the gate of the temple two brazen dogs were placed (on such magic dogs comp. vol. III, pp. 6–7), so that whenever a person who had acquired the knowledge of the Name would pass, they began to bark. Frightened by this sound, the person would forget the knowledge of the Name. Jesus, however, had written the Name on paper, which he hid under his skin. He forgot the Name while passing the dogs, but later learned it again from the paper which he pulled out from under his skin. By means of the Name he was able to perform all the miracles. Comp. Krauss, Leben Jesu, index s.v. “Grundstein.” The view that the Name of the Messiah is engraved upon a stone of the heavenly temple belongs likewise to the Eben Shetiyyah legend cycle. For further details concerning this legend, see vol. I, p. 352; Feuchtwanger in Monatsschrift LV, 43–47; Jeremias, Babylonisches im NT, 79–80, and AT AO 2, 49, 155, 372, 374, 585.
40 Konen 24–25, based on old sources; comp. BR 3. 4–5; PK 21, 145b; WR 31.7; ShR 15.22 and 50.1; Tehillim 50, 279 (where it is said that also the destruction of this world as well as the creation of the new world will begin with Zion) and 104, 441; ER 5, 21; Tan. B. II, 96.
41 Originally a mythological conception of creation as a struggle between light and darkness (=chaos). In Jewish sources the prince of darkness is the angel of death (=Satan); comp. ShR 8.6; Yelammedenu in Ozar Midrashim 64b; Tan. Wa-Yakhel 4. He is, of course, considered to have been created by God.
42 PR 20, 95a–96b, and 203a. The allegorical interpretation of the sign of the Zodiac, although found in both versions of the Pesikta, does not belong to the original legend concerning the struggle between light and darkness, i.e., God and Satan, and is therefore rightly omitted in the manuscript made use of for the text. In this account water and darkness are identical, because water is conceived as the chaotic primeval substance. On the rebellion of the water comp. notes 50–53 and 71–73, as well as Konen 25 (read ונתרקמה מכבודו or ונתרקעה for ונתרקנה כבודו; the formation of solid bodies out of the fluid water will thus be explained), where, quite manifestly, the struggle between light and darkness, as the strife of the former against the water, is described, although just a little before (24) this struggle is given in quite a different form.
43 43 BR 5.8 and 46.3, where the Midrash refers to Aquila’s translation of שדי by “ikanos”; comp. Theodor on the second passage just referred to and Joel, Blicke, I, 147. As to the aspiration of created things
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