Note 48 — Chapter X

As in so much of their speculation, the members of the astral school have here mixed valuable suggestions with pure theorizing. Certain numbers were specially sacred among the Babylonians and were employed as divine names. Sin, the Moon-god, for example, was the god "Thirty," from the conventional length of the lunar month; and the gods "Four" and "Seven" may have represented different aspects of the Moon-god, the former the four phases of the moon, the latter the seven-day week as a lunar quarter. If the idea travelled westward, we obtain a satisfactory explanation of such Palestinian names as Kiriath-arba and Be'er-sheba'. For this subject, see especially Prof. Burney's forthcoming work on "Judges" (see above, p. 290 n. 3), p. 43 f. Discussions are there given of other points illustrated by the Babylonian texts, of which special mention may be made of the exhaustive notes on Yahwe (pp. 243 ff.) and the Ashera (pp. 196 ff.), and the valuable section> on early Hebrew poetry.