Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ethel Jean (Kowan) Saltz" <macnietspingal AT airmail.net>]

Most scholars agree that Ur Kasdim was the Sumerian city of Ur, today Tall
al-Muqayyar (or Mughair), about 200 miles (300 km) southeast of Baghdad in
lower Mesopotamia, which was excavated from 1922 to 1934. It is certain that
the cradle of the ancestors was the seat of a vigorous polytheism whose
memory had not been lost and whose uncontested master in Ur was Nanna (or
Sin), the Sumero-Akkadian moon god. ?They served other gods,? Joshua, Moses'
successor, recalled, speaking to their descendants at Shechem.  Britannica

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I was reading this in the digest and it suddenly answered a question I've 
asked before in another bible group.  That's why Torah uses the moon as a 
marker.  Everyone did back then!!  So they must have taken the sun for 
granted and the most important "God/mystey" to worry about was when one was 
sleeping and things go on.  I live with a dog and both of us it seems to me 
are influenced by solar energy from sunrise to sunset.  They didn't have 
electricity in those days:)  What a wonder Ben Franklin is:)  Also they 
didn't know that the moon was simply a way of keeping track of the sun when 
you couldn't see the sun star:)