Starship Uranus

ScienceDaily, belatedly, offers up "Starship Could Cut The Travel Time To Uranus In Half". Andy Tomaswick, 18 October. A mission for six and a half Earth years is more likely to retain mission planners' interest and not be cut off by some President Abernathy (or President Beale).

If the probe stayed encapsulated in the Starship, the heat tiling could aerobrake in 34 Tauri's atmo. This means the mission could be refueled in Earth orbit - by another Starship, perhaps. Then the first 'Ship just blows all the fuel speeding up to meet the Eighth Heaven, where to intercept its Seventh Planet.

This is a chemical mission. Not considered are Princeton's Direct-Fusion Drive or any NERVA. But Starship could be refitted for such engine too, I believe.

The three actor rule

Lisa Marie Haasbroek, Gmirkinite, has "The Book of Samuel and the Three-Actor Rule in Classical Greek Tragedy" (pdf).

When the theatre first appeared as a form of mass entertainment and/or edification, it was soon found that four was a crowd. Scenes could be delivered with a monologue, or with two d00ds. When three appear, they can have a dispute or a messenger can deliver a message which the other two can handle differently. Where a crowd be needed, that can be the chorus.

Playwrights elevated that system into a rule, which some - notably Euripides - saw fit to bend; for instance, allowing the chorus to interfere with the main characters (better: to judge them, as in Shakepeare's Julius Caesar). Comedy got its farcical edge by cracking all such rules, only to acquire its own rules; but we needn't discuss that for our scope. The tragic form informed how Herodotus would compose scenes between historical figures, those scenes being a sight less historical.

My examples have been Greek, or at least Plutarchite. Haasbroek here makes an assumption: that we don't see the three-actor rule before the Greeks, specifically the great tragedians. She would instead point the trope's dissemination around the Near East, even to Aristotle's Poetics (again, ignoring comedy) and Alexander's forcing of same onto the local populations.

Baruch Halpern once called the Deuteronomic History and the Davidic cycle of 1-2 Reigns/Samuel as "the first historians". This, because they are not like the annals of Assyrian kings nor the historical prefaces to Anatolian treaties. Haasbroek agrees on the parallel, but would strip from the Bible that ribbon. That, because the David stories follow the three actor rule.

One might see a Jew who'd gone to class learning from Herodotus, which inspired him (less-likely her) to compose that sort of court history. Not Haasbroek. She collates the paratext of the Aleppo Codex. Sections end, and a Psalm is brought in - for the chorus to sing. Jews might see this as primitive haftorah. Haasbroek sees the tragic form of the Greeks, whence haftorah evolved.

My problem with this argument is that we own a control-set: Daniel. (Also, Esther. Chronicles too.) A Hellenistic book of Reigns (and Judges) should have attracted Late Biblical Hebrew, western Aramaic, and especially Greek.

I suggest instead that the stage play existed also outside Greece. Jews adopted the form in Egypt; more to the point, Etruscans wrote plays in Italy. They called an actor an istrio, or so say the Romans. This must be from Greek historion; suggesting that it was from Magna Graecia that the Etruscans acquired their historical sense, memory, and - important here - medium, to relate such lore to their peers. Etruria was not however conquered by The Greeks as a unified force. The Greeks couldn't even much conquer each other down there.

So if 1-2 Reigns be, er, histrionic; it needn't have been forced by a Greek overlord. More likely the plentiful Greek colonies nearby spread the good word: Pamphylia, Cyprus, Naucratis, even Al Mina.

The first fall of Neustria

I've said a lot here about how northern Gaul steadily grew as a rival power centre against Rome. It had been a centre before the Gauls even showed up: "Population discontinuity in the Paris Basin linked to evidence of the Neolithic decline" by Seersholm et al..

A feature of 4300–3100 BC was the megalith. These quit being built. The study here deals with a grave site toward the last century of this; these were communal tombs. Nobody was being buried 3000, either. The paper implicates the yersinia - and another bug, Borrelia recurrentis. After the crash, the forests grew back.

