Nimrod and the Wolf

“Saturn and Marcolf both, in any case, replace the demons of earlier Hebrew and Arabic legend who reveal to Solomon the mysteries of the universe” (333).

“there is a direct connection between Solomon’s comment on the warning that befell the proud Chaldeans on the field of Shinar (i.e. the destruction of the Tower of Babel), and Saturn’s reference to Nimrod (the builder of the Tower)” (336).

“The scattering of evil spirits throughout the world after the destruction of the Tower of Babel is strangely another Hebrew legend widely disseminated reminiscent of in the Middle Ages—the belief that the demons and monsters of the world were the evil descendants of Cain” (337).

“For the builders of the Tower were themselves considered to be descended from the first murderer, Cain” (338).

“The story that the giant Nimrod was the first tyrant who rebelled against God by building the Tower of Babel is recounted by Josephus and is a part of history as conceived by most Latin writers of the Middle Ages, among them Augustine, Orosius, Isidor of Seville, Gregory of Tours, and Rabanus Maurus” (338).

“As the dwelling-place of demons the site of the Tower inevitably assumes the character of the waste land, on which no human being may tread, of Solomon’s question” (340).

“It seems probable that because of the close connection and even confusion of Bel and Nimrod in ancient and medieval legend shortly to be discussed, some reminiscence of the story of Bel’s destruction of the monsters and his subsequent death has been combined in the source of the Old English poem with the story of Nimrod and the giants who strove against God in building the Tower of Babel” (344).

“makes it seem probable that some relation exists between the myth of Bel and the similar story of Nimrod’s ‘friend’ how ever much disguised it may have been in the Old English poem” (346).

“First of all, the son of Bel, according to the most common tradition, is Ninus, who is often identified with Nimrod. Ninus, usually considered the founder of Nineveh, as isNimrod in the Hebrew Genesis (x, 9)” (346).

“in the eleventh-century Byzantine chronicler Cedrenus, Nimrod, who is said to be called also Orion and Kronos, is likewise the father of Bel” (347).

“Nimrod thus being substituted for Bel as the father of Ninus” (347).

“For Bel was not only often considered the father of Nimrod, and occasionally his son, but so frequently were the same stories told of the two, that they were sometimes actually identified as the giant who built the Tower” (348).

“a story originally told of Bel may have become fused with another gigantomachia connected with the Tower” (348).

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“Now the wolf was often identified with the Devil among the Germanic peoples” (349).

“That a god of the heathen involved in a fight with dragons should eventually appear as a demon called Wolf is not altogether surprising” (349).

“As was mentioned at the beginning of this article, Marculf or Marcolfus (Marcol, Markolf, Marolf) appears in all the western European stories except the Old English as the opponent of Solomon in debate” (350).

“One or the other has taken the place of the demon who in the ultimate Hebrew source of these dialogues discloses to Solomon the secrets of the universe” (350).

“The accepted explanation, however, is that Marcolfus is a Germanization of a Latin Marcolus, (from which comes the form Marcol), which in turn derives ultimately from the Hebrew Marcolis, a demon-idol, who is supposed by Hebrew scholars to be none other than Mercurius” (350).

“we find that Aethicus Ister identified Saturn with Morcholom (variants Marcholon, Marcholum) who is presumably Markolis” (350).

“It has been thought that the substitution of Saturn is best explained by a confusion of Marcolis with Melcol (Milcol), a variant of Moloch, who is the Oriental Saturn as a devourer of children” (350).

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“Whatever the true Oriental origin of Marculf-Marcolfus, there can be no doubt that he alternates with Saturn as the opponent of Solomon in the dialogues which go back ultimately to Hebrew legends in which Solomon converses with a demon” (351).

“A story told of Bel might therefore have been easily transferred to Saturn and through him to his alter ego in the Solomon dialogues, the Markolis-Marcolfus-Marculf, who was later left as a merely subordinate figure in the story when Saturn became Solomon’s opponent” (351).

“It is certain, of course, that the Germanic Marculf is substituted in this Solomon story for a name going back to an Oriental source” (352).

“A demon Marculf(us), hero of a combat with dragons, might therefore, if the poet, following his usual custom in the dialogue, preferred not to give the answers to his riddles in plain words, be said to be called Wandering Wolf, a wolf of the marches’ (352).

“It looks very much as if Saturn, in giving this account of the Wolf is telling a story about some one intimately related to himself” (353).

“If the two famous wanderers Saturn and the Wolf thus seem to have kept the same company and to be intimately associated, the reason may be that behind the figure of the Wolf lies Marculf, who played, in many another medieval version, the role of Saturn as Solomon’s opponent in debate” (353).