of paradise is found in Steinschneider-Festschrift, Hebrew section, 55–56. Comp. also Abkat Rokel, II, 1.
98 Hagigah 12a. The view that the light created on the first day is identical with that of the heavenly bodies is given as that of the majority of scholars. But there are some who maintain that the light of the first day is entirely different from all the other lights. Comp. vol. I, pp. 8–9. Philo, De M. Opif., 3–4, asserts that the ideal world was created on the first day (concerning this explanation of the expression יום אחד comp. note 71), whereas the material world appeared on the following days. Similarly a Tanna of the middle of the second century asserts: Everything was created on the first day, except that some things appeared earlier and others later; Tan. B. I, 2; BR 12.4; Origen on Gen. 2.2; Ephraim, I, 127C; Basilius Hexaemeron, 4. Comp. Ginzberg, Haggada bei den Kirchenv., 24. See also Ginzberg’s remarks in R.E.J., LXVIII, 148. On the same view by the philosophers of the middle ages, see Horovitz, Ueber den Einfluss… auf den Kalam, 22, note 2. Comp. also note 97 on vol. I, p. 82.
99 God created the sun and the moon in order to give the lie to the heathen who worship them as deities; had God only created one of them, the heathen would have apparently had good reason for adoring it. Similarly Philo, De M. Opif., 14–15; Theophilus 2.15; Tadshe (beginning), which reads: God first created the plant world and then the heavenly bodies, in order that it should not be said that the latter produced the former; comp. also vol. I, p. 16, where the same idea is expressed with reference to the angels.
100 Konen 25–26, which is based on older sources; comp. BR6. 3; Hullin 60b; Shebu’ot 9a (the sacrifice of atonement on the new-moon is God’s acknowledgement that He dealt too severely with the moon); PRE 4 and 51; Targum Yerushalmi Gen. 1.16 and Num. 28.15. These sources, as well as others (Mekilta Bo 1, 3a; PK 5, 54a; PR 15, 78a; Tan. B. II, 47), also speak of the compensation received by the moon for its reduction in size: it became a symbol of Israel and the pious, whereas the sun represents Esau and the ungodly. More over the moon is sometimes seen also by day while the sun on the other hand is never seen by night. A reminiscence of the mythological conception of the diminution of the moon (the rationalistic explanation of the Haggadah by Back, Monatsschrift XXIX, 226, seq., must not be taken seriously) as a punishment for its rebellious conduct toward God may be found in Enoch 18.15,
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