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PARTISAN REVIEW
land as an historical unit is related to specific divine powers. The earth
of the land is not simply a natural space but a dynamic divinized
reality. Every "metaphysical people" presents a specific reality.
Therefore the mythologies vary from people to people and from
place to place. The various myths relate a particular story; how–
ever the people telling the story do not know that it is a particular
tale they tell but consider it to be universally true. Its gods are pre–
sented as "the" gods, its heaven and its earth are turned by the
people into "the" heaven and "the" earth. The mythical community
cannot see beyond itself, generalizing its experience and creating a
generalized "ideology."
It
bridges the hiatus between its concrete
circumscribed horizon of life and the rest of mankind by generalizing
its myth. It is therefore the task of the historian to translate the
language of myth back into its original context. The mythical
cosmogonies that tell the story of the creation of heaven and earth
actually refer to the heaven and the earth of a specific people.
Goldberg's equation (peoples-gods-Iands)
is
exemplified in
his
interpretation of the cult. A people needs a territory not only to dwell
in but to actualize its cult. Not every territory is equally suitable for
the cultic act. Peoples will migrate in search of a suitable territory
where the well springs of its life, the gods, may break through. The
land where the god and the people come together and find each
other is a cultic territory. The cult presents the union of the biological
powers of the people with its source of life. The aim of the cult
is
the covenant with the gods.
When a people first comes into a territory its earth is dark and
void and its heavens above are closed until the cult
is
established.
The territory is the foundation of the cult, but before the cult is
established the territory remains neutral ground. Only when the cult
comes into function does the earth come alive and the heavens spread
above as the firmament. Hesiod in the first part of his theogony does
not, as he thought, present a general cosmogony but rather records
the constitution of the cult. The various cosmogonies of mythology do
not tell the story of the creation of heaven and earth but rather give
a very detailed account of the constitution of cult. Gods and mortals
must work together in taming the wild and overwhelming powers in
both the divine and human realms. Therefore the first sacred act on
the part of the gods is a sacrifice of gods as much as on the part of
man it is the sacrifice of men. Once the common bond between gods
