128 Hntton Webster 



It was not perhaps by accident that the Old Testament makes 

 Abraham dwell at Ur and Harran, for both were centers of an 

 ancient moon cult^* and both lay beyond the limits of the Baby- 

 lonian plain on the confines of a desert overrun by nomad Arab 

 tribes. Nor was it strange — if we may further follov/ a some- 

 what speculative inquiry — that Moses should have led the Israe- 

 lites to Sinai (the Mount of Sin or the moon), to receive the 

 Law. iVs late as the close of the sixth century B.C., the penin- 

 sula of Sinai was devoted to lunar worship. ^■'^ That the moon- 

 god Sin anciently had precedence over Shamash the sun-god has 

 been shown by various writers who place the chief centers of 

 Babylonian sun-worship east of the Euphrates.^*' 



To the Israelites, as to the ancient Egyptians, the moon was 

 preeminently the " wanderer " by whose movements the earliest 

 calendars were framed.^' One of the Hebrew names for 



" Nannar at Ur (Uru) in western Chaldea, Sin at Harran (Haran) in 

 northern Mesopotamia. It is curious to find a Moslem tradition current 

 about 850 A.D., that " Abraham lived with his people four-score years and 

 ten in the land of Harran, worshipping none other than Al Ozza, an 

 idol famous in that land and adored by the men of Harran, under the 

 name of the Moon, which same custom prevails among them to the present 

 day." (Apology of Al Kindy, ly ; A. S. Palmer, Babylonian Influence on 

 the Bible, London, 1897, p. 2). 



^° Pinches, " Moon," in Hastings, Dictionary of the Bib'.e, iii. 434. 



^"Nielsen, op. cit., 31 sq.; Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 

 pp. 68, 75 sq; L. W. King. Babylonian Religion and Mythology,' London, 

 1899, pp. 17 sq. 



^' Like the Babylonian, the Hebrew lunar year consisted of 12 months, 

 adjusted to the tropic or seasonal year by the intercalation of a thirteenth 

 month. The name of the latter is first met in the Mishna occurring there 

 as the " second Adar." In the Mishna, also, the number of days in a 

 lunar year is fixed at 354. The months consisted of 29 days (hence 

 called "defective"), or of 30 days ("full" months), but there seems to 

 have been no uniform sequence of long and short months. The regulation 

 of the month was probably at first in the hands of the priests and later 

 was committed to the Sanhedrin. A- solar year of 364 days, i. e., 52 

 complete weeks, is found in two pseudographia which date probably from 

 Maccabaean times (Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees), but it is hardly 

 likely that solar reckonings were then in general use. On this subject 

 consult Poznanski. "Calendar (Jewish)," in Hastirgs, Encyclopaedia of 

 Religion and Ethics, iii. 117 sqq. 



128 



