The usual Hebrew name for the moon (yareah; cf. Assyr. irihu, arhw, " month "; Ethiopic wareh; Palmyrene yrh) is evidently to be connected with a root yarah or wdrah, cognate with 'arah, "to wander," cf. Assyr. ur(tu, "road," connoting the moon's motion among the stars. With this Semitic root meaning is to be contrasted the Aryan idea of the moon as "the measurer (of time)." While the moon did not among the Semites receive its name from its function as a marker of time periods, the regularity of its phases made its use general as a fixer of times and periods, as with other peoples, and with this were connoted other related conceptions. Thus in Egypt the moon-god Thoth was god of measures, then of knowledge and wisdom in general (with which cf. the Assyrian Sin, explained as zu-en, " knowledge-lord," and the Greek ideas associated with Hermes). The Manda'ans (q.v.), who derived a large part of their system from Babylonian sources, made the demiurge.
Ptahil say: "I gave the moon as time-measurer for the world" (A. J. H. W. Brandt, Die mandtiische Religion, p. 61,
Leipsic, 1889). Similarly amongthe Hebrews the idea of the moon as a
divider
of time was predominant, and its measuring-function is strikingly expressed in Ps. civ. 19: "He appointed the moon for seasons."
The Hebrews and Phenicians called the new moon hodesh,
" new," the former called the new moon kese' (cf. Assyr. kuae'u, " cap," connected with the idea that the moon-god wore a
cap when the moon was full). A Hebrew poetic name for the moon
is lebhenah, " white "; and in Gen. i. the terminology used is " the lesser light." The Assyrians and Babylonians called the
moon-god Sin (see above; from him the Sinaitic peninsula drew its
name), while other names in the Semitic region were Aku (Elamitic'), Nannar, Aa (consort of Shamash; also frequently rendered " queen
"), and the Phenician Ashtaroth-Karnaim. The importance of the
moon to the Hebrews is seen when it is noted how fundamental a division of time the month was for them. The date of the new moon as
marking the beginning of a new reckoning of time was by them not
calculated but observed. The length of a month, twenty-nine or thirty days, depended, therefore, upon the day when the moon was first seen, except that in cloudy weather the thirtieth day was reckoned to the preceding month. That this basis of reckoning determined the custom of counting the day, not from morning till morning or midnight to midnight, but from evening to evening can not be proved; but it may be confidently assumed, since in general peoples who have only lunar months use this method of defining the day. It is equally difficult to be assured that the week was derived from the month by division of the latter into four parts (see
Week). There is general agreement that the seven-day period was derived from Babylonia, where it
was employed in pre-Semitic times-this is confirmed by the fact
that not only were the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the month observed, but that the nineteenth was
also a special day, the reason being apparently that thirty plus
nineteen are forty-nine, this number making up a week of weeks. The union of the planetary bodies with the names of the days of the week
seems to have been a very late phase, probably not completed
till the Greek period. While the sacred seasons of the Hebrews were fixed by reference to lunar reckoning, there is a suggestion of solar
reference in the Old Testament. It may be mere coincidence that
There are a number of indications that the preCanaanitic relations of the Hebrews with the mooncult were close. Abraham is traced back to Haran (q.v.) and Ur (see Babylonia, IV., § 3 ), two noted centers of moon-worship. Moreover, in the Abrahamic family names and genealogies the moon has
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Thus with Terah may be compared Assyr. tarahu "gazelle" (sacred to Ishtar); Nahor is connected with Nannar, the name of a
moon-god; Abram recalls aburammu, "exalted father," a
frequent title of the moon-deity; Sarah ("princess") and Its and Milcah ("queen") are titles of Functions. the moon-goddess;
Laban is to be connected with "kbanu," the white one," cf.
lebhenah above; while Lamech may be brought into relations with Assyr. Lamgu, a name of Sin. Yet with the Hebrews the
moon was sub ordinate and secondary to the sun. Whether this
represents the original Semitic conception is uncertain, since it is held, though not demonstrated, that the moon-cult represented an
earlier Semitic stage of culture. The age of the worship of Sin is
not determined; the Aramean cult at Haran was of great antiquity and persisted into the Roman period. Sahar, the name of a moon-god,
is probably to be seen in the Mandæan Sauriel, while the
Palmyrene deities Yarhibaal and Aglibaal were moon-deities. The Hebrews were, therefore, in the provenance of the moon-cult, and their conceptions of this body were in general agreement with those of
their neighbors. The idea that the moon influenced the earth and its products was practically universal, and this influence was conceived as either malign or benign. This body was thought to be an agent in the production of crops, perhaps through its supposed function as a creator of dew (W. von Baudissin, Jahve et Moloch, p. 24, Leipsic, 1874; W. H. Roscher, Ueber Selene, pp. 49-99, ib. 1890). The Aryans went further than this and attributed to the moon the growth of animals (Avesta, Mah Yast, Mah Nyayis, SBE, xxiii. 88-91, 355); the Indo-Iranians connected the moon with the primeval bull, itself a symbol of fertility; Pliny (Hist.nat., ii. 221 associated growth with the moon; Macrobius (" On the Dream of Scipio," I., xi. 7) attributes to the moon power over terrestrial objects for increase or decline; while it is a worldwide superstition that a waging moon brings increase of crops, and occasionally even the power of impregnation is attributed to that body. The Old Testament references to this notion are necessarily scanty, yet beyond question
Worship of the moon appears to have been native with the Semites. Wadd in Arabia, Sin and Nannar in Babylonia, Sahar in
Mesopotamia (appearing on Aramaic steles at Merab near Aleppo;
cf. C.
Clermont-Ganneau, in Bibliotheque de l'ecole des hautes Etudes, fasc. 113, pp. 193-195, 211-215, Paris, 1897) are
but a few of the examples which might be cited, the moon being
representative of both male and female deities. Apart, however, from the suggestions contained in the tracing of Abraham to centers of
moon-worship and in the connections of names in the Abrahamic
family with names or titles of moon-deities, there is little or nothing in the early history of the Hebrews to connect them with worship
of the moon (cf. Smith, Red. of Sem., 2d ed., p. 135).
It was only toward the end of the monarchy, in the period of declension and of eclectic religious practices, that the worship of this body appears among
them, when it is registered by the denunciation of the prophets
(
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