As to why the focus on this last century, "excess mortality" hit around this time, carrying off the young as well as the old. The paper leaves until later any pathology: starvation? war?... influenza?

Also this earlier "Phase One" tomb was a family tomb, patrilineal (on H2a1). The daughters, if old enough to be married off, were married off perhaps to be found in other tombs. Some of the burials had "homozygosity" - they were from cousin marriages. That cannot have been healthy either.

The forest was reclaiming "Scania" - Geatland - 3100 BC; then Denmark / Holstein 3000-2800.

A new people came 2900 BC, of what the abstract names "Neolithic ancestry". That came from Iberia; that which survives best today in Sardinia. These farmers stuck around for a half century. They say these tended not to build communal tombs; but, here, the paper does look into one tomb, in use until strangely-precise 2470 BC. Regions are regions, we suppose. Anyway, these burials had died older and of more natural causes. Plague was around then too but less of it. They didn't venture much further northeast, leaving Scania fallow.

The Steppe rolled in 2300-1700 BC. These will be the ItaloCelts. The lead author notes elsewhere they also resettled the new-growth Scania.

Trogus on Parthia

Three years ago I was looking into Trogus mainly for his take on THE JOOS. Today, let's look at his Parthic chapters, which we're told ran from #41 to #42. For that, I refer to Alice Borgna published 2015 more-or-less contemporaneously with "B2Bartle" Bartlett.

Trogus himself was a Gaul, so by necessity extracted his Oriental lore from others. I'd pondered if he'd used Timagenes; and/or a vetus-Latina Septuagint if only in epitome.

Apparently Trogus had a scholarly Reputation - recently, not in antiquity - as a hater of Rome. I don't think Bartlett ever fell for that trap; luckily, neither has Borgna. Trogus liked laws, and peace; and diplomacy where laws couldn't cut it, as across borders. It is also difficult to see that Trogus could have said much against Augustus living by grace of the prince's mercy as he was. And so it went for Parthia: as long as the Arsacid shahs ruled well and kept the peace, Trogus praised them. Some pre-2015 historians perhaps felt this was overpraise; even in Roman times, later historians will view the Parthians with less aplomb.

Since 1996, we know of Trogus' main source for the great Iranian east: one Apollodorus of Artemita. Borgna here defers to Nikonorov. Apollodorus for his own part was a loyal Arsacid subject, for all his personal Hellenism.

Before Apollodorus' time, the Parthians were also Hellenists. They even claimed descent from one Andragoras, a [Doric] Greek captain of the Macedonian conquest. This was nothing unusual for the turn of the first century BC; Armenia was doing this too, and more-so Pontus, to varying degrees of historical likelihood. Toward the end of the Parthian state, by contrast, their shahs got into their heads to LARP rather as Achaemenids - as shahs sometimes do. Apollodorus, in between, lived his career when the Parthian shahs claimed ancestry from Arsaces an Iranian from Balkh / Bactria. Most of us, too, would accept that "Arsacid" lineage as likely for them. At any rate, Trogus did not challenge Apollodorus' pro-Arsacid bias. The shahs likely hadn't claimed to be Persians, yet, which claim I suspect Trogus would have marked as hubris.

Apollodorus stops after Orodes II / 50 BC, early in Trogus' chapter #42. Our man must fill in the rest from others - Nikonorov suggests Nicolaus, Sallust, and even Strabo. Borgna, later, argues as a source for Trogus #12, Posidonius, back when the Arsacids were still "Andragorids". Borgna won't take seriously Timagenes as a potential source.

The Life of Adam and Eve - in Syriac, or not

Gavin McDowell has The Rewritten Bible in Late Antiquity. We can read it legally; thank you Brill. This concerns the Pirqe ascribed to rabbi Eliezer, and its contacts with good ol' Jubilees and that Cave-of-Treasures. I haven't read all of it yet. I just got to it.

One point worthy of mention is that the Cave, Syriac itself; relied upon the Life of Adam and Eve, which is not. McDowell does not think that this Life was ever translated into that language. I deem that statement in want of a footnote - better, a paragraph.

