Perplexed, II, 8, and Zohar Hadash Bereshit 4 (caption תני ר״ שמעון). The old Jewish sources are not acquainted with the conception of the music of the spheres; comp. note 102. As to the noises which resound throughout the universe but are nevertheless inaudible to man, a good deal more is mentioned in the sources just quoted. These noises are at the birth and death of man, at the first sexual intercourse, as well as at the time of divorce, the felling of a fruitful tree and the sloughing of the skin of a serpent, the falling of rain (Yoma loc. cit., reads more accurately: the roaring of the taurine angel when he causes the water from the lower abyss to be poured into the upper abyss; comp. Ta'anit 25b; Baraita de-Ma'aseh Bereshit 49; Seder Rabba di-Bereshit 10; Responsen der Geonim, Harkavy’s edition, No. 289, p. 142); finally there resounds out of Rome such a loud voice, that were it not for the grating of the sun, it would have been audible all over the world. In these sources mythological conceptions, as, for instance, the roaring of the taurine angel of the abyss, which is merely the Jewish recast of the Babylonian belief about the god “Ea”, are found side by side with purely poetical images. As to the loud voice which resounds at the time of a divorce, comp. Index s.v. Divorce. See also vol. I, p. 59.
108 Nedarim 8b; Yoma 20b, which reads: These motes are named לא “la” in Aramaic, according to which לא (Dan. 4.32) is explained. On the grating of the sun, comp. Löw in Orientalische Literaturzeitung, XV, 305.
109 109 Yerushalmi Ta'anit 4, 68b; Babli 27b; Soferim 7.5. One should not go out of doors on Wednesday night (i.e., on Wednesday eve, for according to the Jewish conception the day belongs to the preceding night) because the demon Agrat the daughter of Mahlat (=אגרת בת מחלת; the transliteration is doubtful, and Kohut’s Persian etymology in Angelologie, 88, is certainly untenable) with her eighteen myriads of malicious throngs come out on this night (also on Saturday night) to inflict evil on man. See Pesahim 111a and 112b; PRK (Grünhut’s edition) 73; BaR 12.3. Comp. further Sifra 26.4; Geiger, Kebuzzat Maamarim, 167, and Ginzberg’s note in the supplement. In the middle ages Monday (comp. vol. I, p. 15) and Wednesday were considered as unlucky days, and there is an accepted rule אין מתחילין בב״ד “one should not begin any undertaking on Monday or Wednesday”. Brüll, Jahrbücher, IX, 5 (comp. also ibid., 66), accepts the explanation found in a manuscript, according to which the belief
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