burst and lava flowed. The Mexican sacred book, Popol Vuh, the Manuscript Cakchiquel, the Manuscript Troano all record how the mountains in every part of the Western Hemisphere simultaneously gushed lava. The volcanoes that opened along the entire chain of the Cordilleras and in other mountain ranges and on flat land vomited fire, vapor, and torrents of lava. These and other Mexican sources relate how, at the closing hours of the age that was brought to an end by the rain of fire, mountains swelled under the pressure of molten masses and new ridges rose; new volcanoes sprang out of the earth, and streams of lava flowed out of the cleft earth.1 .-.Events underlying Greek and Mexican traditions are narrated in the Scriptures.
"The mountains shake with the swelling . . . the earth melted." 2 "Clouds and darkness . . . fire . .
. the earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax." 3 "He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke." * "The earth trembled . . . the mountains melted . . . even that Sinai." 5 "He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers.
1 See Seler, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, II, 798. 2 Psalms 46 : 3-6. 8 Psalms 97 : 2-5. *
Psalms 104 : 32. " Song of Deborah, Judges 5 : 4-5.
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robin-bobin
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. . . The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned . . . yea, the world, and all that dwell therein." 8
The rivers steamed, and even the bottom of the sea boiled here and there. "The sea boiled, all the shores of the ocean boiled, all the middle of it boiled," says the Zend-Avesta. The star Tistrya made the sea boil.7
The traditions of the Indians retain the memory of this boiling of the water in river and sea. The tribes of British Columbia telclass="underline" "Great clouds appeared . . . such a great heat came, that finally the water boiled. People jumped into the streams and lakes to cool themselves, and died." 8 On the North Pacific coast of America the tribes insist that the ocean boiled: "It grew very hot . . .
many animals jumped into the water to save themselves, but the water began to boil." 9 The Indians of the Southern Ute tribe in Colorado record in their legends that the rivers boiled.10
Jewish tradition, as preserved in the rabbinical sources, declares that the mire at the bottom of the Sea of Passage was heated. "The Lord fought against the Egyptians with the pillar of cloud and fire. The mire was heated to the boiling point by the pillar of fire." n The rabbinical sources say also that the pillar of fire and of smoke leveled mountains.12
Hesiod in his Theogony, relating the upheaval caused by a celestial collision, says: "The huge earth groaned. ... A great part of the huge earth was scorched by the terrible vapor and melted as tin melts when heated by man's art . . . or as iron, which is hardest of all things, is softened by glowing fire in mountain glens."13
.6Nahum 1:4-5.
7 The Zend-Avesta (Pt. II, p. 95 of J. Darmesteter's translation, 1883); Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, p. 268.
8 "Kaska Tales" collected by J. A. Teit, lournal of American Folk-lore, XXX (1917), 440.
9 S. Thompson, Tales of the North American Indians (1929); H. B. Alexander, North American Mythology (1916), p. 255.
10 R. H. Lowie, "Southern Ute," lournal of American Folk-lore, XXXVII (1924).
11 Ginzberg, Legends, III, 49.
^Ibid., II, 375; III, 316; VI, 116. Tractate Berakhot, 59a-59b. 13 Hesiod, Theogony (transl.
Evelyn-White), 11. 856 ff.
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According to the traditions of the New World, the profile of the land changed in a catastrophe, new valleys were formed, mountain ridges were torn apart, new gulfs were cut out, ancient heights were overturned and new ones sprang up. The few survivors of the ruined world were enveloped in darkness, "the sun in some way did not exist," and in intervals in the light of blazing fires they saw the silhouettes of new mountains.
The Mayan sacred book Popol-Vuh says that the god "rolled mountains" and "removed mountains," and "great and small mountains moved and shaked." Mountains swelled with lava.
Coniraya-Vira-cocha, the god of the Incas raised mountains from the flat land and flattened other mountains.14
> And similarly, "When Israel went out of Egypt . . . the sea saw and fled . . . the mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. . . . Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord."1S
"Which removeth the mountains . . . which overturneth them in his anger; which shaketh the earth out of her place . . . which com-mandeth the sun and it riseth not . . . which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea."16
Mount Sinai
Along the eastern shore of the Red Sea there stretches a mountain^ ous crest with a number of volcanic craters, at present extinguished; some, however, were active not many centuries ago.
One of these volcanoes is usually described as the Mount of the Lawgiving: In the seventies of the last century a scholar, Charles Beke, suggested that Mount Sinai was a volcano in the Arabian Desert.1 The Book of Deuteronomy (4:11) says "the mountain burned with fire unto the robin-bobin
midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness." Beke's idea was rejected by his contemporaries and ultimately by himself.2 Modern scholars, however, agree with his original theory,
14 Brasseur, Sources de Vhistoire primitive du Mexique, pp. 30, 35, 37, 47. « Psalms 114 : 1-7.
M Job 9 : 5-8.
1 Beke, Mount Sinai, a Volcano (1873).
2 The Late Dr. Charles Beke's Discoveries of Sinai in Arabia and of Midian (1878), pp. 436, 561.
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and forthis reason they look for the Mount of the Lawgiving among the volcanoes of Mount Seir and not on the traditional Sinai Peninsula where there are no volcanoes. Thus the claims of the rival peaks of the Sinai Peninsula for the honor of being the Mount of the Law-giving 3 are silenced by new contestants.
'It is true that it is stated "the mountains melted . . . even that Sinai," * but this melting of summits does not necessarily mean an opening up of craters. Rocks turned into a flowing mass.
The plateau of the Sinai Peninsula is covered with formations of basalt lava; 5 wide stretches of the Arabian Desert also glisten with lava.6 Lava formations, interspersed with extinguished volcanoes, stretch from the vicinity of Palmyra southward into Arabia as far as Mecca.7 Only a few thousand years ago the deserts glowed with the beacons of many volcanoes, mountains melted, and lava flowed over the ground from numerous Assures.