Semitic magic, its origins and development / by R. Campbell Thompson.

  • Reginald Campbell Thompson
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Semitic magic, its origins and development / by R. Campbell Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that such oaths are reckoned parallel to the unclean tabu of contagion for which similar atonements must be made to free the man from the ban ; does a man who swears to perform a rash act lay himself under a tabu until he shall have completed his task ? Take the instances in Greek mythology, as Miss Jane Harrison, who recognizes the same difficulty, has collected them: “ It is less obvious at first why a^cuyta [offerings destroyed] were always employed in the taking of oaths ... In the ordinary ritual of the taking of oaths, the oath-taker actually stood upon the pieces of the slaughtered animal . . . Tyndareus sacrificed a horse and made Helen’s suitors take an oath, causing them to stand on the cut-up pieces of the horse— having made them take the oath, he buried the horse . . . It was said Herakles had given an oath to the sons of Neleus on the cut pieces of a boar ...” Pausanias says, “ ‘ With the men of old days the rule was as regards a sacrificial animal on which an oath had been taken that it should be no more accounted as eatable for men.’ ” Miss Harrison explains the custom of standing on the fragments of the victim as pointing “clearly to the identification of oath-taker and sacrifice. The victim was hewn in bits; so if the oath-taker perjure himself will he be hewn in bits.” 1 I venture with diffidence to put knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty : or if any one swear rashly with his lips to do evil, or to do good, whatsoever it be that a man shall utter rashly with an oath, and it be hid from him ; when he knoweth of it, then he shall be guilty in one of these things : and it shall be, when he shall be guilty in one of these things, that he shall confess that wherein he hath sinned : and he shall bring his guilt offering unto Yahweh for his sin which he hath sinned, a female from the flock, a lamb or a goat, for a sin offering ; and the priest shall make atonement for him as concerning his sin.” 1 J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, 66.