numbers of angels perish in the stream Dinur, whenever they do not chant their hymns at the exact moment. Comp. Zohar III, 64b; Ekah 3, 132–133.
71 PRE 5 (read, with the two last parallel passages, מקצת); Tehillim 93, 415; Aguddat Aggadot 7; MHG I, 29. A different version is given in Tehillim 90, 391, which reads: The mountains flew over the waters as birds, whereupon God distributed them in accordance with the nature of the earth. Other legends concerning the origin of the mountains are found in vol. I, pp. 79–80; see note 29 on vol. I, p. 112. הרים in BR 3.8 is based on an erroneous reading (comp. Theodor, ad loc.) and הדים is the correct reading, for the Midrash attempts to explain why Gen. 1.3 reads יום אחד) “one day”, and not יום ראשון) “the first day”, a difficulty to which also Josephus, Antiqui., 1, 1, calls attention. See also Hippolytus, ad loc.
72 PRE 5; Aguddat Aggadot 7. On the rebellion of the waters comp. vol. I, pp. 14–15, as well as the following note.
73 Baba Batra 74b; Tan. IV, 97–98; Tan. Hayye Sarah 3 and Hukkat 1; BaR 18.22; ShR 15.22; Tehillim 1, 17 (ערותו של יום); Wa-Yosha’ 46; Hagigah 12a (הים היה מרחיב ובו׳). Comp. also vol. I, pp. 14–16, 27, and 40 (Leviathan, Rahab, and the angel of death are considered identical), as well as vol. III, p. 25, and Yerushalmi Sanhedrin 7, 25d, where the prince of the sea (שר של ים)) is mentioned twice. In the Midrashim cited above two entirely different elements are combined: God’s strife with Rahab (which is a reminiscence of an old Babylonian myth), taken from the Babylonian Talmud, loc. cit., and the weeping of the waters on account of the separation of the upper and lower waters (a mythological explanation of rain as tears), which is found in the Palestine sources (BR 5.4 and the Midrashim cited in note 52). The eagerness of the waters to obey God’s command is emphasized in PR 192b–193a and WR (according to a quotation from it found in Makiri on Ps. 33, 210) as a protest against the mythological account of the rebellion of the waters. A legend which is also composed of various elements is the one given in Tan. Hayye Sarah, loc. cit., and ShR, loc. cit., where the ocean and the “sea of death” are considered identical (a Babylonian view, comp. KAT 3, 576, note 2), and at the same time it is said that it will be “cured” in the time to come. The last statement is found in the old sources in connection with the Sea of Sodom (comp. note 184 on vol. I, p. 256), which was known to Pausanias and the Church Fathers as the “Dead Sea”. This name is unknown in Jewish sources;
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