Yes yes, I know: proving a negative is a mug's game, don't do it, so don't demand of others to do it.

What can instead be done is some hint that the Cave had access to Greek lore directly elsewhere.

Movses Khorenatsi and John bar Penkaye each can be tagged as men who did not read languages beyond Armenian and Syriac, respectively; unable to cite lore outside what had been translated into their languages already. I say "can be" because, I mean, this is just a blog; but I am pretty sure most Movses forewords, and Yulia Furman, can be brought to back me up here.

McDowell is not writing a blog. If I needed him in hardcopy, I'd have to front $110 minus a penny, plus a tax and shipping.

If the Cave could read Greek, we are good. If not... then the Life had to exist in Syriac. In this case the reason it ceased in Syriac is simply that the Cave supplanted it.

Enclitic -na

TheTorah is discussing Hebrew נָא. The Rabbis treat it as a "please", as does mah boi Jerome. Steven Fassberg thinks it is a consecutive.

That it is a suffix hints at something like how Greeks use de or oun, or maybe Latins with -que. Among the Semites, Arabic doesn't use it at all; but if Fassberg be right then fa- is bearing this weight over there. Some Arabic Jews, not yet accepting Talmud, thought it was like Arabic alân "now".

The נָא examples brought are all in dialogue segments. The Bible treats it as spoken Hebrew, not literary. God uses it Micah 6:5 (I had to hunt this up; Micah 6-7 may be Persian-era); usually it is the people using it, for requests. This may explain the Rabbis.

The examples cluster 1-4 Samuel/Reigns, Genesis, and Judges; we also have Micah (elsewhere), Deuteronomy 3 ("Moses"), and Ezekiel. In language, these contexts are later stages of Classical. Micah's king Hezeqiah also uses נָא; its Greek (in narrative passages) is kaige, so the translation is late, but the story is I think considered ancient and near-authentic.

Perhaps נָא is an archaism. It is common in all languages for dialogue to be constructed as if it were "authentic".

Ezekiel v. Trito-Isaiah

Let's talk Ezekiel 40-48. Whatever we may or may not say of Ez 36 or Ez 38-9; this proposal for the Temple follows up Ez 37.

Lenny Prado's bit - that Ez 44:15-16 does not belong to Ezekiel - assumes Joachim Schaper, Priester und Leviten im achämenidischen Juda: Studien zur Kult- und Sozialgeschichte Israels in persischer Zeit, FAT 31 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000). Schaper went on to argue that the rest of Ez 44 indeed belongs to Ez 40-8 and that Trito-Isaiah (Is 56f) is based upon that.

I recently got hold of Nathan MacDonald, Priestly Rule (de Gruyter, 2015). This argues the reverse of Schaper: that Ezekiel 44 used Isaiah 56 - actually, rebutted it. Overall it is a development of Michael Fishbane: Ezekiel 44 is an exegetical oracle. If it's that late then maybe vv. 15-16 isn't intrusive.

MacDonald would shift the intrusions mostly elsewhere than Schaper - and far more thoroughgoing. Immediately before, chapter 1.2.5 argues Ez 44:10-14 has blended Numbers 18 and Ez 14. MacDonald sees a core instead within v. 15: But the Levitical priests, ... will come near to me to minister to me and they will stand before me to offer to me fat and blood – declaration of Lord YHWH. The Zadokites since intrude into v. 15 and then inject the whole of v. 16. As well as vv. 8, 10-14.

The core, for MacDonald, had constructed its anti-Isaiah-56 rebuttal from Lev 1-7 and Deuteronomy. As to the canon: the expansion's use of Numbers is suggestive of a very late date, for which MacDonald cites Achenbach, Die Vollendung der Tora as published (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003) unavailable to his colinguist Schaper in 2000.

That assessment of Numbers runs against the ABH language of the Balaam poems' language, and the Josiah-era dating of the poem of Sihon. On the other hand... ABH poetry elsewhere lingered until Habakkuk, and Wellhausen had proposed Numbers 13-14 for the "J" source.