when the serpent "began to speak of various things." The Pentateuch mentions no such subtlety. But the Paradise Lost parallel is most striking, not only in sequence, but also in idea. Milton has seized on the conception of a casual and subtle approach to Eve, and expanded it into the gyrations and contortions of the serpent before her, followed by his speeches, which begin with gentle flattery, and end by broaching the subject of the tree. The second parallel is the suggestion put into the mouth of Satan that God imposed a restriction on the Tree of Knowledge out of jealousy toward his creatures. Compare P. L., IX, 727. What can your knowledge hurt him, or this tree Impart against his will, if all be his? Or is it envy? Yosippon then has the serpent shake the tree, whereupon the tree cries out. There is nothing said of anyone's touching the tree in Genesis; but the motive is at least suggested in Milton, who makes not the serpent but Eve stretch forth the hand which calls forth a remonstrance from nature. The parallel passages: The dramatic effect of the incident is undeniably heightened by transferring the action from the fantastical serpent to the human Eve, and Genesis, Yosippon and Milton all get rid of the serpent as soon as they possibly can, in order to deal with the human element contained in the episode of the Fall. Milton has already advanced the action of the actual connection between the serpent and the tree, which Yosippon has dealt with as the "shaking of the tree by the serpent, by having the serpent tell Eve that he has already eaten of the fruit. We have as yet said nothing of another outstanding parallel between Yosippon and Paradise Lost, namely, the soliloquy of Eve before she touches tree or fruit. Here are the passages from each work arranged in parallel columns: When Eve saw the serpent touch the tree and not die, She said to herself, that the words of her husband were false. yet first, Pausing a while, thus to herself -P. L., IX, 743 ff. It will be noticed that both in arrangement and in development, the two passages are identical; and the idea contained in the to herself she mused: is not contained in the Biblical account. The passage which follows is substantially the same as that given by M. Saurat from the Zohar, and the Miltonic parallel is equally close: She (Eve) then said in her heart, "Woe unto me that I have eaten of this death, for now I will die; and Adam, my husband, who has not eaten of it will live forever and God will couple him with another woman. It is better that we die together, for God has created us together."-Yosippon. but what if God have seen, And death ensue? Then shall I be And Adam, wedded to another Eve, Obviously either account might have supplied Milton with his materials. But the parallels in Yosippon are, as we have pointed out, more far-reaching than those in the Zohar, comprising not only the jealousy motive, but also the subtlety of the serpent's approach to Eve, the purpose imputed to the Creator in forbidding the fruit, the touching of the tree, with the resultant outcry, the soliloquy of Eve before touching tree or fruit. These similarities, with the certainty on other grounds of Milton's knowledge of Yosippon, entirely dispose of this particular piece of evidence for his use of the Zohar. Moreover, the most cursory investigation of the attitude of the late Middle Ages, and, indeed, of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries toward Yosippon or the Pseudo-Josephus will reveal that Milton, in his use of the work as a source, is following his customary procedure in dealing with an authority. His procedure was ever the same. First, he went to the Bible; if the material found there was inadequate, or lacking entirely, he then went to the next best authority, or lacking that, to the next, and so on until he had exhausted all possibilities. In all cases when he was dealing with Hebrew tradition, he went from Scripture to Josephus, and it is only reasonable to suppose that in the particular case with which we are dealing, his next source would be Yosippon, for he himself admitted si periisset Josephus restaret tantum Josippus tuus. The parallels of the passages are so numerous, the process of embodiment so typical, and the certainty of Milton's knowledge of the material so beyond question, that the admission of this Jewish work as a source is almost inevitable. The whole question of Milton's larger indebtedness to this or similar works of rabbinical nature must be reserved for future discussion. University of Michigan. Mitford, op. cit., VI, 83. THE HELIAND: A NEW APPROACH BY E. C. METZENTHIN Wer den Dichter will verstehen, Muss in Dichters Lande gehen-Goethe. This word of congenial understanding, coined by an "immortali who was himself a poet, if applied to the Old Saxon poet who composed the Heliand, advises those who would understand him to investigate thoroughly the conditions in the old Saxon land at the time this work was written. To this investigation, however, must be brought not only intellect but also a heart full of sympathy with those strange conditions of the early Middle Ages, and the fascinating problems connected with the Heliand and the "Kultur" of the early Carolingian empire must be attacked with the weapons of philologists as well as of theologians. One reason why, up to the present time, the veil enveloping the Heliand has been but so slightly lifted, in spite of many earnest attempts, lies in the fact that the period in which this poem originated is one of the most complicated and perplexing epochs in the history of mankind. Then, for the second time, a world empire was wrought in Europe out of the most diverse elements (Allemanians, Bavarians, Swabians, Franks, Saxons, Langobardians, Italians, even Spaniards in the south-west and Slavs in the north-east) by the genius and energy of Karl the Great, in which empire the Roman Church succeeded in subduing and extinguishing the remnants of ancient heathendom. Such a clash and amalgamation of peoples and religions we find hardly anywhere else in history. And that makes a study of this period fascinating, but the understanding of it exceedingly difficult, even almost impossible for children of our present civilization, so entirely different in every respect. Look, for example, at the most prominent figures of that time: Karl the Great, with his utter disregard of convention, his four wives and more "Nebenfrauen " by whom he had at least seventeen children; Louis the Pious, "Le Debonnaire," born 778, with his dominating, versatile and brilliant consort Judith, a woman worthy to be made the heroine of a tragedy by a master dramatist (cf. Wildenbruch's attempt in his tragedy, "Die Karolinger "). Look at those brilliant scholars of the imperial court at Aachen, representatives of Italy, France, Ireland, England, etc.; or at those devoted missionaries, coming over from Ireland and England to convert their "brethren" or cousins on the continent; or at the different types of monks, from the humblest gardener to the famous scholastic; or at the high Church dignitaries, some of them the most cunning diplomats, others war lords or epicureans-what a strange collection of specimens on the threshold of the Middle Ages! The more we study them in detail, the more unintelligible their complicated natures become to us. Many of them seem composed of a double personality: outwardly, a picture of piety, religious zeal, sincerity; inwardly, almost its reverse in cruelty, licentiousness, dishonesty. This double personality in the individual is, of course, partly the reflection of the many-sidedness of the contemporaneous civilization, in particular, the effect of the planting of the Roman-Christian tree in the Teuton heathen soil. There still remains much to do for unprejudiced historians in the exploration of these mysterious times and in the correct characterization of these double-natured men, to be attempted successfully only after the breaking down of all the barriers of tradition by which even our modern science is often surrounded and hindered. Under this blight of traditional conceptions history and literature are still suffering almost as much as is theology. We certainly are, for example, in need of an impartial comparison of Karl the Great 1 Among the problems which confront the student of the Carolingian epoch and of the Heliand in particular the following might be mentioned: 1. The explanation of the so-called conversion of the Saxons, who, after the most cruel subjugation by the first emperor, Karl the Great, became the most faithful adherents of the second emperor, Louis the Pious. 2. The explanation of the attitude of so many sincere and intelligent scholars of this period towards the abundance of most incredible miracles performed by the bones (often stolen or substituted) of saints. 3. The position and treatment of the Jews under the early Carolingians, as reflected in the "Capitula de Judaeis," in 789 and 814, and in the "Schutzbriefe" by Karl the Great and Louis the Pious followed by Bishop Agobard's pamphlets and letters to the emperor, "De insolentia Judaeorum" and "De Judaicis superstitionibus," and in the outspoken Antisemitism of the Heliand. A thorough investigation of the latter's attitude would doubtless shed new light on this problem and help toward the solution of related problems. |