is due to the fact that 13 in Persian signifies “bad”; but this explanation is rather far-fetched.
110 Comp. vol. I, pp. 23–24.
111 It is not on earth but in heaven where the moon slipped in its terror of the punishment which was pronounced.
112 Hadar on Gen. 1.16, which cites an unknown midrashic source; Toledot Yizhak on Gen., loc. cit., which is very likely based on Hadar. According to this legend, the word כוכבים “stars” is connected with the word כבה “was extinguished”; the light of the moon was dimmed because some of her parts fell off. On the etymology of שמש “sun”, ירח and סהר “moon”, see Konen 25–26. The text of this passage is to be corrected in accordance with Zohar Hadash Bereshit 4, 19b: שמש=שַׁמָּשׁ “servant of man”. Jellinek emended it correctly without having known the parallel passage.—In the legends concerning the sun, moon, and the stars it is presupposed that these luminaries are endowed with consciousness and intelligence. This idea, as pointed out in note 100, was so widespread among the ancients that Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, II, 5 (comp. also Yad haHazakah, Yesode ha-Torah, 3.9), was justified in referring to the Haggadah as support for his doctrine which he borrowed from the Greeks, that the heavenly bodies were endowed with intelligence. Philo, De Plan. Noe, 3 and De Somn., 4, likewise calls attention to the agreement among the Jews and the Greeks concerning this view. It should, however, be observed that in the liturgy, at least as far as the old prayers are concerned, the conception of the heavenly bodies as intelligent or animate beings is entirely ignored, though the opportunity has frequently presented itself to make use of this idea, as, for instance, in the morning and evening prayer, in the passages of Yozer and Ma‘arib ‘Arabim. On the passages in pseudepigraphic literature stating that the heavenly bodies are endowed with life and senses, comp. note 100, as well as Enoch 41.5, and the passages cited by Charles. Not only Enoch 18.13–16, but also the Talmud (Mo’ed Katan 16a) speaks of “rebellious” stars; comp. also vol. IV, p. 36, on Meroz (Jud. 5.23). On the eclipse of the moon and sun comp. note 100. See further Philo, De M. Opif., 19, and Steinschneider in Magazin für Literatur d. Auslands, 1845, No. 80. Concerning the material of which the sun and moon were made very little is found in the Haggadah; according to Konen 25 the moon consists of light, the sun of fire. The statement made in the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch 9 to the effect that the moon has the likeness of a
40
