The Maoris of New Zealand tell of fiery winds and fierce clouds that lashed the waters into tidal waves that touched the sky and were accompanied by furious hailstorms. The ocean fled. The progeny of the storm and hail were "Mist, and Heavy-dew and Light-dew." After the catastrophe
"but little of the dry land was left standing above the sea. Then clear light increased in the world, and the beings who had
the Sinai Desert. See F. S. Bodenheimer and O. Theodor, Ergebnisse der Sinai Expedition (1929), Pt. III.
A German professor suggested also Blattlause. "Blattlause wie Blattsauger schwitzen zuweilen auch aus dem After einen honigartigen Saft in solcher Menge aus, dass die Pflanzen, besonders im Juli, damit gleichsam iiberfirnisst sind" (W. H. Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia [1883], p. 14).
But where are forests in a desert where lice would prepare on the leaves of the trees three meals a day for a myriad of migrants?
5 Psalms 78 : 24 and 105 : 40. 6 Exodus 16:4. 1 Tractate Yoma 75a.
*J. A. MacCulloch, Eddie Mythology (1930), p. 168.
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been hidden between [sky and earth] before they were parted, now multiplied upon the earth." 9
This tradition of the Maoris has substantially the same elements as the Israelite tradition. The destruction of the world was accompanied by hurricanes, hail (meteorites), and sky-high billows; the land submerged; a mist covered the earth for a long time; heavy dew fell to the ground together with light dew, as in the passage quoted from Numbers 11 : 9.
The writings of Buddhism relate that when a world cycle comes to an end with the world destroyed and the ocean dried up, there is no distinction of day and night and heavenly ambrosia serves as food.10
In the hymns of Rig-Veda,11 it is said that honey (madhu) comes from the clouds. These clouds originated from the pillar of cloud. Among the hymns of the Atharva-Veda there is one to the honey-lash: "From heaven, from earth, from the atmosphere, from the sea, from the fire, and from the wind, the honey-lash hath verily sprung. This, clothed in amrite (ambrosia), all the creatures revering, acclaim in their hearts." 12
The Egyptian Book of the Dead speaks of "the divine clouds and the great dew" that bring the earth into contact with the heavens.13
The Greeks called the heavenly bread ambrosia. It is described by the Greek poets in identical terms with manna: it had the taste of honey and a fragrance. This heavenly bread has given classical scholars many headaches. Greek authors from Homer and Hesiod down through the ages continually referred to ambrosia as the heavenly food which in its fluid state is called nectar.14 But it was used also as ointment15 (it had the fragrance of a lily), and as food for the horses of Hera when she visited Zeus in the sky.16 Hera (Earth) was
robin-bobin
9 Tylor, Primitive Culture, I, 324. "> Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 322.
11 Cf. Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia, p. 19.
12 Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, p. 229, Rigveda I, 112.
13 E. W. Budge, The Book of the Dead (2nd ed., 1928), Chap. 98; cf. G. A. Wainwright, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XVIII (1932), 167.
14 Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia. 15 Iliad xiv. 170 ff.
10 Iliad v. 368 f?.; see also ibid., v. 775 ff.; xiii. 34 ff., and Ovid, Metamorphoses ii. 119 ff.
WORLDS IN COLLISION 137
veiled in it when she hurried from her brother Ares (Mars) to Zeus (Jupiter). What could it be, this heavenly bread, which served also as a veil for a goddess-planet, and was used as an ointment, too? It was honey, said some scholars. But honey is a regular food for mortals, whereas ambrosia was given only to the generation of heroes.
"Then what was this substance that served as fodder on the ground for horses, as a veil for planets, bread from the sky for heroes, and that also turned fluid for their drink, and was oil and perfume for ointments?
•It was the manna that was baked into bread, had an oily taste and also a honey taste, was found on the ground by man and beast, wrapped the earth and the heavenly bodies in a veil, was called
"corn of heaven" and "bread of the mighty,"1T had a fragrant odor, and served the women in the wilderness as ointment.18 Manna, like ambrosia, was compared with honey and with morning dew.
The belief of Aristotle and other writers19 that honey falls from the atmosphere with the dew was based on the experience of those days when the world was veiled in the carbon clouds that precipitated honey-frost.
These clouds are described as "dreaded shades" in the Kalevala. From these "dreaded shades,"
says the epos, honey dropped. "And the clouds their fragrance sifted, sifted honey . . . from their home within the heavens." 20
The Maoris in the Pacific, the Jews on the border of Asia and Africa, the Hindus, the Finns, the Icelanders, all describe the honey-food being dropped from the clouds, dreary shades of the shadow of death, that enveloped the earth after a cosmic catastrophe. All traditions agree also that the source of the heavenly bread falling from the clouds with the morning dew was a celestial body. The Sibyl says that the sweet heavenly bread came from the starry heavens.21
The planet-god Ukko, or Jupiter, is said to have been the source of the
17 Tractate Yoma 75a. 18 Ginzberg, Legends, III, 49.
19 Aristotle, Historia Animalium ("Generation of Animals"), v. 22. 32; Galen (ed. by C. G.
Kiihn, 1821-1823), VI, 739; Pliny, Natural History, xi. 30; Diodorus, The Library of History, xvii. 75.
20 The Kalevala (transl. Crawford), p. xvi and Rune 9.
21 Ginzberg, Legends, VI, 17.
138 WORLDS IN COLLISION
honey that dropped from the clouds.22 Athena covered other planet-goddesses with a "robe ambrosial," and provided nectar and ambrosia to the heroes.23 Other traditions, too, see the origin of the honey-dew in a celestial body that enveloped the earth in clouds. For this reason ambrosia or manna is called "heavenly bread."
Rivers of Milk and Honey
•^The honey-frost fell in enormous quantities. The haggadic literature says that the quantity which fell every day would have sufficed to nourish the people for two thousand years.1 All the peoples of the East and the West could see it.2
A few hours after the break of day, the heat under the cloud cover liquefied the grains and volatilized them.3 The ground absorbed some of the liquefied mass, as it absorbs dew. The grains also fell upon the water, and the rivers became milky in appearance.
The Egyptians relate that the Nile flowed for a time blended with honey.4 The strange appearance of the rivers of Palestine—in the desert the Israelites saw no river—caused the scouts robin-bobin
who returned from a survey of the land to call it the land that "floweth with milk and honey"
(Numbers 13 : 27). "The heavens rain oil, the wadis run with honey," says a text found in Ras-Shamra (Ugarit) in Syria.5
In the rabbinical literature it is said that "melting of manna formed streams that furnished drink to many deer and other animals." 6
The Atharva-Veda hymns say that honey-lash came down from fire and wind; ambrosia fell, and streams of honey flowed upon the earth. "The broad earth shall milk for us precious honey . . .
shall
22 The Kalemla, Rune 15.
23 Iliad xiv. 170 ff. Cf. Plutarch, On the Face (De facie quae in orbe lunae apparet).
1 Midrash Tehillim to Psalm 23; Tosefta Sota 4, 3. 2 Tractate Yoma 76a.
3 Exodus 16 : 21.
4 Manetho refers this phenomenon to the time of Pharaoh Nephercheres. See the volume of Manetho in the Loeb Classical Library, pp. 35, 37, 39.
5 C. H. Gordon, The Loves and Wars of Baal and Anat (1943), p. 10.
6 Midrash Tannaim, 191; Targum Yerushalmi on Exodus 16 : 21; Tanhuma, Beshalla 21, and other sources.